Sky Magazine

By Daniela Soave
Contributed by Sai

jeff buckley 

Jeff Buckley sounds as though he's just been hauled from a deep slumber. It's noon in New York and his lazy drawl borders on the sporific. "My life has a built-in alarm clock," he says. "People keep ringing me." He's not exaggerating. In America, you see, Buckley is The Next Big Thing. It's a heavy mantle to assume, but the 23-year-old singer's ability to make the hairs on your neck stand up and prickle can't be easily dismissed. Intense, funky and completely out there, Buckley and his electric guitar come from a completely different dimension. He grew up in Southern California where he, his brother and mom led a nomadic existence, moving from town to town every few months. "It was hard and I didn't think about it. I'd finally get a part in the school play and find out that evening we had to leave. I was the new kid everywhere. As the teacher introduced me as the new kid I would look out over the class and tell who'd be my friend, who'd want to kill me, all that stuff. I got to know so much about people." His natural father was the cult folk singer Tim Buckley, and his mother and other relatives were equally music-obsessed. So it wasn't surprising that when Jeff took off, first for Los Angeles and then for New York, guitar in hand, it was to follow the same path. "I love music," he says. "It's been my friend for a long time. I love anything that haunts me and never leave me, like an old flame who has something about her you just can't resist. Even though you might both be married you still want to do impure things." Thus far he has released a four-song CD, Live At Sin-E, and his début album, this time with a band, follows sometime this summer, round about the same time he plays the Reading Festival. By then, acres of print will be covered with hyperbolic praise, something he views with detached humor. "I think fame has gotten in the way already," he says. "All I love is the work, though. I can't pay attention to that stuff. When my manager gave me a package of press cuttings, I took one look at the raging superlatives and it didn't fit me. So I left it in a trash can on the corner of 56th Street and 11th Avenue." As to the babe appeal, Buckley is the first to admit that "All my life I've been hip to the fact that girls have a more eclectic record collection. If you flip through it you'll find something like the Bay City Rollers next to something shamelessly current and hip. But a guy-if he likes metal it will be all metal. It's absolutely true, to the Nth degree."