Songfacts®:

• Jeff Buckley, Tim's son from a brief first marriage to Mary Guibert when he was 18, was a marginal figure in his life. Tim Buckley's longtime guitarist Lee Underwood recalled to Uncut: "Several times he spoke to me of having abandoned Mary to fulfill his destiny as a musician. Tim intended to explain his leaving when Jeff came of age. Meanwhile, he wrote 'Dream Letter' as a kind of love song reaching across the years to a son he hardly knew. He cared, but he'd made a choice early on: family or music. He chose music."
• This apologetic ode was the second song that Tim Buckley wrote about Mary Guibert and Jeff. The first, "I Never Asked to Be Your Mountain," was on his previous LP, Goodbye and Hello.
• The name of the song would later be used for a live album: the 1990 posthumous release Dream Letter: Live in London 1968.
• Jeff later penned a song for his Grace album, "Dream Brother," for a pal who was considering leaving his pregnant girlfriend. Jeff did not want his friend to become like his own father, who had left his mother before he was born.