Jeff Buckley, musician and poet from New York, talks about himself.
By Carlo Villa, September 16th, 1994 at Rock Planet
Translated by Raffaella D’Andrea
It must not be easy living in the shadow of a famous father. The greater the father was the more we expect from the son. However, Jeff Buckley has never known his father, although he runs after him without realizing it. Because they both chose to live on the wrong side of the road. Moreover, his father Tim was great, really. Unforgettable avant-garde folk-singer with an inimitable vocal timbre: a gold voice that was able to range from baritone to tenor. It does not matter a lot knowing if Jeff has listened one of the nine albums that his father, died of overdose, recorded between 1966 and 1975.
He erased the memory of those few days when, at about the age of eight, he met him for the first time. “I don’t know if he influenced me – he declares categorically when we interview him during his recent visiting to Milan to promote his new album ‘Grace’ – I just know he never had to do with my life”. Jeff’s long wander through East and West Coast leads him inevitably to his father’s music, to those slums of the Lower East Side in New York where he began to perform alone with his guitar. In addition, it is this air that you breathe in ‘Live at the Sin-è’, his first solo mini-LP recorded in the East Village.
‘Grace’, realised on the other hand with a real rock band, is a well-done album where the important musical influences of the past emerge. “I was grown up – he says – with Joni Mitchell, Led Zeppelin, Cat Stevens, Crosby Still Nash & Young, Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles and the soundtracks like ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’. Then Judy Garland, Barbra Streisand, Deep Purple, Stooges, Mc5 and the Doors. For a while I only listened to Pink Floyd’s ‘Ummagamma’ ”. Despite in his music the atmosphere you breathe is highly European, almost bohemian, Jeff actually prefers the sounds of US and mentions among the contemporaries Grifters and Shudder to Think. His lyrics are little secrets about human experience, his poetic vision of the world and his iconoclast egocentricity.“My first teachers – he adds – are the beats Kerouac, Corso and Ginsberg. Their poetry is written but lives outside of the books. It is just like my music. Poetry is everywhere.”
Moreover, what about your possible role in the phantom Generation X? “My generation – he continues – is visual. Instead of investing in art, it spends the life watching MTV. They call us slacker, alternative and so on; but they are your definitions, I just play in a good rock band. Kurt Cobain? I do not understand suicide. He was too young to be an idol, but I would have kissed him. The world turns around me and I think love is the most important thing you can have. My social and political ideas do not exist outside of the relationship with a person at a given time. When I was 10, I was interested in Charles Manson’s vicissitudes. Third Reich and that dark side of the existence attracted me. It helped me to understand how much bad life is. For this reason, I cannot stand idealists now. They use the language as a prearranged structure; I prefer poetry that is a full language”.
How do you consider yourself? “I feel myself out of place – he ends – I have never lived any big event, any revolution: I arrived too late. That is why, perhaps, I like flee artificially, intoxicate me. It is better than becoming addicted to this MTV rubbish. I am part of a small movement that is motionless and nameless”.
By Carlo Villa, September 16th, 1994 at Rock Planet
Translated by Raffaella D’Andrea
It must not be easy living in the shadow of a famous father. The greater the father was the more we expect from the son. However, Jeff Buckley has never known his father, although he runs after him without realizing it. Because they both chose to live on the wrong side of the road. Moreover, his father Tim was great, really. Unforgettable avant-garde folk-singer with an inimitable vocal timbre: a gold voice that was able to range from baritone to tenor. It does not matter a lot knowing if Jeff has listened one of the nine albums that his father, died of overdose, recorded between 1966 and 1975.
He erased the memory of those few days when, at about the age of eight, he met him for the first time. “I don’t know if he influenced me – he declares categorically when we interview him during his recent visiting to Milan to promote his new album ‘Grace’ – I just know he never had to do with my life”. Jeff’s long wander through East and West Coast leads him inevitably to his father’s music, to those slums of the Lower East Side in New York where he began to perform alone with his guitar. In addition, it is this air that you breathe in ‘Live at the Sin-è’, his first solo mini-LP recorded in the East Village.
‘Grace’, realised on the other hand with a real rock band, is a well-done album where the important musical influences of the past emerge. “I was grown up – he says – with Joni Mitchell, Led Zeppelin, Cat Stevens, Crosby Still Nash & Young, Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles and the soundtracks like ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’. Then Judy Garland, Barbra Streisand, Deep Purple, Stooges, Mc5 and the Doors. For a while I only listened to Pink Floyd’s ‘Ummagamma’ ”. Despite in his music the atmosphere you breathe is highly European, almost bohemian, Jeff actually prefers the sounds of US and mentions among the contemporaries Grifters and Shudder to Think. His lyrics are little secrets about human experience, his poetic vision of the world and his iconoclast egocentricity.“My first teachers – he adds – are the beats Kerouac, Corso and Ginsberg. Their poetry is written but lives outside of the books. It is just like my music. Poetry is everywhere.”
Moreover, what about your possible role in the phantom Generation X? “My generation – he continues – is visual. Instead of investing in art, it spends the life watching MTV. They call us slacker, alternative and so on; but they are your definitions, I just play in a good rock band. Kurt Cobain? I do not understand suicide. He was too young to be an idol, but I would have kissed him. The world turns around me and I think love is the most important thing you can have. My social and political ideas do not exist outside of the relationship with a person at a given time. When I was 10, I was interested in Charles Manson’s vicissitudes. Third Reich and that dark side of the existence attracted me. It helped me to understand how much bad life is. For this reason, I cannot stand idealists now. They use the language as a prearranged structure; I prefer poetry that is a full language”.
How do you consider yourself? “I feel myself out of place – he ends – I have never lived any big event, any revolution: I arrived too late. That is why, perhaps, I like flee artificially, intoxicate me. It is better than becoming addicted to this MTV rubbish. I am part of a small movement that is motionless and nameless”.
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