A wooden table. Sandalwood incense sticks in front of him on the table spread a pleasant scent. We order red wine, Marlboros are on the table. I introduce myself with a simple "hi." He smiles at me, and starts talking as soon as I say the word Clinton. "There's something about Clinton that I think is great: first of all, he's the first president I've ever chosen. He invented himself, and he has his wife. I have the feeling, I can almost see it, because I was raised by women, because he was also raised by his mother. I guess his father wasn't there, I don't know. For some blessed reason, he listens to what his wife says. Without his wife, he'd be some kind of political 'good guy', fucking around in the area. It would've been like that. He may be self-sufficient, but he listens to his wife. You can tell by his language."
What a questionable role for a woman.
Oh, no. It's the best one ever played. But the role of a woman must be strange, because the world is strange. Until the revolution comes, the role of a woman is like this. But it changes. If a woman can become Prime Minister of Pakistan, that is mercurial, but she is there, a beautiful woman.
So you'd say a man is nothing without a strong woman.
No, nothing. A man can not be a real man without a woman. To be a real man, you must have a wife (lowers his voice). Without it, you're nothing.
And us women? What are we without men?
Hmm, without a man? Well, then no women would be born. But I'm not talking about a cool macho right now. He can hold his hand over a flame, but he can't raise a child. Just because he burns his ass off and says, 'hey, look at me, I'm a strong guy,' that doesn't mean that he can raise a child, protect it, ask questions and know how to make mistakes. Men are always taught to keep themselves under control. Beautiful little boys are like that. It begins at school. Take a girl who made a mistake. She says, 'okay, I made a mistake and I admit it.' Say the same thing to a boy who denies it or tries to get out of it. I love this. There's such a clear cut, such a separation.
I see that, too, but I'm raising a son alone and I'm afraid of making mistakes.
Oh, like my ma. It is, but not about the men and the women. It's about male energy, something you carry inside you, what you have.
What do you think about your female energy?
Without it I'm nothing, without it I'm shit...
But you have it in you.
Yeah, but it's not mine. It flies around. And without my male energy...Look, sometimes I feel that there is a woman inside me who gets angry when there is no strong man. Like when you're in love and the guy is for some reason formless, unstable, sitting around idly all the time. You love him, but you get all mad at him. And that's how I feel sometimes. I once had this dream of a wonderful woman. She was like a gazelle. She was a girl. With big red hair, naked. She laughed at me from the top of a tree. I was in the woods, and she ran ahead of me, was much more powerful than me, and I became jealous. I realized she was running to my cabin where I lived alone, and while she was jumping in front of me like a gazelle with this amazingly white skin, I ran to my house in a flash and wanted to lock it up so as not to let her in. 'No, you can't come in here,' I screamed. Then she went crazy and trashed it all up. Finally she was lying next to me in bed and we slept through exhaustion. We didn't even have sex. When I'm split, I feel that way, the fight between man and woman. Without each other, they're just junk.
When did you have the last dream you can remember?
Oh, it was a profane dream: I put something in the mail that didn't arrive. The real last dream? Mmm, I saw something so cruel, demonic, infernal I can't tell you. I saw the dark side of my existence.
How did you deal with it?
It was on TV. I was sitting there in my dream watching TV, how do I deal with it (shrugs)?
Do such dreams have anything to do with your songs?
They have everything to do with my life!
Are your songs your life?
Songs reflect my life. My life is my life. Songs are like children who accompany me. Not even that. More like a hall of mirrors. What's a song? That's what the whole music business has been trying to figure out for ages, what the fuck is a song? I don't even know what I'm doing. It's weird and funny, but the music business is the weirdest of all, the strangest. Still far below the carnival business.
How about you? Did you feel an inner compulsion to be a part of the business? Did you become a musician with a vocation? Did you go through some kind of initiation?
No. But initiation? I guess I had a lot, but not so obvious. I experienced many things with my mother when I was a child. I experienced it with myself, actually. Have I lived through an initiation to the music business, to life? Hm...It feels like I'm initiated to life on Earth. But everything always changes. When I soon turn 30, I will have a thirty year initiation to life on this earth.
I had a feeling you might have had some kind of spiritual experience, a first important one that initiated your work.
