February 28, 1995 by Damien Love
Published in Uncut, September, 2004
Submitted by Niella
Buckley: First time I came to Glasgow it was snowing. Flakes this big. I totally bombed at the Glasgow School of Art, January 1994. University of Couldn't Be Bothered.
Looking forward to your six-week break?
Yesss. Thank you for mentioning it. The pleasure is spreading around my body like junk. I'm so happy.
Although born in California, you had a nomadic childhood. Do you think it was the lack of attachment or steady relationships that lead to you adopting music as almost a companion?
Yes. Exactly. Because it was the only constant-like constant down to the very first molecule. Anything from, like, Aerosmith to the soundtrack to Close Encounters. Anything I liked was mine, and I could appreciate the world through it. Music taught me a lot about every other art form...not as a surrogate, but just as a pathway.
I suppose the irony is you got into music because of that unsettled childhood, but now music is forcing you to continue a wandering existence.
Yes. Except I've got my roots down in New York now. I know I'll have to lead this life probably until I drop, but when I'm home, I've got more of a concentrated effort to have a home, a certain place, a certain time with certain people, a certain neighborhood-which is something I've never really had before for more than maybe two or three years at a time. I will grow old and die there. If I grow old at all.
How long have you felt settled in New York now?
This happened maybe four years ago. I'd never been there before. But when you're a kid in America, New York sort of permeates every bit of the media...everybody seems to have made it in either Paris, England or New York, you know? Or Tangiers. And, y'know, Bugs Bunny had a Brooklyn accent and everything took place in New York, so it started for me very young. Saturday Night Live, The Steve Allen Show...I just, for some reason, had a full-blown, romantic/anti-romantic vision of what New York was, and I decided to sell everything I had and move.
Was the city everything you'd hoped for?
It is everything I expected. Because I expected Bugs Bunny's New York, and I expected Jack Kerouac's New York, and I expected William Burroughs' New York and Martin Scorsese's and Gene Kelly's. And it's all there. Boom, Unfortunately. It's a majestic cesspool. I mean, I really love that place. I've never loved a city as much. Ever. But through that city, I'm able to love other cities. My advice to anyone is stay lower and stay east. Stay in my neighborhood.
I should ask you about music. In terms of your influences, you seem attracted to almost elemental types, people like Dylan, Patti Smith, Van Morrison, who can seem dramattic, almost magical, and yet can still feel real, rooted in the street.
Yeah, the river beneath the river. Because that's my sense of the world. It's just the way I see the world, I mean, you've got it. It's sort of self-evident. I dunno how to describe it. Even with all the banal stuff that I write, the dumb little rhymes, I see that as true.
Was Patti Smith a crucial influence?
I remember seeing her on TV, on the Mike Douglas Show. It was when Horses was released. I think she she did "Gloria". And she had these skinny feet, no shoes, and on the Mike Douglas Show that was was like being on...I dunno, pick any wafily talk show host on daytime. She was insane. Fucking insane. This, like, royal guttersnipe, siren girl-woman, and she rocked. She freaked Mike Douglas out. He was like this really horrible Andy Williams/Perry Como type that got his own his own show competing with Dinah Shore. And Patti's like, I dunno, either drunk or totally junked out-it seemed like the latter-and she was just, like, curling up next to him and cackling "HA-HA-HA", and he's like, "Uh-we'll-be-right-back-after-this." I was like: there's one kind of of life on the one side and then there's...her. I want that. That's what I want. I was maybe eight or nine.
Is there a lack of that kind of wildness now?
Well, not a lack in the world, because it's always there. There's places I could show you, actually, there's tons of people like that, tons of 'em-but not really going into music. And if they are, well y'know, they don't really do music well. The thing about Patti was that she had a real universe of what beauty was to her. She's a great fucking writer, an amazing gatherer of nectar. You know what I'm saying: some people write from their experiences and it's like The Cult, just the worst, hackneyed rock rhymes. But other people go through the same things: sex-living-death-loss-travel-glamour-junk-dirt-stink, and it's like some horrible rhapsody we can't turn away from, like seeing someone's arm get ripped off. Like that, that truthful and amazing. She's really a great writer. There's both things going on, a great mind at work. Just like Iggy.
Yeah, I think Iggy's writing is really underrated. Just as prose or whatever.
Y'know who he reminds me of? James Brown, because the thing about James Brown is that your basic literary types would not look at all well on James Brown. But the thing is that what he said was so elemental, he's like the sloganeer of soul, y'know, things that are repeated over and over and over again. Iggy Pop is a lot like that. All that stuff, "Dum Dum Boys," "Shake Appeal", "Death Trip"-really simple, which is a lot of the problem about writing, because people have very big thoughts. Pop music's either totally simplistic or, on the other side, very heavy and you can just catch the rhythm sometimes, but the words don't quite fit the rhythm so it hangs over like toes on an open-toed high-heeled shoe, or it just doesn't work at all. And the other thing with these people is they're very much into melody, and that's another thing that's very difficult if you're not serious. I find it's very hard to think of melody to fit the lyric. But these people are artists.
