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."
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."
