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Wednesday, April 18, 2018

Def Jeff

Melody Maker: April 9, 1994
Submitted by Ana

JEFF BUCKLEY's unfettered emotional outpouring have dazzled a multitude of Makerites, DAVE SIMPSON included.

  DESPITE what we read in the live pages, many gigs are sterile, perfunctory affairs. Bands arrive, playing the roles they're comfortable with and the music that suits a career and we applaud wildly out of numb obligation-maybe because we've forgotten what it feels to be astonished. Go see Jeff Buckley, however, and the chances are you'll be left staggered, awestruck and drained by electrifying flashes of guitar virtuosity and his amazing, heart-wrenching Voice.
  You won't have felt so purified in years.
  "I feel it and I wanna go there," says Buckley of his refreshingly intuitive, spontaneous vocal style.
  "Every feeling has an articulation. You know when you get drunk or you try Ecstasy for the first time, and all your secrets come tumbling out? That's what it's like every night.
  "Sometimes people will f***ing hate it and walk out but I still feel...connected. I just sing what I feel. Emotions are very hard for people to handle. The Greeks made up Gods and goddesses around their emotions, and gave their names and faces and had relationships with them. We don't have that, we have therapy. Which ain't bad. I love therapy. But generally people think they're just meat and that emotions visit on them like in-laws. I've never felt like that."
  Jeff is the son of Tim Buckley, who confronted audiences with a similar spiritual barrage in the Sixties/early Seventies and died in 1975. Jeff met him only once, and hasn't come to terms with the rejection. Ask him about his dad and the best you'll get is an ambivalent shrug, and the insistence that his childhood with his musical mother and mechanic stepfather is much more important. Ask him about politics, poverty, Dylan or Duke Ellington and he'll talk you into the floor. Somehow, conversation always comes back to music.
  "I write mostly personal poetry," he urges. "From dreams, or sometimes I'll wake up in love."
  Does Jeff Buckley ever feel that some weird trick of destiny or genetics has cast him in a similar role to that of his father, some 25 years before?
  "No," he spits instantly. "I get it from my mother."

An EP, "Live At Sin-e", is released this week on Big Cat

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