Ultimate Understanding

The Irish Times, January 20, 1995
By Kevin Courtney

  It's a wet Saturday afternoon, and bright new music star Jeff Buckley has just touched down in Dublin to start the second leg of his tour, only right now he doesn't look so shiny and stellar. Huddled in a corner of the Tivoli Theatre, where he's playing later tonight, smoking Marlboros and snuffling with a cold, the son of Tim Buckley looks knackered, drained of all energy, sapped by the rock'n'roll circus.   He's already done two interviews, one soundcheck, and he's got more interviews after this one-a pretty busy first day in Europe for Sony's golden boy, and a million miles away from when all he'd have to do was just strap on his guitar and play.
  Now he's got a band, an entourage, and a schedule as tight as an E string. When he finds out that tonight's gig will be his only concert in Ireland, and that he's due to be whisked over to London in the early hours of Sunday morning, he reacts with tired resignation: "This is the only Irish date? Drag. I thought we were going to do more dates in Ireland. I love Ireland, especially Dublin."
  Does all this music biz baggage get to you? "I don't really fit into the rock'n'roll circus. The music we play is enough of a circus. I'd rather we all be alone in the room and just forget about what rock'n'roll's supposed to be. It's so confining, very unromantic. In the future, when we have more time, we'll take a van out, me and the guys, and go to places where nobody knows."
  But wherever the 27 year old Buckley goes, the "Next Big Thing" tag follows close behind, and plaudits are piling up around him like firewood around Joan Of Arc. What if, despite all his efforts to remain unaffected, Jeff Buckley finds himself thrust into the role of demigod?
   "I don't want that to happen because I'm far from being a consummate artist. I mean, this is just my first album, and the work is very new and it's just, em, beginning. I'm certainly not worthy of demigod status. There's absolutely no danger of that."
  But while not every artist wants to be Jesus Christ or John Lennon, doesn't everybody want to be liked and accepted?
  "I do too. It just depends on what you hold as important. I don't know any artist who doesn't do what they want to do, and doesn't do what they hear and feel. Aphex Twin can only do what he does, and Suede and the Grifters and Patti Smith, they're just doing what they do, even The Archies. It's an honest statement."
  Not everybody has taken to Jeff Buckley's singular style of music; for every laudatory line, there's also a twisted maze of misunderstanding and misinterpretation. Could this be because Buckley's songs are too intense, too close to the bone for some people to swallow without choking?
  "Those people wouldn't tell you that, though," he asserts. "They'd just tell you it was a load of shite. They'd just want to kill me. Some people just completely hate me on sight. I remember hearing an account of (one critic) getting drunk in a bar and just saying I was a complete fake. I've never even met the man. He doesn't really know me at all. I'm certainly not a fake, and I'll certainly outlive him, I'm sure."
  "It hurts when I'm insulted, and it makes me angry, but it's just the nature of music. Nobody can like everything and not everybody needs a certain kind of music. It's a huge world, and I don't seek to dominate the world."
  If he did want to rule the world, though, he couldn't have picked a bigger record label, the giant multinational Sony corporation, which owns Columbia Records.
  "I really got on to the label because of the chemistry of the people I knew I'd be working with. With them I was very comfortable, and to this day I still am, and I think we'll do good work, because I'm terribly, terribly paranoid of the music business."
  Did you feel you were entrusting your soul to them, that you might have to compromise on your vision? "No. I felt that because I was entrusting my soul to them, that I'd have to over communicate what my soul was, for them to gain an understanding."
  Buckley has been saddled with a "loner" image, partly because of his James Dean good looks, partly because he made his name as a solo artist, and partly because he's still seen as the orphaned offspring of Tim. Yet he's always had a family and he's always had friends, although solitude is something he values very highly.
  "I gain a lot from solitude, and I need it. Everybody does, you know. We need space from each other, and we need each other. I need the relationship. If I played solo for years and years and years I'd probably go crazy, completely insane. And it would be very sterile."
  The media tend to focus on the famous father, but the Jeff Buckley we hear is very much the product of his mother's influence.
  "I'm actually the son of Mary Gulbert," he says, pronouncing the French sounding surname softly. "My mother was born in the Panama Canal zone, and came to America when she was five, with her family, my grandmother and grandfather; and that was the family I knew. My uncle's name is George Gulbert, and he sang - he was actually the first person I ever knew who was in a band. Everybody sang; everybody loved music. It was just all around. My stepfather is a car mechanic, but he was always an inveterate record buyer, and to this day I still have the bug, and my place is filled with records."
  Perhaps it was Buckley's eclectic collection which started him off doing covers of other people's songs, but by the time he moved to New York, he was interpreting a range of songs in his own unique style. How does he choose which songs to cover?
  "The songs just choose me. There are some songs that I just like to make live, that are not necessarily mine. There was a part in my life, there was a time during the solo shows when I was a bit of a human jukebox, but of my own tastes.
  Put a coin in the jukebox and, along with the covers of Leonard Cohen and Benjamin Britten, you'd have also gotten Van Morrison. Was he a big influence?
  "No, he wasn't ever. I love and admire his work, but he wasn't, like, one of my seminal heroes. Basically the reason I did "The Way Young Lovers Do" was because Michael (Tighe, Buckley's guitarist) had a dream that he and I were singing it. And so I sang it for him. And I just got the song, and I fell in love with the album, Astral Weeks, and I absolutely played it out, played it out of my system. But you know, six years would go by and I would go right back to it as heavy as ever. It's just the way I am, I'm very copious with an album, I'll stay there and obsess on it."
  Buckley tackles his own obsessions through his original songs, seven of which feature on the debut album, Grace. Listening to them, you're immediately struck by their unconventiality, their defiance of set structures and sequence. It's certainly not your straight 12 bar rock'n'roll.
  "It's just my taste. I mean, take something like "Last Goodbye". It's a song that doesn't halve anything really repeating, it's just all one thing, and that's good. 'Coz you know, everybody's heard the standard forms over and over and over again, and people make them work, and sometimes they just buzz by you like flies and you don't notice them. I prefer to go from my deepest eccentricities and provide a different slant on this whole thing. And the thing about songs is, songs can hang around for a long time, and you may hate them and totally despise them, but somewhere down the line you may need them. They just fly into your life and have meaning somehow."
  People have said he's deep and mature for one so young. Doesn't that imply that anyone under 30 is frivolous?
  "I am frivolous. Terribly childish. Bob Dylan was deep. Rimbaud was deep. Joni Mitchell was deep. Just because somebody, is younger doesn't mean they're stupid. That's a known fact. Because there's still a mind there. The trend I've seen is that people are more audacious when they're younger, and their ideas are better. I don't plan to have that be the case with me. I admire a whole career, like Picasso or Billie Holiday or like Leonard Cohen. To this day he can still deliver a song and it's all you hear. You're completely captured. Or Iggy Pop. The man, like, rocks over every band I've seen. He just rocks his ass off.
  "I dig maturity. I don't like complacency in anyone. Neil Young is still doing it. And he's done lots of things that failed in the public eye. But it'sall necessary. You need to have ups and downs, it's a human thing. You follow what music demands of you, and through it you can get it's gifts."
  Right now, Jeff Buckley's music demands that he share the stage with bandmates Michael Tighe, Mick Grondahl and Matt Johnson. Is it difficult to weave the delicate fabric of his music in this potentially fractious band situation?
  "No, not at all. The emotion of the song dictates the arrangement, it dictates the sound and the texture and the colours that you use, and it's not hard to do with Michael, Mick and Matty. I'm completely a part of them and they're a part of me. It's just that was there from the beginning."
  So where will the music take Jeff Buckley in the future? He has no big career masterplan, but does he have any ultimate artistic goals?
  "What I really want is to have a life where I learn more about my poetry, learn more about myself as much as possible. I wanna get as deep into it as I can, 'coz that's how more work, is possible and more understanding is possible.
  How much more understanding? "Ultimate understanding."

