Buscadero, November, 1994
By David Sapienza
Submitted by Sai
Translated by me
In the spring there was a small live CD by Jeff Buckley. It was Live at Sin-e, recorded at the small bar in the Lower East Side of New York where the boy had refined a style and a voice soon destined to become unmistakable. My amazement was not really due to the interpretative maturity ("The Way Young Lovers Do" by Van Morrison could eat No Prima Donna (Van Morrison's tribute album) in just one bite), but to the compositive one. ("Mojo Pin" is one of the most beautiful songs of this 'year). Great was the surprise when Musician, prestigious American magazine, by the hand of Bill Flanagan took four pages to tell the story of this young man. His reaction was and still is peculiar: "Bill loves me, he's like that," Buckley apologizes. We are together in a squalid cafe in Milan. The radio is in full blast and obscures the boy's voice. We ask the manager to lower, but pretends not to understand. Once the barista's bad manners has been verified, Jeff turns and continues: "You know how it is, when people older than you love you, they never stop praising you. It was too positive an article towards me and therefore not accurate on the emotional point of view." Throughout the meeting Jeff will continue to change his Rickenbacker's strings. We are close to the Rock Planet in Milan. It is an unsuitable place for a concert so intimate, busy as it is not to suffocate. But despite the lost voice in mixing a wrong locale for this kind of music, the message is that Jeff Buckley is a reality to deal with if you want to speak from now on of the American song that goes around 2000.
UB: The choices that you demonstrate to make seem oriented to sad and melancholy tones, such as "Hallelujah" by Cohen or the theme of love gutted elsewhere in the songs you write.
JB: "Hallelujah" I did not do it because it's Leonard Cohen, but because I like the song. Based on this we proceeded for all the songs, even mine. The version that inspired me is a version of John Cale with all ten verses, unlike what appears in Various Positions. The evening I first proposed it to Sin-è was a special evening, I even acted like a fool. See, the word Alleluia has its own precise sign, it is connected to the church. Instead for me it is a word that celebrates something very human, it speaks of a deep link between pain and the human condition. That word has nothing to do with being nailed to a cross: it's when you're sick, but there's also when you make love, when you lose it...
UB: In your songs there is the presence of this figure, the clash of two great inner positions. How do you see yourself in this dilemma?
JB: I wanted to start this record in the dark, get it to light in the middle, with "Lilac Wine" and "Hallelujah", then come back in the dark. I did it because there will be other works and so the next album could be a continuation, so it starts with "Mojo Pin" and ends with "Dream Brother".
UB: How did you get to Colombia since this is not the music that is trendy at the moment?
JB: It's not like you can believe: I played around the various cafes and I was in a chrysalis, something that I still see of myself. I feel incomplete, I'm incomplete. New York is important to me, it's important in the world. People think we're rough in New York, but it's not like that: the truth is that there's no time for things that do not matter because there are so many things to see and do. People are ruder in Hamburg, for example. There is openness and even if you get rid of the ideas, people actually live in their vision at least in the Lower East Village: they do it because it is necessary and I was doing exactly that, I was living in my vision when I was noticed. I continue to do what I have always done, what has changed is the perception of me, a big change. We do not have a formula, we sail.
UB: This album has brought together fringes of critics generally very distant. Plus, it does not sound like a first album, but something more mature. It will also be the production: who chose Andy Wallace?
JB: Andy is 46 and therefore has a lot of experience. You could not immediately connect his name to Nirvana (he mixed Nevermind) or White Zombie, which were created by him. Andy knows how to focus things and has the energy to keep them framed. He has total mastery of technology, a wealth of ideas, he was a barometer for everything that happened: for example he made me shorten "Lover, You Should Have Come Over". It was like taking a bitter medicine that at first makes you feel like shit then you understand its positive effect. You need to learn certain things. Andy is the person who made Grace happen.
UB: Will you work with him again? Have you thought of a producer like Daniel Lanois, for example?
JB: Wallace costs a lot...Lanois is good, but if I worked with him at his studio I would end up playing like For the Beauty of Wynona, and I do not want this to happen. Surely I would love to work in his studio if he would leave me alone for some time. I would like to work with Hal Willner, or rather I will work on it. He is able to gather the right people in a studio: he's also a strange guy and that's what I need.
UB: What is music for you?
JB: It's like the blood in the veins, it's that kind of vehicle, a channel for ultimate expression. I started writing songs that were horrible at age 13. "Mojo Pin" I wrote it with Gary Lucas a couple of years ago. I carry Gary in my hands wherever I go (feel the last, beautiful Bad boys of the arctic, nda). Music can give you an orgasm, this is its greatness, it's a very physical thing and you're in the middle of it. Music exists only in the present, like every creation. Painters have a trance when they draw, but you can not experience it from the outside. With music you can participate in this continuous creation, which is repeated in the present time. My album is more like a painting, because there was a lot of work, except in "So Real" that was recorded at the first performance, at three in the morning when I got to the studio with that poem.
UB: This is your first European tour; do you believe that the future can reserve you unpleasant surprises, like the routine boredom that many artists see on long journeys?
JB: No, it's bullshit. Playing is magic and even if sometimes it can be a bit 'tired magic, it still remains magic, you can never know what will happen a certain evening, you can not predict what audience you will have in front of you. We never go on stage with a precise lineup, the only guide we have is trusting ourselves and the things that can come from four musicians who want to say something. You see, my songs are born in my dreams with my imagination and my imagination feeds on my life. Boredom can not exist in all this.
