Les Inrockuptibles, February, 1995
By Gilles Tordjman
Submitted by Niella
Translated by me
Awakened by European rumor, America discovers in Jeff Buckley a new prodigal son. Grace's archangel does not feel any nostalgia for the California where he was born. Fatherless son, John Lackland, he can aspire to wider horizons. In the meantime, an account of the capture of Los Angeles.
November 22, 1994. "Spending a night at Hotel Mondrian is like spending a night in a museum," repeatedly looped the internal television channel devoted to self-promotion. Designed in the style of a Mondrian canvas, full of gray, steel and marble, the palace boasts a hanging of three hundred original works: Calder, Vasarely, that kind of thing . During the last earthquake, the Mondrian remained standing. There is no justice. It is 12 pm when Jeff Buckley appears at the bar. On the coffee table is the latest issue of Rolling Stone which saw "the future of rock": REM, Meat Puppets, Porno For Pyros and others. Jeff Buckley was given an untagged photo. "I do not do much of that, and if Rolling Stone could decide the future of rock, that would be the case. The American music press as a whole is not very interesting, except for Creem. As elsewhere, it is the small magazines, resulting from the alternative movement, which are the most engaging. They are very pleasant to read in the bathroom. But what does "alternative" mean?" He sweeps the room with its obvious luxury, the deep black sofas, the atrocious little low-voltage lights, and smiles. "To destroy this room would really be alternative rock."
He is allowed everything
1 pm. On Sunset Boulevard, the car slides quietly. The future of rock makes an excellent driver, and a very zealous tour guide. We cross places of various importance, here, the studio where Nilsson recorded ("I grew up with his records"); there, the Guitar Center where a lot of dreamy guitars are made. Girls looking like the girls pictured in Calendar girls, are seen in big convertibles, glancing at the males in convertibles. None escapes the driver's lust. This guy has a stunning charm. He is allowed to do anything: be vulgar with grace, friendly with indifference, funny with depth, mocking without acrimony. He jokes, makes different voices, acts silly, gets angry for laughs. A slightly magnificent winner, he attends to his youth. As he drives to the places where his childhood came from, no nostalgia dominates him. "In New York, where I've lived since 1990, I sometimes regret little things: driving, the sun, a kind of nonchalance peculiar to California. When I'm here, my skin is more supple, it has more radiance. but I will never come back here. Over there, the contact is easier, the people are more loyal. there is a proximity between people. All I have to do is lean out of my window to see if my friends are around. Here, there is permanent mistrust, we look at each other, we evaluate each other. It is extremely difficult to have social relationships. Everything is subject to the power and money you earn. You already have to have connections to meet other people." How do people meet under these conditions? The answer is: "They don't meet."
First bachelor apartment
2 pm. A city of classes, built on the unique staging of consumerist domination, Los Angeles quickly admits to being repressed. As soon as you leave Hollywood Boulevard and its stupidly armed sidewalks, the streets are much poorer. It is in one of them, at the intersection of Yucca Street, that the Buckley house, the first bachelor apartment, is located. An unattractive building where the corridors distributed around a dark patio guarantee almost total absence of privacy. It is not enough for the poor to be poor, they must also see each other as poor. We also live happily in all the places that misfortune invents. Jeff Buckley mechanically searches the tenant list for a known name, but to no avail. Knowing that the building is still standing is enough consolation. Near the parking lot, an Italian transvestite was working with some success. He left, too. A few blocks away, we arrive at the Magic Hotel on Franklin Avenue. The seemingly ordinary motel takes its name from the neighbourhood of the Magic Club, a kind of baroque castlet where old retired illusionists who were once famous find themselves. A few meters away, another motel housed Janis Joplin's final overdose. "I worked for three years at the Magic Hotel, I was a bit of a handyman, I had to be polite to everyone. Showbiz people, the mafia were coming down here. There was also an old Sufi man waiting for death. One day he slipped in his shower and broke the window. There was blood everywhere. It's probably the most dramatic thing that's ever happened here. Otherwise, ordinarily, we had to deal with all those who had abused a little coke." Work, write, move, dream of a Prometheus future behind the counter of a motel: live. Much further, on the heights of the Hollywood Hills, there is still this studio no bigger than a hotel room, at 3720 Oakshire Drive where, for two years, he battled depression by writing Eternal Life and Last Goodbye. It was in 1988. The past is a journey with no charge. There's still Anaheim-where we will not go-and the tasty burrittos of the Poquito Mas- where Frank Black has a habit of worsening his cholesterol. The soundcheck hour is approaching, the tension is rising. We're going back to the drawing board. Money is proven in a multitude of flashy villas. An insulting sun crushes all that.