No, there's just something happening inside you and you have to do something about it, release it. But there came a point where I saw the music is a part of me. The feeling that everyone has when they're artists. I know many young people who make art and are afraid that everything they have achieved can be taken away from them.
And didn't you ever feel particularly gifted?
Oh, no (laughs). In California's school system, you're tricked in from morning till night because you're not gifted at all. No, not at all. There's nothing special about doing a song.
Then why are you so special?
Thanks, that's your opinion. My songs are always born and have to live, so here I am. I'm their ship, I'm their space.
They like to live in my house.
Yes, but sometimes they go away and never come back. Sometimes they turn out to be bombs (giggles). There's nothing you can do. I don't know. There is so much in a man that tells him that he is connected to the world. Sometimes you are already infected by speaking a new language that you have just discovered. You make so many discoveries. For example, if you discover some kind of eccentricity in yourself that makes you cheer. Or you make discoveries about other people you love. Or admired. You learn from them. Or when you have sex. Or if you have déjà vues, realize that you are connected to your dreams. Or flowers. I love flowers. It's an impressive plant, it serves no purpose except to be beautiful.
Which ones do you love?
The strong ones, the ones that give off a scent, like roses.
You also exude a scent in front of your seat.
Yeah, it's sandalwood. It reminds me of my home. I always buy it on St. Mark's Place. It's five dollars.
How do you feel on stage? Do you separate yourself mentally from the audience to express yourself?
No, no. What do you do when you communicate with people? A part is detached from them, a part is with them. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to talk to them. I never forget there are people standing in front of me, I just accept it and drop myself. Tonight, I'm going to perform like this, in this old shirt and jeans. Sometimes I dress up, though.
Why did you dye your hair black?
The old hair color made me sick, I wanted black hair with red in the roots. I used to have brown hair. You know, my hair is always an issue. My record label has my hair, but maybe I can get a handle on this and ask a woman for advice. Women are good for that, men aren't.
Do you think beauty and pain go together?
No, but sometimes pain is beautiful.
Many of your songs have both. I don't know what fascinates me more, the pain or the beauty.
(Long pause) Well, sometimes things come out of ecstatic joy. And the times when I feel joy-and that may be due to my chemistry-so even when I'm full of joy, there's always a voice in me that wants to say thank you. I am so grateful. Thank you!
Is that why the album is called Grace?
One of the reasons. No, Grace is an important quality. I wrote the song Grace when I had just found out that someone loved me, someone I wanted. Suddenly I was no longer afraid of death, of all the snares and confusion of my life. I've been very abused. By people around me. Especially in LA. I had so many spears in my heart of considerable weight that I carried around with me. And suddenly I looked down and realized that the spears were still there because I hadn't torn them out. And then I did. Nothing mattered anymore. Not the hands that had brought them there, not the heart that had accepted them. I think grace means so much. A grace, for example. 'God is good, we thank God for this food.' Blablabla. But you're also saying grace about a body or a parade. Grace means a lot in people. The ability to look ahead, to maintain warmth, to preserve the part that nourishes life. Or grace as in dancers. You need grace to dance. Besides, I love the name for a woman. Or a man. Yes, I would call my son Grace (joking). My children would love me forever. Oh, I'd like to have kids, but now the time would be too uncertain for that. Not a secure existence if you always live in hotels. By the way, we're married on the Reeperbahn. At the Hotel Monopol. Sex for sale. The same old story. It was the same everywhere I lived, everything for men and boys. It doesn't matter how ugly you are or how stupid you think you are, you don't have to talk, don't give anything of yourself, you just fuck as much as you can and don't go to hell for it. Which I'm just saying is that should you ever go to hell at all.
What love story is in the song 'Last Goodbye'?
I was 22, she was 37. No, I was 21. That just didn't go well.
I like the line 'kiss me, please kiss me' that comes so suddenly.
Yes, there are moments when you feel like a kiss is saying goodbye to you and not coming back. Love's a weird thing, like music. But love is greater than anything, because it connects two different things.
Isn't pure love passive?