I wanted to ask you about your version of "Hallelujah". I guess its based more on John Cale's version than Leonard Cohen's original?
Yeah. But I heard the one on (Cohen's album) Various Positions first. Then I was stuck in a room with that I'm Your Fan CD (a Cohen tribute album) and I listened to (Cale's version) and it was, again, very simple. Then I heard that version one time again in Tower Records, and I was just struck. There and then, I thought, "This is wonderful ."
But am I right in thinking you don't really rate your version, compared with Cale's?
Well, he's a man. Mine's too fast. I know the difference between myself in a totally empty situation-which is best, where anything can happen-and in a situation where something's expected. And I don't feel very good about that day, and the time I chose that song to be included on the record, it was between that version and another version that I really despised. All in all, there must 22 versions floating out there. It's just never the right time. It seems that the only right time is when I'm telling it to people. And I guarantee, I have mashed that version into the ground nightly on tour, just creamed it. And there's also a version on the master reel for "So Real" that, because I was so wiped out and exhausted after that day-we'd recorded "So Real" and I recorded one last "Hallelujah", and that was my best one-I just forgot about that "So Real", I was so tired. So it's just hanging around out there. C'est la vie. Part of making records is letting stuff go.
When did you develop the confidence you have in your own voice as an instrument-I mean, as opposed to attempting to imitate your idols. Or have you always had that?
Well, I've always had my own mark, but there was a period of time when I consciously took on my idolsnas teachers. One, to get inside the skin of the songs that they did that I loved, and also just to learn more about what they did. Not only to make it my own, but to have it call up something from me. Just like any learning at all. It was only after that that I felt the most comfortable with me, and that was maybe, as a final stage, about four years ago.
Were you always aware of your range?
Oh yeah, from just playing around in the shower, imitating ambulances going by. Its the language in which I speak-that's anyone's power, not their range. I've heard plenty of people with amazing amazing ranges that just say nothing...it depends on your life, on how much it changes you to die every day. Your prowess doesnt mean shit. Its only through attention to your love of life that gives honor to your prowess. If I had seven octaves and nothing to say, it wouldn't be worth anything.
Do you resent trying to explain what it is you do?
No, I just see it as futile...besides experiencing it for yourself and deciding, consciously or unconsciously, what it is you think music is and what it gives to you. Other than that, we have language, which is static and full of little meaning, innuendo, puns and stuff. But in a large way, that's what I work with, and being a poet or writer is like being an being an alchemist, you take things like a cup and a sandwich and and you make...a carrot out of them. Or make a war out of them. But sometimes, it's like talking about some voodoo, something that shouldn't be given to the tourists.
Published in Uncut, September, 2004
Submitted by Niella
Buckley: First time I came to Glasgow it was snowing. Flakes this big. I totally bombed at the Glasgow School of Art, January 1994. University of Couldn't Be Bothered.
Looking forward to your six-week break?
Yesss. Thank you for mentioning it. The pleasure is spreading around my body like junk. I'm so happy.
Although born in California, you had a nomadic childhood. Do you think it was the lack of attachment or steady relationships that lead to you adopting music as almost a companion?
Yes. Exactly. Because it was the only constant-like constant down to the very first molecule. Anything from, like, Aerosmith to the soundtrack to Close Encounters. Anything I liked was mine, and I could appreciate the world through it. Music taught me a lot about every other art form...not as a surrogate, but just as a pathway.
I suppose the irony is you got into music because of that unsettled childhood, but now music is forcing you to continue a wandering existence.
Yes. Except I've got my roots down in New York now. I know I'll have to lead this life probably until I drop, but when I'm home, I've got more of a concentrated effort to have a home, a certain place, a certain time with certain people, a certain neighborhood-which is something I've never really had before for more than maybe two or three years at a time. I will grow old and die there. If I grow old at all.
How long have you felt settled in New York now?
This happened maybe four years ago. I'd never been there before. But when you're a kid in America, New York sort of permeates every bit of the media...everybody seems to have made it in either Paris, England or New York, you know? Or Tangiers. And, y'know, Bugs Bunny had a Brooklyn accent and everything took place in New York, so it started for me very young. Saturday Night Live, The Steve Allen Show...I just, for some reason, had a full-blown, romantic/anti-romantic vision of what New York was, and I decided to sell everything I had and move.
Was the city everything you'd hoped for?
It is everything I expected. Because I expected Bugs Bunny's New York, and I expected Jack Kerouac's New York, and I expected William Burroughs' New York and Martin Scorsese's and Gene Kelly's. And it's all there. Boom, Unfortunately. It's a majestic cesspool. I mean, I really love that place. I've never loved a city as much. Ever. But through that city, I'm able to love other cities. My advice to anyone is stay lower and stay east. Stay in my neighborhood.
I should ask you about music. In terms of your influences, you seem attracted to almost elemental types, people like Dylan, Patti Smith, Van Morrison, who can seem dramattic, almost magical, and yet can still feel real, rooted in the street.
Yeah, the river beneath the river. Because that's my sense of the world. It's just the way I see the world, I mean, you've got it. It's sort of self-evident. I dunno how to describe it. Even with all the banal stuff that I write, the dumb little rhymes, I see that as true.