3:30 pm at Luna Park, 665 Robertson Boulevard. Litany of flight cases carried in the half-darkness, guitars tuned, jacks taped to the ground. A theory of intermediaries is active in the bays, manager, road-manager, product manager, guitar manager, cable and spoon manager, sous-chefs of all kinds justifying their existence by testing their mutual powers. It's because Jeff Buckley's European (French?) success has shaken up the American apathy a little. With the help of economic realism, we convinced ourselves that we might have the next big thing with him. Hence a rather caricatural eagerness to complicate what is simple, to multiply the problems that are not, to cut schedules to the minute, in order to once again affirm the unbeatable proffessionnalism of the professionals of the profession on this side of the civilized world. Ritually, Jeff Buckley hangs out, breathes the atmosphere of the deserted club, soaks up an atmosphere to come. In a few moments, he is on stage. With a good exterminating angel smile, he lets clear and violent sounds, as beautiful as disasters, burst forth. Three pieces later, the case is in the bag. The cars go back to the radio where the group has to play live.
Sometimes alive, sometimes dead
6:30 pm Modern Rockline, Ventura Boulevard, Sherman Oaks. American Music Club, who are scheduled to play after Jeff in the same program and will perform tonight at the Roxy, are prowling around. Seen sleeping on a couch, Mark Eitzel falls in our arms: "Hey guys, what the hell are you doing here?" Good guy. We discuss everything and nothing, Mark always looks overwhelmed by life or the absence of something a little serious to put in his throat. After rehearsing a good hour to the maximum of his abilities, for the pleasure, Jeff takes a five-minute break before the live performance. "This Mark Eitzel is really someone," he says, "but rather like a coward. I don't know if he likes me a lot." Think again, dear Jeff. He gave us your eulogy less than a month ago. "No kidding? I'm really happy about that." The atmosphere relaxes. The bassist from Americain Music Club explains very seriously that his great ambition is to remove more and more strings to his bass, in reaction to the crazy slappers. He plays on three strings and does not despair of doing even less. Everyone laughs heartily as they read the lyrics of Jackyl's latest album, a kind of serious Spinal Tap. It is 8 pm when the band starts playing "So Real", repeated a good dozen times before. But, as if everyone sensed that something special could happen, the studio filled up. Something special happens. Like a gap between these guys so young, messing around, but terribly attentive to each other, and the music of a monsterous beauty that escapes from the control monitors. In the moment that follows, the joke takes over. We put the listeners' questions on the air. Lea plays the smart one by giggling like a little girl: "Oh Jeff, you're so fantastic, amazing...Uh, are you married?" Felice plays the intellectual role: "What inspires you, what is your writing process?" Jeff responds very kindly "Well, that depends. Sometimes I'm alive, sometimes I'm dead. Everything you are, even what you are ashamed of, must appear in writing, including things that are ridiculous or unimportant. And always write from your daily environment, never use ready-made formulas." There are many always and never in his sentences.
9:30 pm at Luna Park, 665 Robertson Boulevard. Brenda Kahn's band goes on stage. Disserting topic: how can such a cataclysmically pretty girl play such a big double? The hicks accompanying her compete for the super-heavyweight title and finish in a tie. All the cheesiest shots will be played, from the predictable drum break to the funkiest pseudo-funky solo. At the end of the set, the guitarist who makes rock 'n' roll poses will leave the room with his briefcase. The following concert is a special experience. There is something definitively terrifying in the way Jeff Buckley is acting through the music, as if it goes through him. Not a look at the instruments, the eyes look at a very distant point beyond the club's walls. Mick Grondahl and Michael Tighe don't move, letting the sound storm pass through. Extreme tension allows extreme freedom: twice, the improvised introductions will extend beyond several minutes. New sounds are born, flexible and sumptuous layers that make you forget all the great orchestras of the world. Scott Walker has been right to hide in his bunker for three years.