The Lost Jeff Buckley Interview

February, 1994
By Jay Sosnick
Submitted by Angela from the book L'impressione di Essere Eterno (The Impression of Being Eternal)
Translated by me

Did everything happen faster than you thought?

Faster, but not early enough.

Columbia has a great tradition of folk songwriters: Dylan, Leonard Cohen. Does it make sense that you stay with them?

I do not know exactly what they see in me or why they want me to represent a genre. For me the Sex Pistols are folk. All these labels that record companies and the media create do not belong to me. When someone talks about singer-songwriters, they immediately think of James Taylor, any guy with an acoustic guitar, people like Marc Cohn. But there are also singers who write songs, so fuck it. Jimi Hendrix was a singer-songwriter.

Was it a problem for you to switch from taking care of only the creative aspect to the work you have to do for the label?

No, because it's all creative. All art is made 75% for problem solving. The attention, the photos...are annoying because I come from a place where you only think you're shit, when you're not. I wonder every day if I release too many interviews. I do not think we need to make a lot of fuss.

Is it different to be in front of a camera than to be the center of attention of an audience?

No, because I'm up there and there is all this energy directed towards me that I give back to them. So it's the same thing. We are beings made of energy. Seperate life in these terms. I always understand when someone lies, they haven't grown up or are full of fear. The biggest fear that people have is that everyone knows that they are full of fear. People can not completely hide themselves, but they spend their lives trying to do it.

What's the weirdest thing about being the center of attention? Are you embarrassed at times?

The real discomfort comes from noticing how people allow you to carry this light on their behalf, they refuse to do it themselves. But it's a transitional phase, maybe one day I won't feel the way I do today while doing the same things I do now. Maybe that's just the kid hiding inside me who doesn't want to be rejected, I guess. The only downside is that I spend so much time being photographed, interviewed, meeting people, that I don't have much left to compose. I want to improve as an artist, and I have so little time. I feel like I'll never have a steady girlfriend, that I'll never have a home. I am constantly on safari.

What do you think about the interviews?

I think they are very dangerous. I make the mistake of talking to these people as if they were my friends, as if they were able to understand everything I say. But then there is the transcription, the revision, where the shit is cut, or maybe added something I did not want to say. You must speak very clearly and defined. If I were not afraid of being misinterpreted, things would be easier. I am rather shy about this aspect. I'm more for concerts. The live experience is essential for me if not, I'd die.

What is your biggest fear about success?

What will fly away, what will be taken away from me. But fear is an indication of exit, fear is only a door that leads you to both transformation and enlightenment...or perhaps just a tragic illusion.

Have you ever been aggressive in order to stand out?

No not at all. The only thing I do aggressively is express myself, even when I'm passive; it's still penetration. It's part of the movement. I am only interested in glorifying the energy of music for what it is. Exalting myself in it, learning its gifts, unhinging it. I get it wrong a lot of times, you know? But I'm not competitive. If I were, I'd be way ahead of where I am now. Even David Bowie would ask me for a job.

Did you have to work a lot on music, or is it something that simply came?

I've never made the conscious decision to play or sing. It was like a toy, another parent. It was my best friend, because I was almost always alone.

And now? What is the priority now?

Having the freedom to go where I want. Not to control the music, but dance with it, instead of making it dance with me. It is like growing, becoming mature and not burning like a piece of wood, like Jesus.

What do you mean?

The crucifixion is a monument to what people really want to believe, which is the unhealthy idea that suffering is the ultimate expression of this life. Don't dance, don't make love, but sacrifice. This view is quite insane. But without us, this God that people talk about wouldn't be able to dance, laugh, cry or whatever. I am therefore aware that we have a direct, daily relationship with the creator. I mean, when we become disinterested by acting like drunken children, we have war in the Gulf. But there's no point in getting pissed off at Him to make your life better.

What is the biggest challenge you have to face?

Being a person and bringing this to different levels, to the point that everything I get from music is completely altered.  I want to find different ways to show joy, sadness, discover all that I have to offer. And to do this you need discipline, time to develop ideas, to create different sounds.

And a nut that does not make the guitar seem out of tune.

No, I like that too, it's still a possibility. The possibility is music.

Voice of an angel in a hard and dirty realm

Prince Patrick Hotel review
The Age, September 4, 1995
By Dugald Jellie
Submitted by Sai

A CONFESSION. I first heard Jeff Buckley only several months ago, early on a Sunday morning on the car radio. The Triple J announcer, Francis Leach, I think, was talking about an evangelical New York singer by the name of Buckley. The song was Hallelujah.
  I heard there was a sacred chord/That David played and it pleased the Lord/but you don't really care for music do you?
  On Saturday night at the Prince Patrick Hotel, Jeff Buckley, and his music, were alive. From the moment he started crying-his voice transformed into the sounds of a sitar as if to tell the audience: "if you want me to, this is what I can do"-everyone knew that tonight, in the bowels of a pub somewhere in Colingwood, they were in for something special.
  Buckley, squeezed into a pink top with the words "take that, love you" across his chest, mesmerized the audience for an hour-and-a-half with his visceral voice, playing the hymnal tunes from his debut album Grace.
  At times, with songs such as Lover, You Should've Come Over and Last Goodbye, his body writhing and contorting to each lyric, it was as though rock music was merging with the ecclesiastical.
  Was it that the lone spotlight shining down on the singer, guitar slashed across shoulder a halo?
   But between moments of haunting elegance, Buckley's voice and music also divulged, as with So Real, a hard and dirty realm, immersed in anguish.
  When I first heard Buckley's voice on the radio I didn't know it came from the son of the venerated late-1960s Los Angeles fringe folk singer, Tim Buckley; that the song he was playing, Hallelujah, was penned by the post Leonard Cohen.
  And it's not a cry that you hear at night/It's not somebody who's seen the light/It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah.
  I didn't know that Jeff Buckley only met his father once, aged eight, before he died of a heroin overdose. Or that he grew up singing with his mother, a classically trained pianist and cellist, in the car, bundled around southern California.
  All I knew was that his was an exquisite voice. It was as though an angel was singing for us.
  The highlight of the show was a mournful solo rendition of Morrissey's I Know It's Over, perhaps the saddest song ever penned. The audience, many of whom had queued for tickets (which sold out in two hours) for this small venue tour, were breathless.
  The only lowlight was the background clinking of drinks being served, and the sing-along vocals of over-exuberant fans.
  When it was all over, the audience exhausted, my companion turned and asked: "Did I just die and go to heaven?" Such was the mood of the room.

