On June 4th, 1997, the body of Jeff Buckley was found floating in a harbor leading into the Mississippi River. This brought to the close the week-long search for him, and brought the curtain down on one of modern musics’ iconic tragic heroes.
Jeff Buckley, listed by Rolling Stone magazine number 39 in the top singers of all time, released one studio album while he was alive and yet somehow captured the imagination and hearts of so many lovers and music lovers across the world. Producer Steve Addabbo found him to be an intense and dedicated musician, adding “There was no veil. He wasn’t trying to do anything; he was just doing it. There was no artifice. None at all. This is what he did.” The tragic twist to his tale only adds to the romance of this modern crooner
““ ..there’s always been music. It’s been my friend, my ally, my teacher, my tormentor … I can’t recall a time when it wasn’t there. And singing just took me over. ””
At age 12, he decided to become a musician, presumably following in the footsteps of his dad Tim Buckley. He studied at a few music schools, which he later described his time at the Musicians Institute as a ‘waste of time’. His first guitar was a Les Paul and his first break was at a benefit concert for his own father in April 1991. He played, among other songs, a tune his dad had written for him and his mum called ‘I never asked to be your mountain’, though he was always seeking to step out of the shadow of a famous father, the legendary late 60s/early 70s singer who died of a heroin overdose at the age of 28.
“Dreaming, both waking and asleep, [is] a reservoir of mine. The thing is, there’s no difference for me between dream states and living. They both carry truth to them. I can read them both. I feel things in my dreams and I feel all the things that human beings’ lives bring them, except sometimes there are purple monsters or a chocolate dog trying to wake you up, but it’s still all very valid to me and I read situations in waking hours just like I read them in my sleeping hours, my sleeping hour, my lack of sleep world.
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And so he began the hustle, working Manhattan’s East Village and dropping cover versions of a range of artists – Led Zeppelin, Bad Brains, The Smiths, Bob Dylan. Soon he got some attention from the record execs, and in 1992 he secured a 3 album deal with Colombia Records. In January 1994 he toured North America and then Europe, and on August 23rd, the immaculate debut ‘Grace’ was released.
“ It’s different in the case of [Van Morrison’s] The Way Young Lovers Do. That came about because my friend Michael, who eventually joined the band, had a dream about me and him singing [it]. On a whim, I got it together and performed it one night. Then it became something else because the tempo I liked, the feel of it; the words and the song got into me. Any time I take a cover and wear it on my sleeve, it’s because it had something to do with my life and still marks a time in my life when I needed that song more than anything ever.” ”
Grace
Jeff, along with Mick (bass), Matt(drums) and producer Andy, recorded 7 original tracks and three cover versions. Lilac Wine was based on the Nina Simone interpretation, while the song he is most commonly associated with (and the big track from ‘Grace’) was of course ‘Hallelujah’ based on John Cale’s version of the Leonard Cohen classic. This song would come to define Jeff in some ways, and is certainly the most accessible and recognized of his limited discography.
Steve Berkowitz, Executive producer and A&R man noted that ‘“he had spent his whole life getting ready to make his first album. You only make a first album once, and he understood that. And he wanted it to be, in his own terms, ‘badass,’ and good, and be proud of it,” adding “He internalized the feeling in the song, maybe like his great idol, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and delivered it in a musical, spiritual kind of a way.”
“Perhaps most notably, Grace’s lyrics are inseparable from (and intertwined with) its music and arrangements, used as poignant shading and thematic nuance to enhance the album’s overarching emotional thrust. The record takes the perspective that ill-fated trysts (and the subsequent heartbreak) are deeply romantic, almost more intoxicating and exhilarating than the actual love affair itself. As a result, Grace‘s originals are more like ornate poems than linear narratives, with images of beautiful (but formless) women, brilliant nighttime scenes, ephemeral physicality, and even death used to convey drama and anguish.”
“If I wanted to be famous, I’d assassinate the President. There’s no life in it. There’s nothing wrong with being famous for something you do well or uniquely like if I invented the cure for AIDS, I wouldn’t mind being very famous. It’d be a great achievement. Or if I wrote a song that everyone loved, I wouldn’t mind that.”
On the very day 21 years ago that he was fished out the water, friend of Jeff, Liz Fraser of the Cocteau Twins recorded the vocals for ‘Teardrop’ which would become one of the breakout tracks of the upcoming Massive Attack release Mezzanine. She revealed in a 2009 interview that “ That was so weird … I’d got letters out and I was thinking about him. That song’s kind of about him – that’s how it feels to me anyway.”
These two also recorded a song together, a kind of ultra romantic snapshot of life and love
While there are some conflicting opinions, Jeff reached and remains an iconic figure, trapped in the tragedy yet releasing some of his genius before floating out of our world. It is conjecture to imagine what he might have become if he hadn’t gone swimming that day. And still, perhaps he found that gap between the worlds
Aweh Online 