It came to me in a dream. My sister Jannette and I are standing in front of Livingstone's, an old favorite bar in Fresno, and we're waiting for someone to exit. That someone ends up being our mother and her sister, two-and-a-half sheets to the wind, tossing money at us so we can go inside because Livingstone's has suddenly become Club Fred, a live venue that's just one street over. Inside, a handful of friends are sitting at three or four of about 20 tables, and they're watching in the dark as
Jeff Buckley does a posthumous and slightly girl group-esque rendition of a
Sketches-era demo called "
I Know We Could Be So Happy Baby (If We Wanted to Be)." Jannette and I can't even manage to sit, we're so enthralled, and as he runs through his arabesques and falsettos... those chords! Those swirling chords that dance in and around each other and seem to trail off as easily as he snaps them back toward himself...
We stand there watching until the very end, and as Jeff quickly says his goodbyes and the band starts to break down their equipment, the room is overcome by a palpable grief. Grief not just because the show is over and we'll probably never experience anything like it again, but because we're all somehow aware that he's only temporarily gracing us. Somehow, despite the fact that he's just a few feet away from us, we all know, logically, that's he's not really alive anymore, and as soon as he walks out the club doors he'll be gone forever. As we allow it to sink in, heads bowed and faces drawn, I wake up with that song in a loop through my brain.
MP3: Jeff Buckley - "I Know We Could Be So Happy Baby (If We Wanted to Be)"It's been ten years since Jeff Buckley's death. Doesn't seem like ten years, does it? It's the progressively clipped pace of each passing year that seems to be sneaking up on us, making us stop in our tracks and wonder, "Really? Already?" It's hard to believe he would have been 41 this year. Like his estranged father, cult troubadour
Tim Buckley, Jeff left the world with an ephemeral image of youth that isn't easily blurred by the persistence of time. Tim died just two months after meeting his eight-year-old son for the first time, and it was the image of his father--his mythology, his music and its profound influence on so many people--that would haunt Jeff for the rest of his life.
As a child,
Jeffrey Scott Buckley was known as
Scotty Moorhead. In an effort to spare him any confusion, Jeff's mother
Mary Guibert and her second husband
Ron decided to use Ron's surname for Jeff's enrollment in kindergarten. After Tim Buckley's death in 1975, however, Jeff decided to change his name in an homage to his late father, and while his family would always continue referring to him fondly as Scotty, to the rest of the world he would soon be known as Jeff Buckley.
Raised in Southern California, Jeff's love of music was encouraged not only by his mother--who was a classically trained pianist and cellist--but also by his stepfather, who bought Jeff his first
Led Zeppelin album,
Physical Graffiti. He began learning to play guitar at age six, and after high school Jeff enrolled in the
Los Angeles Musicians Institute, graduating from the guitar program at age 18.
MP3: Jeff Buckley - "I Never Asked to Be Your Mountain" (Live)In 1991, Jeff was invited to perform at a benefit concert for his father at
St. Ann's Church in New York. The concert, called "
Greetings from Tim Buckley," was to consist of mostly unknown local acts covering classic Tim Buckley songs. Conflicted with both resentment and admiration for his father, regretful of not having gone to his funeral, and anxious about performing in front of an audience, Jeff reluctantly accepted the invitation. Concert attendees were Tim Buckley fans and people who had known and worked with him, so expectations and curiosity about Jeff hung in the air like incense. The legacy left by Tim, however, was not only musical, but also genetic, and all bets were off as soon as Jeff--armed with a backing band including ex-Captain Beefheart guitarist
Gary Lucas--took the stage.
David Browne, author of
Dream Brother: The Lives and Music of Jeff and Tim Buckley, writes:
After an instrumental interlude, a new group of musicians took the stage. One of them was a long-haired kid wearing a black t-shirt. Danny Fields, Tim's onetime publicist, was in the audience, keeping an eye out for the supposed son. Though Jeff had his back to the audience as he tuned his guitar, the spotlight caught his profile and one cheekbone. "And I said, 'Whoa--there he is,'" Field recalls. "I didn't have to wonder too hard. It could take your breath away."