On the same peaks as Elllington
November 23, 11 am, Sunset Boulevard. Los Angeles has its place in Pigalle, less the little women. Around the Guitar Center, some more secret stalls, like Valdez's, exhibit extremely rare instruments that, taken together, could pleasantly tell the whole story of American music: Gibson's harp guitar, tenor four-string guitars or ukuleles from the 1920s, oversized super-400s, Dan Armstrong in plexiglass, Martin 00, Gretsch unknown to the battalion. Contrary to what some people think, it is not entirely indifferent that Jeff Buckley is, moreover, a singular guitarist: "For me, music is intimately linked to the guitar, it's normal that I try to explore all its possibilities. However, I have never tried to be weird. If I have always been passionate about different tunings, it is because of the frustration I felt about jazz. There is a harmonic richness in jazz that doesn't give much back on a normally tuned guitar. By changing the way we tune, we deeply modify the approach of the instrument, we can approach it like a piano or an orchestra. That's probably why I'm not interested in "orthodox" jazz guitarists, at least not as much as people like Jimmy Page or Johnny Marr. Apart from Jim Hall, I think jazz guitarists are perfectly lame. Might as well listen to the real big ones, like Duke Ellington, whom I love. I'm an incurable romantic. There is a darkness in him that comes from the same place as his joy: his music is a kind of perpetual celebration, whatever the feelings he expresses." If you look carefully, you could certainly find ten or twenty collusions between Elllington's mysterious sound paste and Buckley Junior's ferocity. These two breathe on the same peaks. Memory: in France, a long time ago, a journalist had dared to call Prince "the Duke Ellington of the 80s." We no longer hear about either one.
Fatigue accepted
2:30 pm. Sony Music headquarters, Santa Monica. What was supposed to be a simple mixing session turned into a real closed-door session that severely disrupted the sacrosanct schedule. The manager goes out from time to time, annoyed and admiring: "It must be the fifth layer of voices. It doesn't look like anything you've ever heard of, it's incredible." The firm's bunker spreads its power and glory over several thousand square meters. The atmosphere is businesslike and conflicts are carefully avoided, disappearing under this kind of unbearable relaxed politeness thanks to which we've made it clear that you are only tolerated in these places. In the very modern and very dull cafeteria, old beards of the trade meet young people who are first satisfied with their fate. Jeff Buckley agrees to leave the studio, holding his two fetishes, a hat and a strange book with blank pages blackened with a few doodles. An American photographer is elbowing his way in, upset that there may be French photographers. The session is finished in about 20 minutes. We are given the distinct honour of taking a seat in the limousine that will take the prodigal son to the concert venue. "I'm trying to fight to save myself some time. Everything that I write in these difficult conditions is more spontaneous. Musicians are very involved in the development of the songs. Maintaining a friendly relationship with the people accompanying me is essential. I don't see myself playing with session musicians. I have too big a mouth for for that. It's going to play tricks on me one of these days." Fatigue is visible but accepted. "Pressure is mainly about preparation. As soon as things happen, when the music starts, everything else is swept away, the whole mess no longer exists. The obligations, all these intermediaries, there's only one way to deal with them: be very polite, but at the same time assert yourself in your refusal, show your rebellion. I'm not afraid of losing control, because I'm not trying to control everything. The only thing that bothers me is that I no longer have time to solve the simplest problems." He shows his pants, badly torn and patched by a row of safety pins. "Look at these pants, what can I do, change it? Impossible, I'm too superstitious with clothes." The voice is low, the eyes are tired and lost in the traffic of Santa Monica. "I have never had a so-called normal life. It's not for me. If I pulled over, I'd loose everything."
