Lone Star

Sky International, July 1995
By Daniela Soave

 Chicks swoon when he sings in his vest, his records are mega-successful, and his backing band is cuter than Blur. So how come he just wants to be left alone? Daniela Soave finds out.

Jeff Buckley is hiding in the depths of his tour bus, trying to grab a little solitude. The curtains are drawn, the lights are dimmed and the outside world has been shut out of his safe -- but it has to be said, rather smelly -- cocoon. He's just finished his soundcheck and has fled to his home for the last few weeks, a cramped, very 70s brown seven berth coach which is parked outside the backstage entrance. Ahead of him are just two more gigs before a six-week break, the longest holiday he's been permitted since fame beckoned. He looks wiped out but sexy, long hair half hiding the two rings in his left ear ("I've got another one somewhere else," he smiles, "but I'll never tell where." The mind rather boggles).

We've just begun to talk when somebody starts banging on the door. We try to ignore it but whoever it is out there won't give up. Eventually Buckley pulls himself out of his seat and sighs loudly as he disappears to open the door. From the back of the bus I listen to the exchange, which goes something like this:

FEMALE: Oh! You're Jeff Buckley!
BUCKLEY: Hello
FEMALE: I bought your album.
BUCKLEY: [politely] Thank you.
FEMALE: Look, my boyfriends stood me up and he's got our two tickets. Will you put me on the guest list?
BUCKLEY: Well, it's full but I'll do what I can. What's your name?
FEMALE: I've written it down. Here you go. You won't forget about it will you?
BUCKLEY: Look, I can only try. I've got to go. Goodbye.
FEMALE: Don't forget. You will put my name on the list, won't you? It's just my boyfriend has my ticket. {With the next line however she totally blows her excuse} And could you get a ticket for my friend as well?

Buckley walks up the passage frowning heavily. "One thing I don't like is when plundering is disguised as appreciation," he says flatly. "Like that?" I ask him. "Yeah...like real encroachment or whatever. They really step over a line because...she's a grifter, man, what can I tell you? People are really very, very, very misguided. The fame thing isn't what people think. I heard it from Ray Davies [frontman of The Kinks] most eloquently. I think he said there are two myths about people. One is that if you have a record contract you're rich, or if you're famous your rich, and the other one is...um...err...actually, I forget what it is". He laughs. "But it's like people think I have tons at my disposal. Like I should think myself absolutely lucky to have this brown bus." He looks around the dreary vehicle, which looks like it last played host to the Bay City Rollers, shaking his head in amazement. "I mean, who designs these things."

In the space of 12 months, Buckley has gone from Best Kept Secret to Next Big Thing, from performing in smoky little New York coffee bars to filling cavernous halls with his particular brand of thrash tenderness. It's his voice that does it: low and sexy one moment, high and girly the next ("I'm completely chemically altered by the end of a performance, due to the places I have to go in my head for he songs," he claims, a quote which would have surely made Kurt Cobain jealous). Its this almost scary intensity that makes audiences drool and inspired critics to go totally ga-ga about his debut album, Grace, when it was released in autumn.

Jeff Buckley first picked up the guitar when he was still a kid. His father, Tim Buckley, was a cult singer who fled the family home when Jeff was still a baby and overdosed at the age of 28 (Jeff's age this year). After this family led a transient existence, with the result that music took the place of friends he could never keep.

"I grew up mainly in Southern California, mostly in little white trashville towns overrun by Burger Kings, malls, Bloods and Crips and high taxes," he remembers. "Just me, my mom, and my little brother, mainly, moving from one place to the next, depending on what relationship, job, break-up was happening at the time. We moved so often I just used to put all my stuff in paper bags. My childhood was pretty much marijuana and rock and roll," he says. "I had the longest hair and the weirdest clothes - the kids at my high school use to call me 'that faggot' and beat me up all the time."

Thus the loner instinct was born. Buckley left home at 17, moved to Los Angeles at 18 and came to New York four years later, changing his name from Scott Moorhead (the name of his mother's second husband, the man who introduced him, for better or worse, to Led Zeppelin). "I didn't tell anyone that I was going. I don't need someone else telling me what to do. I just sold everything and split: I'm the sort of person who mulls things over but never discusses their plans."

Buckley lives in a small apartment in east Manhattan and says his wandering days are over. He says he couldn't imagine living anywhere else because the city offers everything he could ever want.

"I felt the pull from an early ages," he adds. "I must have been about 12 when I started to think about its bright lights. When I was living in California, the people I was attracted to always came from New York. They were totally different. I got sick of being in California because I never felt I belonged, but I can't ever imagine tiring of New York."