Jeff, who had billed himself as Jeff Scott Buckley, began strumming rigorously as Lucas surrounded him with waves of soaring-seagull guitar swoops. It was "I Never Asked To Be Your Mountain," Tim's song to Mary and her son. The audience suddenly stopped glancing at their watches. After an hour of esoteric music, here was one of Tim's most recognizable songs, emanating from a very recognizable face and sung in a familiar (if slightly deeper) voice. Halfway through the performance, a light behind the stage suddenly flashed on, throwing Jeff's silhouette against the back wall; it was, as Willner says, "like Christ had arrived." ("My God," Jeff said to a friend on the phone after the show, "I stepped onstage and they backlit it and it was like the fucking Second Coming.")
Just before he went onstage, Jeff had finished writing his own verse for the song: "My love is the flower that lies among the graves," it began, ending with a plea to "spread my ash along the way." Anyone familiar with the subject matter of the song knew this performance was more than a faithful rendition of a '60s oldie. It was a tribute, retort, and catharsis all in one, and as soon as Jeff left the stage, the audience was literally abuzz with chatter: So that was the son.
Once quoted as saying, "The only thing I ever stole from my father was a fleeting glimpse," Jeff intended to become a true artist in his own right. After his compelling performance at the St. Anne's benefit, Jeff moved to New York, plunging headlong into the avant garde performance art scene and embarking on what he called his "
café days." Influenced as much by
Nina Simone and
Edith Piaf as he was by
Freddie Mercury and Pakistani Sufi musician
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (whom he idolized and called "my Elvis"), Jeff's repertoire and musical style astounded anyone within earshot. He could, quite literally, sing anything. Garnering a following at local clubs and coffeehouses, he eventually took up residence at New York's famed
Café Sin-é for a weekly gig every Monday night.
MP3: Jeff Buckley - Banter/"Yeh Jo Halka Saroor Hai" (Live)YouTube: Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan & Party - "Yeh Jo Halka Saroor Hai"Those early solo performances--consisting of original material as well as requests and covers of favorites--began quietly enough. A few nightstand-sized tables and standing-room stragglers gathered around Jeff and his guitar for intimate sets near the back of the small café. That soon changed, however, and after just a few months of playing for a humble and rapt audience, record execs were literally lining up at Sin-é's doors to sign him. It steamrolled from there. A sea of limousines on the street, people on tiptoes trying see over the throng of fans; it was a phenomenon, and in 1992 he received a three-album deal from
Columbia Records. The gears were quickly greased and while Jeff assembled a band to record his debut album, Columbia released
Live at Sin-é, a four-song EP of recordings from his old stomping ground. Included on the EP, along with a breathtaking
Van Morrison cover and two original songs, was a covered translation of the Edith Piaf classic, "
Je N'en Connais Pas La Fin."
MP3: Jeff Buckley - "Je N'en Connais Pas La Fin" (Live)Grace, Jeff's full-length debut, was released in August of 1994 to critical acclaim, and though it was delivered warmly into the open hands of fans, the album initially received otherwise modest attention and slow sales. Proving, however, that American audiences are notoriously slow on the uptake,
Grace went gold in Australia and France and was awarded the
Grand Prix International du Disque.
MP3: Jeff Buckley - "Grace"
Sprawling and ardent,
Grace was an astonishing manifestation of Jeff's innate talent and sense of musical history, and its colossal sound took many of his long-time followers by surprise. Given new form and texture by the addition of a full band (including former bandmate Gary Lucas), Jeff's own instrumentation--from guitar to organ to drums and even sitar and tabla--seemed to weave a sort of musical Persian rug. That Eastern sound, like a flurry of filigrees, was most pronounced on "
Dream Brother," a song written to one of Jeff's best friends and, parenthetically, to Jeff's own father.
MP3: Jeff Buckley - "Dream Brother"It's those acrobatic vocals with the multi-octave range that get you in the jugular, though, and Jeff's command of his voice made it the most arresting instrument in his arsenal. A song like "
Last Goodbye"--with the string quartet gliding into tiny collisions with the chiming guitars and Jeff's voice, a lilting melody that builds into an anthemic declaration of love almost as quickly as it concedes into one final languishing farewell--hangs onto you for dear life. It's his most commercially successful song to date. It's also one of the most touching moments on
Grace.