5 pm, Melrose. Los Angeles has its Halls, minus the Sebasto. A trendy shop displays its piercing accessories. A slogan: "You've experienced everything. Try genital mutilation." Five meters further, a large window illuminated like daytime. Inside, a bric-a-brac of disparate furniture, sofas with faded colours, a TV on in a corner. It looks like a deposit-sale. Old people in dressing gowns are sitting in the armchairs, under the neon lights in the window, offered to passers-by. This is not a deposit-sale. It's a retirement home.
Last frontier
9 pm at Roxy, Sunset Boulevard. The debonair audience, come there to have a drink listening to good music, can't believe their ears. On stage, the white energy is palpable. Jeff Buckley and his men are crossing another border. Once again, songs are invented in the moment, long melodies unwound ad libitum before the sound, all massive and airy, devastates the audience.Between the songs, Jeff Buckley defuses the emotional tension by imitating an average slob: "Hey, little slut, bitch, you suck?" A disarming smile. Some girls are a little overwhelmed. Then it's Kangaroo and its noisy radicality. Then Hallelujah, hanging by a thread, the voice on the verge of silence, flirting with the stratosphere of the high-pitched. A few hours before, he said again, "There's no danger, no injury in the music. You can never be too intense. Everything else is a physical problem. There is a scene in Janacek's opera Jenufa that is really dangerous for the voice, and all singers fear it. There are also people like Robert Plant who have lost their voice for pulling too much. In my case, I don't sing beyond my limits and I would say that you can sing anything natural in the spoken voice without any problem, there are not as many differences as we would like to believe. I can easily imagine one day reaching a turning point in my life, because some things will have been completed, but I believe that nothing will stop me, that there will always be new paths. I will reconstitute myself, I will continue." Fear is absent from that life.
November 24th. 5 pm, La Cienega. "of all that is very good, but always in quality. Of all that is very good, there are always very few; what there is a lot of is underestimated; and, among the very people, giants usually pass through it as real dwarves. Some estimate books by size, as if they were made to load the arms, rather that to exercise the minds. Extension alone has never been able to cross the line of mediocrity and it is the misfortune of the universal people to excel in nothing, for wanting to excel in everything. Intention gives a prominent place, and makes a hero if the material is sublime."- Baltasar Gracian, The Court Man
By Gilles Tordjman
Submitted by Niella
Translated by me
Awakened by European rumor, America discovers in Jeff Buckley a new prodigal son. Grace's archangel does not feel any nostalgia for the California where he was born. Fatherless son, John Lackland, he can aspire to wider horizons. In the meantime, an account of the capture of Los Angeles.
November 22, 1994. "Spending a night at Hotel Mondrian is like spending a night in a museum," repeatedly looped the internal television channel devoted to self-promotion. Designed in the style of a Mondrian canvas, full of gray, steel and marble, the palace boasts a hanging of three hundred original works: Calder, Vasarely, that kind of thing . During the last earthquake, the Mondrian remained standing. There is no justice. It is 12 pm when Jeff Buckley appears at the bar. On the coffee table is the latest issue of Rolling Stone which saw "the future of rock": REM, Meat Puppets, Porno For Pyros and others. Jeff Buckley was given an untagged photo. "I do not do much of that, and if Rolling Stone could decide the future of rock, that would be the case. The American music press as a whole is not very interesting, except for Creem. As elsewhere, it is the small magazines, resulting from the alternative movement, which are the most engaging. They are very pleasant to read in the bathroom. But what does "alternative" mean?" He sweeps the room with its obvious luxury, the deep black sofas, the atrocious little low-voltage lights, and smiles. "To destroy this room would really be alternative rock."
He is allowed everything
1 pm. On Sunset Boulevard, the car slides quietly. The future of rock makes an excellent driver, and a very zealous tour guide. We cross places of various importance, here, the studio where Nilsson recorded ("I grew up with his records"); there, the Guitar Center where a lot of dreamy guitars are made. Girls looking like the girls pictured in Calendar girls, are seen in big convertibles, glancing at the males in convertibles. None escapes the driver's lust. This guy has a stunning charm. He is allowed to do anything: be vulgar with grace, friendly with indifference, funny with depth, mocking without acrimony. He jokes, makes different voices, acts silly, gets angry for laughs. A slightly magnificent winner, he attends to his youth. As he drives to the places where his childhood came from, no nostalgia dominates him. "In New York, where I've lived since 1990, I sometimes regret little things: driving, the sun, a kind of nonchalance peculiar to California. When I'm here, my skin is more supple, it has more radiance. but I will never come back here. Over there, the contact is easier, the people are more loyal. there is a proximity between people. All I have to do is lean out of my window to see if my friends are around. Here, there is permanent mistrust, we look at each other, we evaluate each other. It is extremely difficult to have social relationships. Everything is subject to the power and money you earn. You already have to have connections to meet other people." How do people meet under these conditions? The answer is: "They don't meet."