Dream Brother at Howlin' Wolf

Live at the Howlin' Wolf in one of my favorite cities, New Orleans, LA on December 2, 1994. ☺

Original location today, still doing live music ❤️ (website)

Current venue (907 S. Peters, website)

From White Trash to Poetic Soul

Australian Herald, July 13, 1995
By Nui Te Koha 
Submitted by Brett

Jeff Buckley, son of the legendary Tim Buckley, was just another aimless teenager in California before realizing his musical talent in a small cafe in New York City.

  A grimy trail of equipment cases, empty bottles and show business handshakes leads to the backstage area at the Boston Apollo.
  Jeff Buckley bounds up the stairs to have an after-show beer with his band, peers into an empty ice bucket, then looks momentarily lost. He searches the room for other fun.
  A joint bypasses Buckley and finds its way to Juliana Hatfield, who smiles at the gift and heads towards the main stage.
  While Hatfield maintains the lop-sided grin through her opening song Universal Heartbeat, Buckley bounces around the room signing autographs and indulging in chit-chat.
  He's been on the road for two and a half weeks, and each night injects passion into a faultless 45-minute set before Hatfield.
  The bombastic Eternal Life deteriorates into a mess of feedback and cluttered ideas, before Buckley's lonesome wail resurfaces and he leads the band into the haunting Mojo. From there it's anything that'll test Buckley's amazing voice (The Last Goodbye, Grace); anything that'll bare the soul a little more (Lilac Wine, Lover...).
  "I'm fighting for my life, to get it happening," Buckley sighs. "I'm feeling like an old man with nothing to say. I'm wanting some new life in my life."
  A few days later, at home in New York City, Buckley flits about his apartment with the same lost expression. "This city is waiting to live without me," he mumbles, looking down on the traffic and people below.
  Grace, Buckley's debut album from last year, is a mirror on his poetic soul. It is a quiet storm which weathers the universal themes of the search for happiness, love and detachment.
  As it cuts between blues and rock flavors, Grace is fuelled by intense emotion, often confused and extreme, but never false.
  "I wanted the songs to be alive," Buckley says. "I wanted them to carry across their own emotion somehow. It's also the first time I've had to deal with the process of making an album.
  "It's like, 'If I let this choice go, it'll end up on this plastic disc to be there until the day I die.' That can be a real concern.
  "I've had to learn how to let it go. Let mistakes be put on, be more relaxed with with the creation process. It's stressful to bear a child, but you just do the best you can."
  Buckley smiles. "I think it's a great album considering the band had been together for only five weeks."
  The songs on Grace all come from Buckley's teen years. He jumped into a van and road-tested the songs with his band in small venues on the American east coast. "It was the key to producing some great moments," Buckley says. "The more you depend on each other when you make music, the more powerful the experience and the overall emotion becomes.
  "I've literally watched the the songs that I had written bloom into other wonderful forms."
  Buckley lived what he describes as a "white trash" existence in California until his late teens. The son of seminal folk singer/songwriter Tim Buckley, Jeff never met his father.
  The family name would've been a foot through the door, and there were record company offers from the age of 17, but Buckley says he never actively pursued a career in music.
  His change of heart came when the moved to New York, and an important venue in that transition was Sin-E, a small Irish cafe in The Village, where Buckley's seminal EP Live at Sin-E was recorded.
  "I was huddled there on Monday nights, and other cafes on different nights, just working my ass off for small pay, paying off my phone bill and rent as best I could," Buckley says.
  "The offer to record came around one more time and I took it. I felt I could rise to the occasion."
  Buckley equates New York City with the feel of his music.
  "I consider New York City to be part of my soul," he says. "Los Angeles did nothing for me as an artist. The silliness and artifice of that city is something that blows into your house with the wind."
  You never met or knew your father, I say to Buckley. What impression do you get of him through his music?
  The question is met with unease. "That he was a man," Buckley says slowly, "who conducted his career like a man who was convinced he was going to die before 30.
  "I think I still characterize some of that crazy show business world of Los Angeles. It becomes part of you.
  "It's the dirty dream world you never asked for."

Eternal Life (Sony) is released on Monday. Jeff Buckley's shows in August and September are sold out. 

Tuttifrutti Article

By Gianni Poglio
Submitted by Sai
Translated by me

  He comes from the underground scene of the East Village of New York, the new American prophet of psychedelia. "Grace" is a record that does not leave much room for meditation, it can be loved or hated at first listen, but does not arouse indifference. Mr. Buckley, twenty-seven years old, of California origin, likes to define his music "a small dreamy particle of the psyche." And it could not be otherwise for an artist who still suffers the fascination of Pink Floyd's "Ummagumma." 
  "It is undoubtedly the album I heard most in my life along with the soundtrack of 'Jesus Christ Superstar' and the early records of Bob Dylan. On my first album I could not not pay tribute to a master like Leonard Cohen. I hope he can listen to my version of 'Hallelujah'. In general I am very attached to the music of the seventies. At that time, boys got in the evening to play or to listen to music. Today there is red light pay-TV and MTV. The power of television, the suggestion of the image are the true new facts of this decade. The words of the songs no longer have any importance, only the visual aspect counts. Through MTV the record industry can control the tastes of millions of people. After Kurt Cobain's suicide everyone had the chance to know, through the media, every detail of his private life. It is something that struck me a lot. I never met him in person, but at that moment I realized how pressure on the leader of a band as well known as Nirvana could be sufficating. Talking about bands, on the other hand, there are also the 'false alternative.' Can Pearl Jam be called an alternative band? In my opinion no! They play excellent rock'n'roll but nothing more. I do not think they invented anything new."

Although originally from California all the stages of your career were held in New York. Did you think that in the "Big Apple" there were more possibilities for a musical genre like yours?

I left home at the age of 17.  For some time I played around America with rock and reggae bands, then in 1990 I decided that New York was the right city for me. In the 'Lower East Side' I feel more at home than anywhere else in the world. It's the place I've always thought of belonging to. I can be what I want. I could not do it anywhere else where I lived as a child. In a short time I found the right musicians to create the sound I had in mind.The first one I met was the bassist, Mick, at the end of a concert at Columbia University. We immediately went to my house and started playing what can be called 'two in the morning music'. He had all the qualities I was looking for. There are a lot of bass players that sound good technically, but his style is really unique.

In the songs of your first album there are many references to the typically British sound of bands like the Smiths or Siouxsie and the Banshees...

Maybe, but I can not say that they were decisive in my musical training. Unlike many musicians who are tempted to insert themselves into a genre and then live off private income, I think only of music as it springs from my brain. I can not stand the idea of ​​being labeled. I leave this task to journalists and record companies. There will not be two identical Jeff Buckley records. I want to experiment with different solutions and not just in the studio. Anyone who has seen two or more of my concerts knows that every show is different. Every time I go on stage I do not know how long the concert will last. Music can not become routine for me. The job is to convey to people what you're really feeling, not what you pretend to be. It's happened that I felt like not wanting to leave the stage any more, but also there were some situations where after ten minutes I wanted to be somewhere else. The recording room is a place I do not like very much, but I have to say that during the recording of 'Grace' everything went smoothly. I was lucky to work with a very experienced producer like Andy Wallace. It prevented me from forgetting to eat. When I'm focused on music I lose track of time.

