Q Magazine, July, 1994
Contributed by Sai
THE SIN-E CAFÉ, NEW YORK'S LOWER EAST SIDE.
Contributed by Sai
THE SIN-E CAFÉ, NEW YORK'S LOWER EAST SIDE.
October 1992. There's no room at the back so you squeeze past to a chair at the front, right under the singer's nose, close enough to look up it, not that he notices. His eyes are clenched tight, his body edgy and straining.
The singer in question looks of the folky-troubadour variety, but he's wielding an electric guitar and scrubs at it quite maniacally. At one point he's impersonating Elvis, at another whipping off his shirt before gabbling the chorus of I Against I by reggaecore fusioneers Bad Brains, then heading off in the direction of Van Morrison's free-flowing Sweet Thing. His voice, raw and rich, stretches high and low, curling around the notes like smoke, as if unwilling to let the sound go.
This singer has the most uniquely swoonsome tonsils but an uncannily reminiscent pair all the same. Who else has sung this way? Tim Buckley, that's who, the man who took folk-rock on a jazz odyssey in the late '60s and about whom American critic Lillian Roxon once said, "There is no name yet for the places he and his voice go". Tim Buckley died at 28 after ingesting a heroin/morphine mix he mistook for cocaine, inspiring a ravenous cult of appreciation that grows to this day.
To hear the same cosmic talent, alive and kicking, in the shape of Jeff Buckley, son of Tim, is an experience few-Buckleyites or not-are likeky to forget.
FAST FORWARD 18 MONTHS TO LONDON'S Borderline club. There is more room to move this time but people still clearly crowd the stage: the transatlantic Grapevine has been wrestling and proof is sought. The same pattern emerges: stark solo figure, surfeit of kooky charisma, inspired torch songs, wounded-angel voice, gobsmacked audience reaction.
Curly-mopped, spangle-eyed Jeff is the first "Son Of" to generate superlatives close to those that greeted his father: dad in this case being a near diety in rock historical termd. Aware he would be accused of trading on the family name, Buckley has refused to take handouts. Since shifting to New York from his native California in 1991 (his twentieth city in as many years due to his mother's gypsy lifestyle), he's avoided support slots and a record deal, even chosen to abandon Gods 'n' Monsters, the left field "supergroup" he formed with ex-Captain Beefheart guitarist Gary Lucas and Bob Mould's old rhythm section, to stick it out alone, like a hobo, on the underground/cafe circuit.
"In a cafe," Buckley ventures, "people are free to come and go, free to talk, and free to ignore me, but it's impossibly intimate even for those at the back. I want to feel that room and be good enough, and in love enough, to move them right where they stand."
After a set at Bunjies Folk Cellar-a brick oven of a London venue that holds 50 chairs and a plug socket-he does an impomtu gig down the road that lasts another 2 hours. The night before flying to Amsterdam, he slots in Stevenage. "I was made for the road," he volunteers, lying on the floor of the tour van. "It's partly to do with always feeling a stranger but also to do with whittling down what you are. And I have a love of misadventure."
Buckley eventually signed a deal with Columbia which allowed him to stay away from the studio for at least a year. His cautionary approach, he admits, is also the product of "a heavy mistrust of the music business. I was brought up around it: my mom's friends were partly failed musicians, and every time someone saw me with a guitar or starting to sing, they'd pull me into another room and I'd get the talk, about how it's a big jungle out there, how nobody cares about you."
For anyone bold enough to accuse him of echoing his father, Jeff's response is simple: "I say fuck you, see you later, because I'm on my own. Any influences I sought out were on my own. My mom would sing along to the radio as we'd drive to school-Joni Mitchell, Crosby Stills and Nash, James Brown. My step dad couldn't carry a tune but had amazing taste-Booker T., Willie Nelson-and he bought me my first record, Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti."
Curly-mopped, spangle-eyed Jeff is the first "Son Of" to generate superlatives close to those that greeted his father: dad in this case being a near diety in rock historical termd. Aware he would be accused of trading on the family name, Buckley has refused to take handouts. Since shifting to New York from his native California in 1991 (his twentieth city in as many years due to his mother's gypsy lifestyle), he's avoided support slots and a record deal, even chosen to abandon Gods 'n' Monsters, the left field "supergroup" he formed with ex-Captain Beefheart guitarist Gary Lucas and Bob Mould's old rhythm section, to stick it out alone, like a hobo, on the underground/cafe circuit.