MP3: Jeff Buckley - "Last Goodbye"The two years following the release of
Grace were spent on a worldwide tour in support of the album. Caught smack between the death of Seattle grunge and the birth of Britpop, Jeff's sound was a departure from anything on the current music scene, and people took note. While college rockers were clamoring in existential angst, Jeff's blues manifested into crescendos of falsettos and cabaret croons. Given the musical landscape of the time, his maverick sentimentality and barefaced talents were radical in a refreshingly unexpected way, and every new stop on the tour begged the question, What next?
MP3: Jeff Buckley - "Vancouver"By mid-1996, the makings of a second album were well under way. Tentatively titled
My Sweetheart the Drunk, plans (and expectations) for the follow-up to
Grace were
Sgt. Pepper-scaled.
Tom Verlaine (of
Television fame) was enlisted to produce the album and studio demos were recorded with him. But new songs were not coming easily. The pains and excesses of touring had taken their toll, and Jeff found it increasingly difficult to produce new material that wasn't just
Grace II. The demos recorded with Verlaine were left incomplete, and in late spring of 1997 Jeff decided it was Tennessee, not New York, that was conducive to writing. He rented a tiny house in Memphis, set a four-track recorder in the middle of the living room, and began reworking the new material all by himself.
MP3: Jeff Buckley - "I Know We Could Be So Happy Baby (If We Wanted to Be) (4-Track Demo)
There's a certain sort of bittersweet sadness that's reserved for that very specific moment when you realize that what you're listening to--that forgotten voicemail, or the sound of someone's keys on the other side of the door, or the album that you're in awe of at every turn and could quite possibly be one of your favorites of all time--is the last you'll ever hear from someone.
Grace is a gorgeous album, nearly dizzying in its perfection. There's no doubt that if Jeff had lived,
My Sweetheart the Drunk would have been one hell of a sophomore effort, but he was swallowed up by the Mississippi River before anyone could know for sure.
On May 29th, 1997, as Jeff and his friend
Keith Foti were en route to meet the band at the Memphis studio where they were to begin recording, they decided to take a quick detour along
Wolf River Harbor, a tributary of the Mississippi. With a guitar and boombox in tow, Jeff and Foti relaxed on the bank of the river, strumming along with the music and swapping stories. After a few minutes, spontaneously overcome with the need for a swim, Jeff waded into the water fully clothed, singing along to Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love" and still wearing his boots. Foti watched from the shore as Jeff backstroked away, ignoring Foti's calls for him to come back, and he disappeared under the wake created by a passing boat. On June 4th, floating near the end of Beale Street, the home of the blues, Jeff's body was found by a riverboat passenger.
As with most late musicians, Jeff Buckley fans seem to come out of the woodwork year after year. This is perhaps because, despite the fact that he's gone, Jeff continues to be a fairly prolific artist. Since his death, his mother Mary has been working closely with Columbia regarding all posthumous releases. The first of these was 1998's
Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk, a double-disc collection of the Verlaine-produced demos as well as his Memphis four-track recordings. Live albums and deluxe editions were to follow, and while they all cement the idea of Jeff as a dazzling talent doomed, as he saw himself, to his father's fate, it's
Grace that will always be regarded as his masterpiece.
MP3: Jeff Buckley - "Hallelujah" (Live)This year,
Grace re-entered the Top 50 charts. It went six-fold platinum in Australia, where Jeff's even more of an icon than in America, and has sold over two-million copies worldwide. Music magazines and high-profile fans such as
Bob Dylan,
Paul McCartney,
Thom Yorke of
Radiohead, and
Led Zeppelin's
Jimmy Page and
Robert Plant have lauded
Grace as one of the greatest albums of all time. It's considered an irrefutable classic by anyone who's had the chance to listen. Haven't had a chance yet? Go ahead. Halfway through that listen, you'll encounter what is considered by many to be one of the most beautiful songs in musical history. "
Hallelujah," Jeff's signature tune, is a cover of the
Leonard Cohen song by the same name. It's been covered countless times by dozens (maybe even hundreds) of artists, but it's Jeff's version--especially this live version from the Sin-é sessions, a ghostly hymn with its sparse production of guitar and vocals--that fifteen years on seems to be calling, still, with a quiet urgency that refuses to die out.