Jeff Buckley: Music is God

Musica, July, 1995
By Giuseppe Videtti
Submitted by Ananula
Translated by me

Correggio - "Everybody goes to the Unity Party here", says the diligent waitress at the bar in the center of Correggio, while making meticulously perfect hot sandwiches filled with all kinds of gods. "Did you come for that American singer?". Already for him. The Saturday night star at the party. Jeff Buckley: the only Italian date at the end of a tour that has lasted for months and which is coming to an end. The Padana is motionless under the July sun. Perfect. The sheaves of straw, what remains of the recent harvest, are lined up in the fields. Poplars draw shady avenues in the meadows. No sign of life at two o'clock in the afternoon. Too hot: even the elderly of the country have abandoned the game of cards. The ranks of the cafés under the porticos of Correggio (province of Reggio Emilia, about 25,000 inhabitants) are empty. A few kilometers away, in the small cemetery of Canolo, where the writer PierVittorio Tondelli (1955-1991) rests, a fly does not fly. Not a breath of wind. The only sign of life, the chirping of cicadas.
  The young Buckley rests in the shadows, shirtless, with the mark of a tank top designed on the frail body. A silver circlet with a naughty black bead hangs from the navel. His eyes are small, lively and deep like those of Geraldine Chaplin. Of his father Tim he has the high cheekbones, the bony face and, above all, that "metallic" and desperate "howl" that gives life to the voices inside, gives body to the ghosts, does not care about the styles, makes a mockery of perfection. The artist, who described himself as a voracious consumer of psychedelic mushrooms, devours apricot sized strawberries and grazes with mineral water. Take a look at the enormous empty space where, under the rising sun, the stage stands out: "Even in Glastonbury it was hot as hell, I still have the marks," he says, pointing to his "farmer's tan." "It was bizarre to play for all those people, but good. The organization was good. Except for the bathrooms. They were already seated at three in the afternoon. We've performed in better places. In Denmark, for example. A fantastic festival, in a magical place, that brought charm to our music."
  The album Grace has been released for some time, but Buckley does not seem to be in a hurry to record another one. "I wrote a few new songs, I did not have the time, I'm never home. I live in Manhattan, the best place in the world, I moved from California in 1990. I was 23. Now I live on the edge of the Lower East Side. I go out a lot. I'm never at home, even when I'm in town. I do not like cooking, so I have to go out to get food, like a hungry animal that is forced out of the den. I need too much concentration to cook. I prefer to wash the dishes. It relaxes me". Patti Smith said, "Momma, I will not wash your dishes anymore..."..."It was at the end of Piss Factory, I think, that single has never been published in America. It can only be found as a single. Extraordinary Patti Smith, she has poetry in her voice, even when you can't understand what the poetry says: She's been through terrible years-her brother's death, her husband...She says, "My best guys are gone" alluding to Fred "Sonic" Smith (Jeff closes the concert with a devastating version of Kick Out the Jams, a tribute to the late MC5s and Detroit guitarist with whom the rock poet had two children), and Robert Mapplethorpe." In Florence, in 1979, he sang in front of 80,000 people. Buckley almost does not believe it: "In New York, at the time, he still played at Bottom Line, for 300 paying".
  Rock'n'roll has some crazy cycles, every ten years or so. Patti Smith resurrected it. You could be next. "I don't know, I dont think so. I know artists who have returned to their roots in a much more radical way. Sebadoh, for example (the group of Lou Barlow, the bassist of Dinosaur Jr., which plays a direct and primitive rock). They have their own magic. Perhaps you now say these things because you're sitting here, in front of me. Sebadoh less magical and less poetic than me? It flatters me that you believe it, but it's not like that."
  Buckley loves beautiful songs, but prefers sad ones. They struck him as a child, when he rummaged in his mother's record collection. "I listened to Lilac Wine for the first time from Nina Simone, not from Elkie Brooks, as they wrote. The song is perhaps a little stupid, but she gives it that sense of extraordinary and sensual suffering. Only a few have this interpretative originality. She and Ray Charles. Aaah...the first, great Ray Charles. Nina Simone is an indelible artist, no one should leave this world without ever having heard her. The songs... Sometimes they are better than books. More direct. They enter the bloodstream more easily. Although I still believe that the written word is still the most accurate and complete way to communicate. People's letters. People who write their dreams. Your thoughts. Writing is the last remaining art form. Although, I know, this is certainly not the generation of letters, but computers. But the written word remains a sublime form of art. A letter more than a fax. No, I do not have a fax at home. Only a cordless phone. I have nothing against computers, mind you. Like how we were addicted to the typewriter. Although I have always preferred to write with a pen in hand to beating on the keys with ten fingers.
  "She's coming back, you know." Who? "Patti (Smith). I knew it. She's making a new record. Lenny Kaye will also be with her. An artist like this to return must be close to madness. She must feel completely in the open. (Imitating her) "I'm Patti Smith, I'm an American artist and I'm not guilty". She would be the right type to redo her Birdland. "I thought about it too, you know..." The beginning was shocking: "His father died..." "The father of each of us is dead". I show him a fanzine dedicated to Tim Buckley, his father, a newly-known father, bought in Paris in 1978, in the same little shop that sold Piss Factory by Patti Smith. "You can keep it, it's more fitting that you have it. At that time, we fans did not know that Tim had a son," I tell him. His hands tremble. His eyes are shiny. He stares at a photograph of his father in concert, absorbed in the guitar. "Here he must have drank," he murmurs. Pats the photo with immense tenderness. He is far away with thoughts, in a different place than this world, like the child of Birdland.
  Are you a believer? "Who is God? I don't know. On a subliminal level I grew up Catholic. Catholicism and voodoo. They are the same thing. My mother's family was Panamanian. They believed in voodoo. No difference between the Pope and a sorcerer. I do not believe in organized religion, with a God seated on a throne, in the clouds. Jesus will not come back. He's dead. We just have to live alone. Music is the only thing left to us. Music contains all religions. It exists even without man. Music is."

The Troubadour of the Western World

Rock Sound, February, 1995
By Yves Bongarçon
Submitted by Ananula
Translated by me

He is the only new artist to have been really acclaimed this year and especially almost unanimously by the public and critics. Jeff Buckley began his European tour in Dublin, Ireland this mid-January. The opportunity to see firsthand, on site and on stage, the strong impression left by the album "Grace" this summer. A moving report between the scent of beer, impressions of Ireland and the revelation of an immense talent. All just before the French performances of the artist in February.