No, it's very vulnerable, but not passive. It's as passive as the ocean. You can put your hand in the ocean, you can extract oil from the ocean, but the ocean will always win over you. And whoops, you're dead, but the ocean is still there. You can't destroy the ocean, it can destroy you. But love's not passive. It's permeable. Movable. You know what's so great about the ocean? It'll teach you how to take off and fly. You sit in the sea and feel the rhythm, learn about the rhythm of the waves. It'll teach you to get off the ground.
Do you dive?
No, I body-surf. Every time we're on tour somewhere where there's sea, or water, I need it. That's how I get the tension out of my shoulders and my back.
Does that make you feel free?
Yes, but you only feel free when you surrender to the ocean and its movements. But I have to tell you something about 'Last Goodbye': It says so much more about the special love story. It no longer refers to a specific person, a specific place. It comes from there, but it affects everyone who listens to the song.
I'm not so much fascinated by the words as I love the music. It's so painful and beautiful at the same time.
I see what you mean. Thanks a lot. Wonderful, if that's the way you feel.
I thought no musician could do that for me anymore. Like I've been looking forward to it all along. I thought 'what a genius this man is.'
Oh, thank you. Really, I'm not. I'm no genius. Every person has something ingenious.
How was the atmosphere during the recording of Grace?
It was like the birth of a baby coming a few inches out of your head every day, but it's in the world now. Very weird.
Are your band mates your soulmates?
They were before that, but I love them, I need them. Everything's focused on me, but it's also about them. That's why I chose themm we communicate wonderfully with each other. It's a good collaboration.
Why did you cover Corpus Christi by Britten?
A friend I love very much gave it to me, it's for him. Besides, I love the song.
Why did you cover a Leonard Cohen song?
Because I find myself in Hallelujah, not because of Cohen. (Orders another glass of red wine)
The guy (journalist Jörg Feyer), who just interviewed you, wrote today in a Hamburg newspaper that you sound like Robert Plant from a time machine...
Yeah, that's what every guy who interviewed me says. All of them. Before you, only two women interviewed me. They're studying my bio and checking everything. They don't ask anything else. One was in Amsterdam, like 39 or so, with glasses, very objective. Even during the interview she looked as if she was formulating her words in her head. And in Sweden, a girl did a radio interview with me. She asked me how I'd keep fit if I was a woman, how I'd keep myself young. Oh God, what a load of bullshit. All right, to Plant. When I was a kid, my stepfather played Led Zeppelin to me, but I'm not Robert Plant. I'm more like Nina Simone, I'm more like Judy Garland. Listen to me tonight, I'm getting more and more like Judy Garland. You know, people love conventions, they love their place by the fireplace with the same TV program, and the same woman, and the same old dog. Same old story. They may want to escape, but they just don't take responsibility for their lives. They don't want to take responsibility for their longing for freedom, they then transfer that to the artists. Such people don't think of themselves as artists and so they project their longing for it onto other people, onto us. They're putting us on a platform. But the fact for me is that two people who make love already make art. They do this thing that starts in nothingness and evolves into this beautiful dream and then ends, but they have to do it over and over again because it's always different. And that's art. I'm not Robert Plant's love child, I'm not the new Led Zeppelin. It's not me. I am me. And those interviews until you were just awful.
Do you think you have a certain purpose in life?
No, I have a task in life that is different and yet the same as that of any other person: I want to find strength and balance, anything to fathom my human existence. That's what it is.
Why did you call yourself Jeff Buckley? You could have figured out that everyone's talking to you about your father.
When I was a kid, my name was Scott Moorhead. When I was 12, I wanted to know what my real name was, so I chose Jeff. It was on my birth certificate, but my mama used to call me Scott, and my stepfather's name was Moorhead. So when I was 12, I chose my real name. I didn't know it was coming out now. My father never wrote me, never called me. I barely even knew him.
And the people who keep comparing you to him?
What people interpret is more their own projection. I've been myself for a long time. I've already won that fight. There are the others who haven't won the fight yet, if they don't stop comparing me to someone who's long dead. But I'm here. Those guys, for God's sake! They're like little boys handling music like it's baseball cards. They're like collectors, they don't make their own experiences, it's bad...Thanks for talking to me, it was very refreshing.
© Frauke Feilbach