"In a cafe," Buckley ventures, "people are free to come and go, free to talk, and free to ignore me, but it's impossibly intimate even for those at the back. I want to feel that room and be good enough, and in love enough, to move them right where they stand."
After a set at Bunjies Folk Cellar-a brick oven of a London venue that holds 50 chairs and a plug socket-he does an impomtu gig down the road that lasts another 2 hours. The night before flying to Amsterdam, he slots in Stevenage. "I was made for the road," he volunteers, lying on the floor of the tour van. "It's partly to do with always feeling a stranger but also to do with whittling down what you are. And I have a love of misadventure."
Buckley eventually signed a deal with Columbia which allowed him to stay away from the studio for at least a year. His cautionary approach, he admits, is also the product of "a heavy mistrust of the music business. I was brought up around it: my mom's friends were partly failed musicians, and every time someone saw me with a guitar or starting to sing, they'd pull me into another room and I'd get the talk, about how it's a big jungle out there, how nobody cares about you."
For anyone bold enough to accuse him of echoing his father, Jeff's response is simple: "I say fuck you, see you later, because I'm on my own. Any influences I sought out were on my own. My mom would sing along to the radio as we'd drive to school-Joni Mitchell, Crosby Stills and Nash, James Brown. My step dad couldn't carry a tune but had amazing taste-Booker T., Willie Nelson-and he bought me my first record, Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti."
Jeff's uncomfortably fierce reaction to mention of Pa Buckley is more understandable when you uncover the past. Brought up by his mother and stepdad after Tim left the family fold when he was six months old, he saw his father again eight years later, one Easter. His dad died two months after that. "So I knew him for a total of nine days. The people that did know him apparently have magic memories of him, but it's been a claustrophobic thing all my life.
" I guess my dad and I were born with the same parts, like some people are born with the same bone structure, but it's not his voice...it's not even my voice, it's the voice that has been passed on through the male Buckley family. His father sang, my grandmother sang too. My uncle could sing his ass off."
Ironically, Jeff's first break was indirectly down to Tim. Hal Willner, the brains behind the Kurt Weill and Walt Disney tribute projects, was organizing a Tim Buckley tribute show at Brooklyn's St Anne's Church in 1991 when he discovered Tim had a son that sung and flew him over.
" I went to the show because I didn't get to his funeral, which bugged me. At the time, I was meeting stranger after stranger who knew my father better than I did, and whatever feelings I had about him and toward him, I hadn't gotten over. But I wanted to pay my respects, which is what the tribute was about. I just didn't want to be billed or even announced."
He sang I Never Wanted To Be Your Mountain-"a song about him having to take the gypsy life over a regular one. It mentions both me and my mom"-encoding with one of Tim's tenderest ballads, Once I Was: "The first song my mother ever played me by him. When she left my stepdad, I guess she wanted me to get into who my dad was. So I learned it but it was hard. I couldn't really do a full version of it at home without crying."
Before and after Buckley plays his Borderline set, the DJ spins Counting Crows, the latest American sensations. If the Crows' Adam Duritz, another dreamer, a true believer, can be embraced, so can Buckley. If you're good enough, then people won't care who your father is.
" I guess my dad and I were born with the same parts, like some people are born with the same bone structure, but it's not his voice...it's not even my voice, it's the voice that has been passed on through the male Buckley family. His father sang, my grandmother sang too. My uncle could sing his ass off."
Ironically, Jeff's first break was indirectly down to Tim. Hal Willner, the brains behind the Kurt Weill and Walt Disney tribute projects, was organizing a Tim Buckley tribute show at Brooklyn's St Anne's Church in 1991 when he discovered Tim had a son that sung and flew him over.
" I went to the show because I didn't get to his funeral, which bugged me. At the time, I was meeting stranger after stranger who knew my father better than I did, and whatever feelings I had about him and toward him, I hadn't gotten over. But I wanted to pay my respects, which is what the tribute was about. I just didn't want to be billed or even announced."
He sang I Never Wanted To Be Your Mountain-"a song about him having to take the gypsy life over a regular one. It mentions both me and my mom"-encoding with one of Tim's tenderest ballads, Once I Was: "The first song my mother ever played me by him. When she left my stepdad, I guess she wanted me to get into who my dad was. So I learned it but it was hard. I couldn't really do a full version of it at home without crying."
Before and after Buckley plays his Borderline set, the DJ spins Counting Crows, the latest American sensations. If the Crows' Adam Duritz, another dreamer, a true believer, can be embraced, so can Buckley. If you're good enough, then people won't care who your father is.
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