First bachelor apartment
2 pm. A city of classes, built on the unique staging of consumerist domination, Los Angeles quickly admits to being repressed. As soon as you leave Hollywood Boulevard and its stupidly armed sidewalks, the streets are much poorer. It is in one of them, at the intersection of Yucca Street, that the Buckley house, the first bachelor apartment, is located. An unattractive building where the corridors distributed around a dark patio guarantee almost total absence of privacy. It is not enough for the poor to be poor, they must also see each other as poor. We also live happily in all the places that misfortune invents. Jeff Buckley mechanically searches the tenant list for a known name, but to no avail. Knowing that the building is still standing is enough consolation. Near the parking lot, an Italian transvestite was working with some success. He left, too. A few blocks away, we arrive at the Magic Hotel on Franklin Avenue. The seemingly ordinary motel takes its name from the neighbourhood of the Magic Club, a kind of baroque castlet where old retired illusionists who were once famous find themselves. A few meters away, another motel housed Janis Joplin's final overdose. "I worked for three years at the Magic Hotel, I was a bit of a handyman, I had to be polite to everyone. Showbiz people, the mafia were coming down here. There was also an old Sufi man waiting for death. One day he slipped in his shower and broke the window. There was blood everywhere. It's probably the most dramatic thing that's ever happened here. Otherwise, ordinarily, we had to deal with all those who had abused a little coke." Work, write, move, dream of a Prometheus future behind the counter of a motel: live. Much further, on the heights of the Hollywood Hills, there is still this studio no bigger than a hotel room, at 3720 Oakshire Drive where, for two years, he battled depression by writing Eternal Life and Last Goodbye. It was in 1988. The past is a journey with no charge. There's still Anaheim-where we will not go-and the tasty burrittos of the Poquito Mas- where Frank Black has a habit of worsening his cholesterol. The soundcheck hour is approaching, the tension is rising. We're going back to the drawing board. Money is proven in a multitude of flashy villas. An insulting sun crushes all that.
3:30 pm at Luna Park, 665 Robertson Boulevard. Litany of flight cases carried in the half-darkness, guitars tuned, jacks taped to the ground. A theory of intermediaries is active in the bays, manager, road-manager, product manager, guitar manager, cable and spoon manager, sous-chefs of all kinds justifying their existence by testing their mutual powers. It's because Jeff Buckley's European (French?) success has shaken up the American apathy a little. With the help of economic realism, we convinced ourselves that we might have the next big thing with him. Hence a rather caricatural eagerness to complicate what is simple, to multiply the problems that are not, to cut schedules to the minute, in order to once again affirm the unbeatable proffessionnalism of the professionals of the profession on this side of the civilized world. Ritually, Jeff Buckley hangs out, breathes the atmosphere of the deserted club, soaks up an atmosphere to come. In a few moments, he is on stage. With a good exterminating angel smile, he lets clear and violent sounds, as beautiful as disasters, burst forth. Three pieces later, the case is in the bag. The cars go back to the radio where the group has to play live.