Baile Atha Cliah

Dublin, the Cité Du Gué Aux Claies, unrolls its British geometry through the taxi window. Saturday, January 14th, half past four, it's dark and raining. As often in Dublin. No problem. It's just as if a few green Victorian doors, yellow or red come to cheer up this particular atmosphere that, elsewhere than here, would automatically be called cockroach. But by making a detour through literature, from Joyce to Henrich Böll through Anthony Burgess, we see that from generation to generation, the city retains its mysteries, its appeal, its charisma itself and acts instantaneously on the mood of the traveler or the native. Those who attended a rugby match in the pouring rain in the stands of Landsdowne Road know what it is about. Of love, of passion, of warmth, of the spark that only provides the well-being of a rare moment. From an Irish moment. Yet, difficult to ignore the misery, there, next door. Kids with snotty noses begging on the bridges over the Liffey, the Tinkers from the north-west, confiscated in utter destitution and whose wives sell flowers on the sly in old children's carriages in front of the General Post Office on O'Connell Street. The old ones too, dry as branches, with admirable dignity, cased in tweed, dark cravat on checked shirts with moiré necks of grime. These old men, who sit under the porch of some Betting Office, spend their days reading and rereading the "Turf" pages of the Irish Independant always dreaming of the ideal nag. Black Beauty or something like that...When the universe of Delly unceremoniously telescopes that of John Ford, sorry, Sean Aloysius O'Finney. So, it seems that since Liam O'Flaherty or Sean O'Casey, things and time are frozen. That Ireland will be Ireland forever. Red fire. On the palisade of a construction site, some colorful posters, half-glued flapping in the wind, Foreigner and Doobie Bros at the Point Depot, no thanks; Ian Dury & The Blockheads at Olympia, must see; Richard Thompson also at Olympia, yes, surely. And then the new Irish attraction, the group everyone is talking about, Pet Lamb, both protected and direct competitor of Therapy? No doubt soon on our decks...The taxi driver inquires about the reason for our presence in Ireland: "Jeff Buckley?", he does not know, but in a surge of kindness and sincerity, assures us that "he must be very good." Normal, according to him, since we have come to Dublin to see him...It's called hospitality and, after the Stout, it's Dublin's other specialty. And it starts as soon as you have your ass on the moleskin of a taxi seat. In short, not like in Paris.

Take That

At the Westbury Hotel on Grafton Street, just steps from the famous Trinity College, the atmosphere is buzzing with excitement: five hundred girls have taken over the street in front of the hotel, protected by a cordon of police since they learned that the four twinks from Take That, a kind of British New Kids On The Block, have elected residence there. Whenever someone appears at a window, hysterical cries fill the street. Exit the Dublin immemorial, that of Parnell and that of Easter 1916, that of Leopold Bloom and Swift, poor us! The record company had warned: no interview with Jeff Buckley, no pictures, the man is tired, he is coming out of an exhausting American tour. Perhaps there will be a quick meeting after the show in the middle of the night and a few snapshots at the beginning of the show. Procrastination. Wait and see. A few hours to spare while waiting for the scheduled concert in Tivoli around midnight. Quick, go out on the street. And first buy the press, including Hot Press, excellent city magazine that skillfully combines music, politics and society with great writing quality. As many dailies as the Irish Independant and the Irish Times do not care about rock and thus Jeff's concert, so much Hot Press is the event of the week, photos in support (on the sidelines of a long paper on Pet Lamb!) Hot Press will be the companion of the weekend even if Time Out, the London newspaper, draws a little more attractive with a beautiful photo of Adjani on the cover with this title "The ice queen finally melts". Obsession. A detour by HMV on Grafton and Virgin on the docks to realize that the two stores are broadcasting at the same time "Grace", the album of Jeff and announce with much support of PLV the evening concert. Good augury. Back to the hotel after a beer at O'Donoghue's and impromptu meeting on the steps with the three Human Leagues visibly in full promo for "shamrock" off their new album "Octopus". Not heard it yet. Too bad, we could have talked five minutes and had a drink. In memory of "The Lebanon", nothing else.

The Tivoli

The Tivoli, 135 Frances Street, five minutes drive from the city center is a funny place. First, you do not access this old theater and cinema by the main entrance (typically Irish!) but by a stealth entrance on an adjacent street, two hundred yards away. A dark and rather dirty porch, a long and tortuous open-air trip between walls covered with posters of concerts which seems to take pride in the place and finally the right entry. Admittance. The ticket is reasonably priced, £ 7.50. A competent and energetic girl scrupulously verifies the accreditations, escorted by a bouncer, fat and bearded, sort of a cross between Carlos and Philippe Seguin to locate. Which does not make you want to bring him back anyway. The room, finally. Crowded is a weak word. How many people have piled in here tonight? Hard to say. Entering this vast shed converted into a forum, a beer in hand, quickly, is impossible. The audience, half female, is quiet and in a good mood, there to spend an evening with friends rather than emptying some cans. Students for the most part, with an average age of around twenty-five. T-shirts and jeans de rigueur, little or no leather. Jeff Buckley has already sorted out his Irish fans, it's clear. 11:30, the first part accesses the scene, it is provided by The Mary Janes, a local trio of bass, electric guitar and a dreadlocked leader perched on a bar stool with an acoustic guitar. The set is good and organized, strangely layered, songs quite relevant, skillfully combining neo-folk fighting and noisy temptation. They are on the track for an album (Setanta?), Which on the strength of their performance tonight is well deserved. The reception that the public offers them is in any case extremely warm.

State Of Grace

We do not really know what it's all about. The magic of a moment, a stylistic brilliance, a second of weightlessness or eternity. Or, finally, just an attitude. Simple, determined. Like the unique way that Jeff Buckley casually enters the stage. White shirt with long sleeves, bright green, short sleeved shirt, scrupulously crumpled, ad-hoc jeans, chain and biker wallet, ivory Telecaster worn very low, messy hair, an outfit seen thousands of times in the rock scene but which, on Buckley, adds to the authenticity of the character of the artist. This is probably what is called natural elegance or, to borrow from Buckley himself, grace. He appeared on the platform with guitar, cables, beer, the room still lit, Buckley immediately shows he's far from artificial. Following his band, he sets his Marshall amp, tunes his Tele, tests his pedals and returns. The surprised public did not immediately notice but give him a standing ovation as soon as they realize that the guy over there is not a roadie like the others. A rudimentary approach to the public that appears spontaneous but shows Buckley has good knowledge of the stage and almost controls his own character, his own image. Impressive.

Instant Karma

He approaches the microphone, makes a few grimaces and in response to a girl who shot out a warm "We love you Jeff!", He answers in a deep, sensual, broken voice, able to capsize the heart of any horde of Huns, "Thank you, I love you too". That's it! Buckley has won the game before it even started. A tour de force. A natural charisma that will allow him to start his concert with "Dream Brother", an almost intimate title and continue with "So Real" his radio hit of the moment. Almost chained entirely to his art without a word, without a look. For Buckley, that's what it's about, art, artistic creation, performance in the 'plastic arts' sense of the term. Of a Herculean combat that the artist delivers to the material, body-to-body, with bare hands. In the space of ten minutes, the old Dublin theater is thus transformed into an arena where the life of a man will play out, in the Brechtian sense of the term. "Last Goodbye" and his slide guitar, bass and oriental effects, diabolical zeppelinizims, and above all the charming voice, a muscular version of "What Will You Say", and Jeff takes to the microphone to finally address the audience. To do what? Present and showcase his musicians, Mick Grondahl (bass), Michael Tighe (guitar), and Matt Johnson (drums)! Smart, Buckley, over-mediated prodigal son, hides behind the group. Nobody is fooled but it works, we want to believe in the humility of the man. A likeability that this one will hurry to exploit while gently playing. The very grunge "Eternal Life" followed, as to definitively thwart any attempt at classification, the very delicate "Lilac Wine", "Listen to me / I can not see clearly..." is almost a profession of faith.