Was Patti Smith a crucial influence?
I remember seeing her on TV, on the Mike Douglas Show. It was when Horses was released. I think she she did "Gloria". And she had these skinny feet, no shoes, and on the Mike Douglas Show that was was like being on...I dunno, pick any wafily talk show host on daytime. She was insane. Fucking insane. This, like, royal guttersnipe, siren girl-woman, and she rocked. She freaked Mike Douglas out. He was like this really horrible Andy Williams/Perry Como type that got his own his own show competing with Dinah Shore. And Patti's like, I dunno, either drunk or totally junked out-it seemed like the latter-and she was just, like, curling up next to him and cackling "HA-HA-HA", and he's like, "Uh-we'll-be-right-back-after-this." I was like: there's one kind of of life on the one side and then there's...her. I want that. That's what I want. I was maybe eight or nine.
Is there a lack of that kind of wildness now?
Well, not a lack in the world, because it's always there. There's places I could show you, actually, there's tons of people like that, tons of 'em-but not really going into music. And if they are, well y'know, they don't really do music well. The thing about Patti was that she had a real universe of what beauty was to her. She's a great fucking writer, an amazing gatherer of nectar. You know what I'm saying: some people write from their experiences and it's like The Cult, just the worst, hackneyed rock rhymes. But other people go through the same things: sex-living-death-loss-travel-glamour-junk-dirt-stink, and it's like some horrible rhapsody we can't turn away from, like seeing someone's arm get ripped off. Like that, that truthful and amazing. She's really a great writer. There's both things going on, a great mind at work. Just like Iggy.
Yeah, I think Iggy's writing is really underrated. Just as prose or whatever.
Y'know who he reminds me of? James Brown, because the thing about James Brown is that your basic literary types would not look at all well on James Brown. But the thing is that what he said was so elemental, he's like the sloganeer of soul, y'know, things that are repeated over and over and over again. Iggy Pop is a lot like that. All that stuff, "Dum Dum Boys," "Shake Appeal", "Death Trip"-really simple, which is a lot of the problem about writing, because people have very big thoughts. Pop music's either totally simplistic or, on the other side, very heavy and you can just catch the rhythm sometimes, but the words don't quite fit the rhythm so it hangs over like toes on an open-toed high-heeled shoe, or it just doesn't work at all. And the other thing with these people is they're very much into melody, and that's another thing that's very difficult if you're not serious. I find it's very hard to think of melody to fit the lyric. But these people are artists.
I wanted to ask you about your version of "Hallelujah". I guess its based more on John Cale's version than Leonard Cohen's original?
Yeah. But I heard the one on (Cohen's album) Various Positions first. Then I was stuck in a room with that I'm Your Fan CD (a Cohen tribute album) and I listened to (Cale's version) and it was, again, very simple. Then I heard that version one time again in Tower Records, and I was just struck. There and then, I thought, "This is wonderful ."
But am I right in thinking you don't really rate your version, compared with Cale's?
Well, he's a man. Mine's too fast. I know the difference between myself in a totally empty situation-which is best, where anything can happen-and in a situation where something's expected. And I don't feel very good about that day, and the time I chose that song to be included on the record, it was between that version and another version that I really despised. All in all, there must 22 versions floating out there. It's just never the right time. It seems that the only right time is when I'm telling it to people. And I guarantee, I have mashed that version into the ground nightly on tour, just creamed it. And there's also a version on the master reel for "So Real" that, because I was so wiped out and exhausted after that day-we'd recorded "So Real" and I recorded one last "Hallelujah", and that was my best one-I just forgot about that "So Real", I was so tired. So it's just hanging around out there. C'est la vie. Part of making records is letting stuff go.
When did you develop the confidence you have in your own voice as an instrument-I mean, as opposed to attempting to imitate your idols. Or have you always had that?
Well, I've always had my own mark, but there was a period of time when I consciously took on my idolsnas teachers. One, to get inside the skin of the songs that they did that I loved, and also just to learn more about what they did. Not only to make it my own, but to have it call up something from me. Just like any learning at all. It was only after that that I felt the most comfortable with me, and that was maybe, as a final stage, about four years ago.
Were you always aware of your range?
Oh yeah, from just playing around in the shower, imitating ambulances going by. Its the language in which I speak-that's anyone's power, not their range. I've heard plenty of people with amazing amazing ranges that just say nothing...it depends on your life, on how much it changes you to die every day. Your prowess doesnt mean shit. Its only through attention to your love of life that gives honor to your prowess. If I had seven octaves and nothing to say, it wouldn't be worth anything.
Do you resent trying to explain what it is you do?
No, I just see it as futile...besides experiencing it for yourself and deciding, consciously or unconsciously, what it is you think music is and what it gives to you. Other than that, we have language, which is static and full of little meaning, innuendo, puns and stuff. But in a large way, that's what I work with, and being a poet or writer is like being an being an alchemist, you take things like a cup and a sandwich and and you make...a carrot out of them. Or make a war out of them. But sometimes, it's like talking about some voodoo, something that shouldn't be given to the tourists.
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