Sometimes alive, sometimes dead
6:30 pm Modern Rockline, Ventura Boulevard, Sherman Oaks. American Music Club, who are scheduled to play after Jeff in the same program and will perform tonight at the Roxy, are prowling around. Seen sleeping on a couch, Mark Eitzel falls in our arms: "Hey guys, what the hell are you doing here?" Good guy. We discuss everything and nothing, Mark always looks overwhelmed by life or the absence of something a little serious to put in his throat. After rehearsing a good hour to the maximum of his abilities, for the pleasure, Jeff takes a five-minute break before the live performance. "This Mark Eitzel is really someone," he says, "but rather like a coward. I don't know if he likes me a lot." Think again, dear Jeff. He gave us your eulogy less than a month ago. "No kidding? I'm really happy about that." The atmosphere relaxes. The bassist from Americain Music Club explains very seriously that his great ambition is to remove more and more strings to his bass, in reaction to the crazy slappers. He plays on three strings and does not despair of doing even less. Everyone laughs heartily as they read the lyrics of Jackyl's latest album, a kind of serious Spinal Tap. It is 8 pm when the band starts playing "So Real", repeated a good dozen times before. But, as if everyone sensed that something special could happen, the studio filled up. Something special happens. Like a gap between these guys so young, messing around, but terribly attentive to each other, and the music of a monsterous beauty that escapes from the control monitors. In the moment that follows, the joke takes over. We put the listeners' questions on the air. Lea plays the smart one by giggling like a little girl: "Oh Jeff, you're so fantastic, amazing...Uh, are you married?" Felice plays the intellectual role: "What inspires you, what is your writing process?" Jeff responds very kindly "Well, that depends. Sometimes I'm alive, sometimes I'm dead. Everything you are, even what you are ashamed of, must appear in writing, including things that are ridiculous or unimportant. And always write from your daily environment, never use ready-made formulas." There are many always and never in his sentences.
9:30 pm at Luna Park, 665 Robertson Boulevard. Brenda Kahn's band goes on stage. Disserting topic: how can such a cataclysmically pretty girl play such a big double? The hicks accompanying her compete for the super-heavyweight title and finish in a tie. All the cheesiest shots will be played, from the predictable drum break to the funkiest pseudo-funky solo. At the end of the set, the guitarist who makes rock 'n' roll poses will leave the room with his briefcase. The following concert is a special experience. There is something definitively terrifying in the way Jeff Buckley is acting through the music, as if it goes through him. Not a look at the instruments, the eyes look at a very distant point beyond the club's walls. Mick Grondahl and Michael Tighe don't move, letting the sound storm pass through. Extreme tension allows extreme freedom: twice, the improvised introductions will extend beyond several minutes. New sounds are born, flexible and sumptuous layers that make you forget all the great orchestras of the world. Scott Walker has been right to hide in his bunker for three years.
On the same peaks as Elllington
November 23, 11 am, Sunset Boulevard. Los Angeles has its place in Pigalle, less the little women. Around the Guitar Center, some more secret stalls, like Valdez's, exhibit extremely rare instruments that, taken together, could pleasantly tell the whole story of American music: Gibson's harp guitar, tenor four-string guitars or ukuleles from the 1920s, oversized super-400s, Dan Armstrong in plexiglass, Martin 00, Gretsch unknown to the battalion. Contrary to what some people think, it is not entirely indifferent that Jeff Buckley is, moreover, a singular guitarist: "For me, music is intimately linked to the guitar, it's normal that I try to explore all its possibilities. However, I have never tried to be weird. If I have always been passionate about different tunings, it is because of the frustration I felt about jazz. There is a harmonic richness in jazz that doesn't give much back on a normally tuned guitar. By changing the way we tune, we deeply modify the approach of the instrument, we can approach it like a piano or an orchestra. That's probably why I'm not interested in "orthodox" jazz guitarists, at least not as much as people like Jimmy Page or Johnny Marr. Apart from Jim Hall, I think jazz guitarists are perfectly lame. Might as well listen to the real big ones, like Duke Ellington, whom I love. I'm an incurable romantic. There is a darkness in him that comes from the same place as his joy: his music is a kind of perpetual celebration, whatever the feelings he expresses." If you look carefully, you could certainly find ten or twenty collusions between Elllington's mysterious sound paste and Buckley Junior's ferocity. These two breathe on the same peaks. Memory: in France, a long time ago, a journalist had dared to call Prince "the Duke Ellington of the 80s." We no longer hear about either one.