Vampire

From the first chords of "Grace"-title song-the audience roars with pleasure, shows its excitement but also, one feels it releases the tension accumulated during the first part of the show. Because if Jeff Buckley gives himself without reserve to his audience, going so far as to put into play and sometimes in danger his status as artist, abandoning all modesty, he also asks a lot to the people who listen to him, a lot of focus and their attention, monopolizing for their exclusive benefit their emotional state. This guy is an emotional vampire and sucks the blood, the energy of every human being fallen under his spell. In this context, the familiarity that is already in a song like "Grace" is a happy fall in pressure that has become for many (deliciously?) unbearable. And it is not "Lover, You Should Have Come Over" with its fits of fever and moments of appeasement is a perfect example the sexual intensity of this New York musician. End of the show. A panting audience takes a few seconds to react to the disappearance of the young Adonis. Especially since Jeff returns almost immediately on stage to perform alone with the Tele, his magnificent cover of "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen. "I've seen your flag on a marble arch/Love is not a victory march...", every word is weighed, felt, lived with a prodigious sense of dramaturgy and surrender. Upsetting. A version so intense, so personal, so haunted that it definitely puts the public on their knees before he superbly jumps into the crowd.

Fucking Good Concert

 Fionna, Twenty-three-year-old biology student, her eyes on the wave in the direction of the stage, lost in the middle of the empty room, triturated her empty Holstein Pils box. She has just received the Buckley concert right in her face. She stammers "He is so...He is so...generous, so intense! I discovered him just a week ago, a friend lent me his record, I cracked. He is even better in concert...". Anne-Marie,  twenty-one, a fan of Therapy? she wears a beautiful T-shirt but is disappointed: "He's doing too much on the cursed poet side, we do not believe it. I find that he can not manage his image of the tortured romantic along with the energetic rocker. He's trying to play both games, it's risky." Eamon, twenty-seven years old, architect student, a beautiful red beard carefully cut is downright charming, he explains: "Given his age, Buckley is astonishingly mature, juggling his image, his music, and the emotions he inspires as an artist already at the top of his game. It's magic. We had been waiting for someone like him for a long time. He is very involved, how far can he go? That is the question. To give so much, we'll ask him more next time, that's for sure." The analysis is relevant, the concept of risk taking seems not to have escaped the public. Janine, Liz and Moira, twenty-eight, twenty-four and thirty years old respectively, bank employees on a night-time outing, have failed by a little luck, to drink a beer. Jeff Buckley left them mixed impressions: "He's handsome, very natural but his songs get boring after a while, he puts too much stuff inside. We'd rather it be simpler sometimes. The last one (Lenny Cohen's cover) was superb." The Tivoli finishes emptying discovering a floor littered with hundreds of crumbled plastic cups and almost as many empty beer cans. Gilbert, red giant, leader of roadies, forty years old, a respectable belly, lights a Silk Cut, puts his hands on his hips, solemnly adjusts his black Metallica T-shirt before putting his gloves back on and asserts with the definite assurance that belongs only to earthy men: "Fucking good concert, huh?! This guy is really impeccable." Finally, the last bit of recognition that was missing for Jeff Buckley, that of a roadie. Three o'clock in the morning, the night is icy and wet. Dublin tries to fall asleep. The taxi driver is in great shape. He turns around, red-faced with sparkling eyes, looking at our bruised faces and asks, with a mischievous eye: "A last drink before bed?" Always the famous Irish hospitality. How to resist?

Mood Swing Whiskey Alt. Take

An alternate take on the wonderful Mood Swing Whiskey 

Jeff Buckley

Rhythms, July, 1995
By Christie Eliezer
Submitted by Gabby

  If you're one of those whose copy of Jeff Buckley's Grace is still In the CD player a year after it's release, you'd already know about that stunning, gorgeous voice, the heart-pounding melancholy of the ballads and the grittiness of thevrock-out tracks.
  Onstage, Buckley is much more than that. With songs like "Dream Brother" and "So Real" (which, incidentally, have been opening his shows in Europe), it was accepted Grace was the sort of album that really come alive in the live context. After touring nnon-stop with his band for almost a year, the set is crackingly good.
  "The Last Goodbye", for instance, is just a bundle of intensity, as Buckley dissolves into a loud "kiss me, ooh, KISS ME!" while the on-stage renditions of "Grace" and "Mojo Pin" acquire a beauty only hinted at on record. A recent addition to the show, "What Will You Say" (written by good friend Chris Dowd, former ivory tinkler and trombone player with Fishbone, who incidentally, was the real inspiration behind "Dream Brother", not father Tim as commonly assumed) breaks away from his image as the good loking angel les chique tragique.
  You ain't heard nothing yet till you hear ol' Jeff take high vocals on "Lover You Should've Come Over", or the way he and his band gleefully punch holes into the lyrics of Big Star's "Holocaust" and come up gasping for air, mouth turned down in junkie chic while dripping with blood. For the final song, Buckley stands alone, turning "Hallelujah" into more of a melodramatic opus than its writer Leonard Cohen intended it to be Buckley clings to rock music for the simple reason Lennon or Dylan grasped at it. It allowed him to reinvent himself and claw himself out of life's claustrophobia. Being part of a band has given him a family for the first time. If you heard the themes behind "Grace" and "Eternal Life"-how music makes him feel so goddamn good-you'd know that anyway.
  "Do you know what it's like when you're having sex and you're about to have an orgasm, and your entire mind and body are concentrating every single molecule on that one thing?" Buckley murmurs. "That's what music is for me. It's a white light, it's my mother and father, it's my best friend, it's my blood.
  "Nothing else matters. When I'm working, I'm thinking music. When I'm resting, I'm thinking music. People say I bend my body into the weirdest shapes when I'm performing onstage. I can understand that. When I'm singing, I can feel that force just push my face, my body, everything into all kinds of shapes."
  Does that explain the amount of people who've written to him saying how Grace saved them from suicide?
  "Is that such a big deal? I don't think my music attracts weirdos. The people at my shows are pretty normal. They're not coming because they want to see some rock god-which I'm NOT!-they enjoy playing Grace in their homes and they want to see the songs delivered in person.
  "Maybe if they're feeling kinda down, maybe it's hearing the songs and realizing that they're not alone, that other people-a lot of other people-are feeling those things too. Everyone feels like shit. I certainly have. I spent most of my teenage days feeling real empty inside, feeling I had nothing to offer anyone. A lot of people think angst is something to revel in. It's not. You have to contend with it. You can either be self indulgent and boring. Or you can create a masterpiece."
  So how would he react if someone in the audience told him they'd come to see a rock god or, travesty, the spirit of Tim Buckley revived?
  "Yeah, well, the joke's on them. I hardly knew my father. He left my mum when I was six months old. I never saw him again until a week or so before he died. My mum gave me the name Jeff Scott Moorhead. Moorhead was the name of my stepfather. Until my mid-teens I actually was known as Scott. I changed my name when I was old enough. I don't really know why. Or maybe I do."
  It may be significant that Grace made Buckley a star at 28, the same age as when Sr died of an overdose. Jeff spent the last year explaining to people that, no, aside from the name, there's no connection with his father. Now he's changed his tack. At a recent press conference in Milan, when hit with a question about his father's death, he replied, "I dunno, man, maybe I should give you some phone numbers in America and they could help you answer that."
  Ma Buckley was a hippie who turned him on to "that real post-Dylan acoustic stuff, marvelous to listen to even today." She was a bit of a gypsy, and the young boy's childhood was spent being the perennial "new kid in class" at yet another Californian school. He made a deal with music: it would become his best friend, and he in turn would listen to everything from the Beatles to Joni Mitchell to classical to '40s soundtracks.
  Life was no swing through the Fun House for Buckley. He remembers as a teenager he was "dead inside", writing "endless poetry and stories, real shit stuff". It didn't alleviate his feelings of worthlessness. One day he raged, burned all his writings. Symbolically, two weeks later, the riots broke out in L.A.
  So nowadays, New York-based Buckley is a bit of a '90s teen idol and "rock icon". He once jammed with Chrissie Hynde and John McEnroe during a visit to London, and is rumored to have had a fling with Liz of the Cocteau Twins. In interviews, he admits to having some horrific nightmares. Like doing his homework while listening to the radio, and being grabbed by the music and smashed into the floor until he screams. Or being invited back to an artist's studio to see his work-which turned out to be displays of living things with their vocal cords cut out. So is working on his next album a similar nightmare?
  "No. It'd be interesting to see if having to project to a large group of people at shows will change the style. You always have this...uh, fear, that people might hate it or the ideas might not come when you're making it. But I figure I'm gonna be doing this for the rest of my life, so I might as well try and enjoy it now while I can."
  Does continually being on the road disillusion him?
  "No, I was always on the move as a kid. I enjoy it. It can be a bit hard at times, but, hey, the concerts make up for everything. If I get some backlash, that's OK. The more you're attacked, the more you're forced to defend this thing you love."