Buckley first started performing in little smoky New York bars like Bang On, Fez, and the First Street Café - as well as a minute Irish café called Sin-é on St. Mark's Place in the fashionably scuzzy East Village - slowly attracting a cult following that, in its turn, began to attract the attention of A&R; men. By the end of the year record company limos were crowding St. Mark's Place, and soon Buckley had a major record deal. A live EP, Live at Sin-é, came out last spring, demonstrating the heights that his voice and an electric guitar can reach. For his debut album, however, Buckley drew together a band, and they've been together ever since.

"They've become my family. They're my key friends as well: I lucked out on that score," he says. "I attracted them. They saw the show and wanted to play with me, almost the way I hoped it would turn out. Meeting people through word of mouth is a lot more efficient than placing ads in the paper. It's hard to get people who will listen musically. Most just want to rock, rock, rock. That might be fun for a while, but you lose your hearing and you lose your patience and you get a big headache."

For the females in the audience, the band has the added bonus of providing serious babe material. Guitarist Michael Tighe, at 21, draws the biggest sighs, hiding behind his curtain of fair hair, while bassist Mick Grondahl and drummer Matt Johnson have a steady following of their own. Tighe and Grondahl met Buckley after seeing him play in St. Ann's church in Brooklyn, while Johnson, who shares an itinerant background with Jeff, was introduced by friends. The three provide a pounding wall of sound to the grungier side of the set, which is divided into intense, solo slots and ear bleeding band pieces -- as well as the occasional moment when Buckley motions for them to be quiet while he whispers "I love you" to the crowd.

One of Buckley's most endearing qualities is this complete absence of embarrassment about coming across as a total luvvie. "I can overwhelm people with my feelings," he's said. "It's been a problem of mine since I was a kid." While we're talking he breaks off to scribble manically in his notebook. "I've got to write," he says. "It's an unspoken thing. I want to be loved for something I am. I'm easily hurt, which is why I know I can't pay attention to my press."

Considering how good that press has been, you'd think Buckley had little to worry about, but success certainly hasn't gotten to his head. Not yet, anyway. "What I never bargained for was the level of attention I'd attract. That's something else. When I first started out, I pretty much figured that people would come and see me because of my father's name. So I just sort of acknowledged the hype and did the shows the best I could. But now its become all... this," he says vaguely, waving his hands around. "Like absolutely psychotically praising somebody and putting them up on a pedestal. I'm just not comfortable with it, not comfortable at all."

OK, so he's a luvvie, but he's a pretty down to earth luvvie. Something to do with those years plinking his guitar in grungy coffee shops, perhaps? "That's what I've known since I was 16, just the dynamics of the saloon. People drinking, people trying to get laid, people lying, people pretending to be something they're not, hope against hope that everybody will accept them for what they need to be..." He sighs again, and gets lost in his thoughts.

"So," I say, loudly, hoping to break his reverie, "what's life on the road like, then?" Buckley wakes up again.

"Well I need some reloading time right now, but I'm not uninspired and I'm not uninspired with the situation," he says. "Being on the road offers up some really great gifts which more than make up for having to live on bad buttery ham sandwiches that I detest or endless slices of flabby pizza. I guess that's the worst part being on the road, not having good nutrition or a regular bath life. Because there's no bath life," he laughs, referring to the highly potent pong that permeates the entire bus.

Buckley brightens up even more when I ask him what he plans to do with his six-week vacation.

"Man, it's like a school holiday!" he says. "I'll do sweet FA. I'll go home to New York and paint my walls and pretend I live there. I'll wake up around 11, have my scrambled eggs and coffee, and make some toast. And either I'll laze around for a few hours or write into the DAT Walkman. Or I'll clean the house. Usually when I clean the house I start at three in the morning and finish at seven. Totally backwards. I'm impossible to live with. Although I'm paranoid about the walls being so thin.

"I'll write down all those things that have been bugging me for a while. I might take care of some business or read a few books. I'm reading Tropic Of Cancer right now. Any idea, anybody else's work, if it appeals to me and gives me enjoyment, that gives me inspiration. And I'll see some movies. On the bus there's very little time to read and the movies we have on board are horrible, stuff like Twins. Hardly inspiring material."

Some stubbly bloke pops his head to tell Jeff that its time for tonight's gig. Buckley sighs again, ever the reluctant rock god. "So what do you actually like about the rock 'n' roll life?" I ask as a parting shot.

"Well..." He pauses, staring into space for a few moments before breaking into what actually looks like a bit of a grin. "I guess it's been very educational."