Fatigue accepted
2:30 pm. Sony Music headquarters, Santa Monica. What was supposed to be a simple mixing session turned into a real closed-door session that severely disrupted the sacrosanct schedule. The manager goes out from time to time, annoyed and admiring: "It must be the fifth layer of voices. It doesn't look like anything you've ever heard of, it's incredible." The firm's bunker spreads its power and glory over several thousand square meters. The atmosphere is businesslike and conflicts are carefully avoided, disappearing under this kind of unbearable relaxed politeness thanks to which we've made it clear that you are only tolerated in these places. In the very modern and very dull cafeteria, old beards of the trade meet young people who are first satisfied with their fate. Jeff Buckley agrees to leave the studio, holding his two fetishes, a hat and a strange book with blank pages blackened with a few doodles. An American photographer is elbowing his way in, upset that there may be French photographers. The session is finished in about 20 minutes. We are given the distinct honour of taking a seat in the limousine that will take the prodigal son to the concert venue. "I'm trying to fight to save myself some time. Everything that I write in these difficult conditions is more spontaneous. Musicians are very involved in the development of the songs. Maintaining a friendly relationship with the people accompanying me is essential. I don't see myself playing with session musicians. I have too big a mouth for for that. It's going to play tricks on me one of these days." Fatigue is visible but accepted. "Pressure is mainly about preparation. As soon as things happen, when the music starts, everything else is swept away, the whole mess no longer exists. The obligations, all these intermediaries, there's only one way to deal with them: be very polite, but at the same time assert yourself in your refusal, show your rebellion. I'm not afraid of losing control, because I'm not trying to control everything. The only thing that bothers me is that I no longer have time to solve the simplest problems." He shows his pants, badly torn and patched by a row of safety pins. "Look at these pants, what can I do, change it? Impossible, I'm too superstitious with clothes." The voice is low, the eyes are tired and lost in the traffic of Santa Monica. "I have never had a so-called normal life. It's not for me. If I pulled over, I'd loose everything."
5 pm, Melrose. Los Angeles has its Halls, minus the Sebasto. A trendy shop displays its piercing accessories. A slogan: "You've experienced everything. Try genital mutilation." Five meters further, a large window illuminated like daytime. Inside, a bric-a-brac of disparate furniture, sofas with faded colours, a TV on in a corner. It looks like a deposit-sale. Old people in dressing gowns are sitting in the armchairs, under the neon lights in the window, offered to passers-by. This is not a deposit-sale. It's a retirement home.
Last frontier
9 pm at Roxy, Sunset Boulevard. The debonair audience, come there to have a drink listening to good music, can't believe their ears. On stage, the white energy is palpable. Jeff Buckley and his men are crossing another border. Once again, songs are invented in the moment, long melodies unwound ad libitum before the sound, all massive and airy, devastates the audience.Between the songs, Jeff Buckley defuses the emotional tension by imitating an average slob: "Hey, little slut, bitch, you suck?" A disarming smile. Some girls are a little overwhelmed. Then it's Kangaroo and its noisy radicality. Then Hallelujah, hanging by a thread, the voice on the verge of silence, flirting with the stratosphere of the high-pitched. A few hours before, he said again, "There's no danger, no injury in the music. You can never be too intense. Everything else is a physical problem. There is a scene in Janacek's opera Jenufa that is really dangerous for the voice, and all singers fear it. There are also people like Robert Plant who have lost their voice for pulling too much. In my case, I don't sing beyond my limits and I would say that you can sing anything natural in the spoken voice without any problem, there are not as many differences as we would like to believe. I can easily imagine one day reaching a turning point in my life, because some things will have been completed, but I believe that nothing will stop me, that there will always be new paths. I will reconstitute myself, I will continue." Fear is absent from that life.
November 24th. 5 pm, La Cienega. "of all that is very good, but always in quality. Of all that is very good, there are always very few; what there is a lot of is underestimated; and, among the very people, giants usually pass through it as real dwarves. Some estimate books by size, as if they were made to load the arms, rather that to exercise the minds. Extension alone has never been able to cross the line of mediocrity and it is the misfortune of the universal people to excel in nothing, for wanting to excel in everything. Intention gives a prominent place, and makes a hero if the material is sublime."- Baltasar Gracian, The Court Man
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