Grace Under Pressure

Cleveland Scene, October, 1994
Written and submitted by Pete Chakerian

  The sounds of Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan drift in between the relaxed words of Jeff Buckley as he begins one of his last phone interviews of a two-day press marathon. Checking in with the SCENE from the Sony offices in midtown Manhattan, Buckley doesn't sound like an artist who's wrestled with the press for two straight days.
  "(The press schedule) was my wish actually, to get it done in two days and actually achieve the illusion of having spare time," Buckley admits. "It's just an illusion."
  Another illusion, in Buckley's opinion, are all the Next Big Thing kudos he hs been receiving from critics. From the release of last year's debut EP, LIVE AT SIN-É, to his first long-player, GRACE, Buckley has been swimming through a sea of these common, critical declarations. Or, what he refers to as "a cop-out to thinking.
  "Next Big Thing votes are like when Boy Scouts first learn how to ejaculate," Buckley says, obviously grinning. "They just keep on doing it and doing until it gets all sloppy and stupid and your balls hurt. Boring! If that's me, then I have achieved my worst nightmare.
  "Everybody's been looking for Christ since the Beatles hit America," Buckley reflects, "The kind of art that I make could never take over anything, except for maybe somebody's bedroom. Or maybe their heart. People don't know what to make of (my music), so it can't possibly be a revelation...It's a really treacherous area to interpret something that doesn't really have a language.
  "My oniy advice to people," adds Buckley of the hype, "is just to ignore it. Let's see if we can have a good time together." Buckley will give his fans that opportunity when he plays Wilbert's this Tuesday, November 1; labelmate Brenda Kahn will open.
  To the media's defense, Buckley’s surreal sense of honesty would have any music aficionado-writer or otherwise-blowing a fuse. His approach is unique and revealing, yet somehow, he still remains secretive within the context of his compositions.
  "Everything I need is right here in my kneecaps and in my breastbone and in my head," offers Buckley. "I guess the by-product is revealing, but the object is not to reveal. It is simply to express, but everybody's revealed when they express themselves, you know? Everybody walking around, wether they like it or not-even the most covert-is completely exposed for what he or she is by their actions."
  Buckley’s not interested in turning his art into a confessional. "I don't want (my music) to become a forum for me, pouring out my inner most secrets," Buckley admits. "That's something I would never do. I don't divulge secrets to the public. I divulge them to my friends, and only when it's appropriate."
  Since Buckley’s first appearance on the New York music scene back in 1991-during a tribute to his biological father/troubadour hero Tim Buckley-comparisons to legendary figures like Robert Plant, Freddie Mercury and his father Tim have cropped up everywhere. With little provocation, Buckley shudders at all the comparisons.
  "(It's) lazy journalism and a lazy culture and lack of courage to describe originality," he counters matter-of-factly. "Or maybe, I'm just not a good enough artist that I can buck all those things. I'm sure it's high praise, you know? Freddie Mercury was f**king brilliant."
  According to Buckley, the comparisons make "easy copy" for writers. "I've read rock journalists describe my friend Craig Wedren (from Shudder To Think) as a young Robert Plant," he says. "He's about as close to Robert Plant as Doris Day is. It's just stupidity left and right."
  It's not that Buckley doesn't have influences. "I grew up listening to all those people. I grew up  ensconced in an era that was polluted with that music," he admits. "So be it. My own choices are evident. I just don't think that people know me or listen to me deeply enough to write rock reviews to really know the real me. But that's OK, there's time. And maybe I am totally derivative and unoriginal. Maybe the next album will determine that. I feel I'm making my own statement."
  When focus narrows to the comparisons made with his father, Buckley’s tranquil voice becomes melancholy and pensive.
  "Another shortcut to thinking," Buckley says. "He never taught me anything. He had another son that he taught to be a good person and he had another wife. I just wasn't included. It's journalists playing Ken and Barbie with me and Tim Buckley. It used to hurt. It used to hurt a lot. Now it's just boring. Painfully boring. It's quite an oddity, this whole situation."
  It was such an oddity to Jeff at first, that he was reluctant to participate in the 1991 memorial show for his father. After struggling with his emotions, he acquiesced when "I realized that I'd never have another chance to pay my respects. I didn't make it to the funeral. I wasn't invited. So I decided to do it on my own terms. I don't think I really sang very well (that night)," he adds, "(but) it was a matter of life or death."
  "Do you know what a 'kaddish' is?" he asks. "It's what the son or daughter does for the dead parent. Nobody sang a kaddish for him, and, if I didn't, I felt like that part of him wouldn't rest. And a part of me wouldn't rest."
  Buckley made great strides in building his own separate identity when he joined Gods & Monsters-a band centered around ex-Captain Beefheart guitarist Gary Lucas-a short time after the tribute show. Rather than follow the circling industry vultures who attended, Buckley felt that if his notoriety was to build, it would build at his own pace, on his own terms.
  Buckley’s shortlived tenure with the underground supergroup didn't provide that slow build. He split with the band-which also featured the Bob Mould, WORKBOOK  rhythm section bassist Tony Maimone and drummer Anton Fier-less than a year after he joined. To Buckley, it seemed like each musician was strictly interested in what they were doing as individuals on the stage. The band cohesion Buckley wanted wasn't there, so he left.
  "But not because ot was a difficult situation or an unworthy situation, but precisely because it had so much potential," Buckley clarifies. "It could hsve been very, very, very fruitful. I just didn't feel I was in the right situation. It was galvanizing to not start a whole situation, but to stop all situations possible and just start from zero."
  Buckley began playing the NYC coffeehouse circuit as a solo artist, which eventually garnered him a devoted following. Before Buckley knew it, noted Sony A&R guy Steve Berkowitz had become one of his fans. Berkowitz eventually signed Buckley to the Columbia label and arranged for a live recording of one of his performances at the Cafe Sin-e. A small smattering of the three recorded hours became Buckley’s debut, LIVE AT SIN-É.
  Having released his first long-player GRACE earlier this year,  Buckley now fronts his own band and couldn't be happier with his bandmates-Mick Grondahl  (bass), Matt Johnson  (drums) and Michael Tighe  (guitars)-and the direction they are headed in together.
  "It's a perfect band for me," Buckley says. "It's just an unsaid understanding that we like being together. And I need their views on music and their untapped potential to make music. We're different and we come from very different backgrounds, but being as old as we all are, we sort of have the same exposure to American life and American music...to the impossibilities of love and loss.
  "So, we do have many things in common," Buckley finishes. "It's the differences that keep us together."