By David Sapienza
Submitted by Sai
Translated by me
In the spring there was a small live CD by Jeff Buckley. It was Live at Sin-e, recorded at the small bar in the Lower East Side of New York where the boy had refined a style and a voice soon destined to become unmistakable. My amazement was not really due to the interpretative maturity ("The Way Young Lovers Do" by Van Morrison could eat No Prima Donna (Van Morrison's tribute album) in just one bite), but to the compositive one. ("Mojo Pin" is one of the most beautiful songs of this 'year). Great was the surprise when Musician, prestigious American magazine, by the hand of Bill Flanagan took four pages to tell the story of this young man. His reaction was and still is peculiar: "Bill loves me, he's like that," Buckley apologizes. We are together in a squalid cafe in Milan. The radio is in full blast and obscures the boy's voice. We ask the manager to lower, but pretends not to understand. Once the barista's bad manners has been verified, Jeff turns and continues: "You know how it is, when people older than you love you, they never stop praising you. It was too positive an article towards me and therefore not accurate on the emotional point of view." Throughout the meeting Jeff will continue to change his Rickenbacker's strings. We are close to the Rock Planet in Milan. It is an unsuitable place for a concert so intimate, busy as it is not to suffocate. But despite the lost voice in mixing a wrong locale for this kind of music, the message is that Jeff Buckley is a reality to deal with if you want to speak from now on of the American song that goes around 2000.
UB: The choices that you demonstrate to make seem oriented to sad and melancholy tones, such as "Hallelujah" by Cohen or the theme of love gutted elsewhere in the songs you write.
JB: "Hallelujah" I did not do it because it's Leonard Cohen, but because I like the song. Based on this we proceeded for all the songs, even mine. The version that inspired me is a version of John Cale with all ten verses, unlike what appears in Various Positions. The evening I first proposed it to Sin-è was a special evening, I even acted like a fool. See, the word Alleluia has its own precise sign, it is connected to the church. Instead for me it is a word that celebrates something very human, it speaks of a deep link between pain and the human condition. That word has nothing to do with being nailed to a cross: it's when you're sick, but there's also when you make love, when you lose it...
UB: In your songs there is the presence of this figure, the clash of two great inner positions. How do you see yourself in this dilemma?
JB: I wanted to start this record in the dark, get it to light in the middle, with "Lilac Wine" and "Hallelujah", then come back in the dark. I did it because there will be other works and so the next album could be a continuation, so it starts with "Mojo Pin" and ends with "Dream Brother".
UB: How did you get to Colombia since this is not the music that is trendy at the moment?
JB: It's not like you can believe: I played around the various cafes and I was in a chrysalis, something that I still see of myself. I feel incomplete, I'm incomplete. New York is important to me, it's important in the world. People think we're rough in New York, but it's not like that: the truth is that there's no time for things that do not matter because there are so many things to see and do. People are ruder in Hamburg, for example. There is openness and even if you get rid of the ideas, people actually live in their vision at least in the Lower East Village: they do it because it is necessary and I was doing exactly that, I was living in my vision when I was noticed. I continue to do what I have always done, what has changed is the perception of me, a big change. We do not have a formula, we sail.
UB: This album has brought together fringes of critics generally very distant. Plus, it does not sound like a first album, but something more mature. It will also be the production: who chose Andy Wallace?
JB: Andy is 46 and therefore has a lot of experience. You could not immediately connect his name to Nirvana (he mixed Nevermind) or White Zombie, which were created by him. Andy knows how to focus things and has the energy to keep them framed. He has total mastery of technology, a wealth of ideas, he was a barometer for everything that happened: for example he made me shorten "Lover, You Should Have Come Over". It was like taking a bitter medicine that at first makes you feel like shit then you understand its positive effect. You need to learn certain things. Andy is the person who made Grace happen.
UB: Will you work with him again? Have you thought of a producer like Daniel Lanois, for example?
JB: Wallace costs a lot...Lanois is good, but if I worked with him at his studio I would end up playing like For the Beauty of Wynona, and I do not want this to happen. Surely I would love to work in his studio if he would leave me alone for some time. I would like to work with Hal Willner, or rather I will work on it. He is able to gather the right people in a studio: he's also a strange guy and that's what I need.
UB: What is music for you?
JB: It's like the blood in the veins, it's that kind of vehicle, a channel for ultimate expression. I started writing songs that were horrible at age 13. "Mojo Pin" I wrote it with Gary Lucas a couple of years ago. I carry Gary in my hands wherever I go (feel the last, beautiful Bad boys of the arctic, nda). Music can give you an orgasm, this is its greatness, it's a very physical thing and you're in the middle of it. Music exists only in the present, like every creation. Painters have a trance when they draw, but you can not experience it from the outside. With music you can participate in this continuous creation, which is repeated in the present time. My album is more like a painting, because there was a lot of work, except in "So Real" that was recorded at the first performance, at three in the morning when I got to the studio with that poem.
UB: This is your first European tour; do you believe that the future can reserve you unpleasant surprises, like the routine boredom that many artists see on long journeys?
JB: No, it's bullshit. Playing is magic and even if sometimes it can be a bit 'tired magic, it still remains magic, you can never know what will happen a certain evening, you can not predict what audience you will have in front of you. We never go on stage with a precise lineup, the only guide we have is trusting ourselves and the things that can come from four musicians who want to say something. You see, my songs are born in my dreams with my imagination and my imagination feeds on my life. Boredom can not exist in all this.
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