Brett's Autographs

From IG user Brett Greenberg

I love this! (According to Brett, he was tired of signing his name) 😄

A Voice Of His Own

St. Louis Post Dispatch, Oct. 28, 1994
By Alan Sculley
Submitted by Sai

Buckley avoids dad's shadow

  Jeff Buckley had just let out a huge sigh, the kind that projects a mixture of weariness, anger, disappointment and disgust.
  His reason for the response and the sudden uneasy air in this recent phone interview was the mention of his father, Tim Buckley, the acclaimed late singer/songwriter whose trailblazing blend of jazz, folk, and blues made him something of a troubadour icon.
  Despite obvious reluctance over the subject, Buckley patiently and candidly-but briefly-discussed his father and how much attention he had paid to his music before concluding before concluding his thoughts this way:
  "Anyway, I'm tired of this. I'm tired of every single journalist seeing fit to keep (bringing it up)," he said. "Everybody has read everything they have to read about it. Everybody knows my attitude on it. Nobody wants to observe it. So I'll just have to deal with it, I guess. Maybe I'm not a good enough artist that people just think of me. Maybe in the future I'll bloom into something that will make people look at me for what I am."
  It's easy to see why Buckley is so weary of having to discuss his father. After all, Tim Buckley had left Jeff's mother to pursue music before he even knew his own son. The only time Jeff Buckley met his father was when he was 8 years old, and even then they only spent one week together. A couple months later, in 1975, Tim Buckley was dead from a drug overdose, so any father-son musical connection has to be considered tenuous at best.
  And although he may express self-doubts about his own music so far, Buckley has released a strikingly original studio debut CD, Grace," that should make father-son comparisons seem even more superfluous.
  Actually, Buckley said, the people who played key roles in shaping his music were his mother (a classically trained pianist and cellist) and stepfather, who was married to his mother from 1971 to 1973.
  "I have a lot of my mother in me, but I was just born with the same parts as (my father). I don't sound like him," Buckley said. "I mean, I can do an impression of him right now, and I do not sound like him. I sound like me. My sense of rhythm I learned from my mother. My melodies I think sometimes I get from my mother. But I molded everything myself. I was just left alone with music and got an understanding from whatever I could as a kid. It certainly wasn't from my father's records. I don't own any of my father's records.
  "If people want to go ahead and compare us, that's fine. They can do that all day, but just don't come to the gig, because you won't get what it is you want. And I'm sure the next album will completely disappoint all Tim Buckley fans if they think I'm going to do what he did for them. That's just useless and childish to think that will happen. I'm concerned with the future. I'm concerned with my life, my present, my friends, people I love, people who love me. I have no intention of taking on a legacy that wasn't bestowed on me."
  Buckley's own music has begun to come into focus only in recent years. After growing up in California in what he describes as a rootless existence-he and his mother moved frequently during Buckley's youth-he dabbled in local bands and briefly attended the Musician's Institute in Los Angeles before moving to New York City in the early '90s.
  He first gained significant notice when he performed  at a 1991 tribute concert for his father. ("I went there just to pay my last respects because that was something that I was denied before as a child," Buckley said. "I wasn't invited to the funeral. I don't know why.")
  Shortly thereafter, Buckley briefly joined a group called God & Monsters, which included former Captain Beefheart member Gary Lucas, drummer Anton Fier (of the Golden Palominos) and bassist Tony Maimore (formerly of Pere Ubu). After two God & Monster gigs, Buckley realized he had to strike off on his own to discover his own musical voice.
  Over the next two years, he played at small coffeehouses and clubs around the city, accompanying himself only on electric guitar. His sets came to feature a diverse range of cover tunes mixed with a growing repertoire of intriguing originals. He quickly became known for his engaging, theatrical stage presence and, more notably, for his soaring falsetto vocals, which have drawn comparisons to Freddie Mercury, to Robert Plant and, naturally, to Tim Buckley's haunting tones.
  Buckley said that even though his music was conceived in a solo setting, he knew he would expand into a band format that would be built around electric guitar and his voice. However, Buckley didn't find the right players for his band until just prior to the recording sessions for "Grace." Bassist Mick Grondahl and drummer Matt Johnson joined in time to squeeze in a few rehearsals and gigs before heading into the studio. Guitarist Michael Tighe came on board well into the sessions and played on one song, "So Real."
  But if the band my still be refining its chemistry, the members combine for some spectacular moments on "Grace," one of the most original-sounding albums of the year. Buckley and band have created a sound that defies categorizing. They rock hard on "Eternal Life" and "Mojo Pin," downshift into folksy pop on "Last Goodbye" and conjure up achingly beautiful balladry on "Lover, You Should've Come Over" and on versions of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" and Nina Simone's "Lilac Wine."
  At the center of it all is Buckley's soaring voice, which can both reach spine-chilling crescendos (as on the title track) or be gentle and touching (as on "Lilac Wine"). It's the kind of record that gains power and passion with each listen.
  As the distinctive flavors of the music suggest, songwriting is an intuitive process in which, Buckley said, he tries to let the melodies and words emerge naturally and take their own shapes and sounds. By necessity, it starts as a rather selfish process.
  "If my heart isn't beating, how can other hearts beat t the same time?" he said. "Maybe (someday), I'll just make, like, a complete on-demand record that everybody wants to hear. But tht would be impossible-and, also, I just changed my mind. I don't think I'll ever do that.
  "That's an ugly thought to make an album to the demands of a record-buying public that you can't even see. They don't come to me because I pander to their interests. They come to me because I pander to mine, and we sort of are in alignment, and that's good. That's a nice thing, it's sort of like a spontaneous affair."

Allan Sculley writes on pop and rock music for a number of publications.

Jeff Buckley
Where: Sheldon, 3648 Washington Ave.
When: 8 p.m. Friday, Nov. 4
How much: $10
Opening act: Brenda Kahn
Tickets: 291-7600