Crossbeat, March 1995

 By Atsushi Sasaki
Translated by Tutu Fujimoto

Jeff Buckley, who's been deified at the same time as his debut because of the stoic impression you get from his album’s cover photo or the "Miracle Voice" catchphrase issued by a record company, was a slender built, naive young man who looked younger than the actual age of 27. The way of his frank speech, sometimes child-like, is a little different from the surreal atmosphere of his singing.  The real Jeff stands slightly in a place far from the image that the world has about him...he looked that way to me.

******

I wanted to interview you after seeing the concert if possible...

Yeah, right 

First of all, could you tell me the members of the current band?

Mick Grondahl.., oh, (looking at the material on the desk) you have the list.

You mean, it's the same as the members of the album?

Yeah, the same members.  Michael Tighe and Matt Johnson. Always these members.  I don’t feel like playing with others.

A show playing with four members, right?

Yes.

I heard you don’t have set lists, is it same in Japan?

Yeah.

Is it better without set list for you?

Hmm...there’s no meaning even if I prepared it because the reactions are different by the audience. For example, you don't always feel the usual energy in your first place, you don’t know what kind of songs the audience would enjoy as well. So we play the song that appeared next in my head naturally after one song finished...like that. So, it’s like when a DJ plays their records at a party.

You mean, it depends alot on the reaction of the audience?

Right. And of course, it also depends on the energy or feelings on the band side. Anyway, it’s better to get ready for what or when we play the songs. It’s going to be better in some cases. It’s going to fall straight down sometimes. (lol) But...there's something we've got, a sort of habit, and there’re songs we want to play. So, it feels like I'm going to change it according to the time.

In other words, I think it's a close relationship with the members of the band.

Yeah, I love them. Of course. The natural chemistry of this band is sewn up very tight, we’ve all built each other up. It’s exactly what I wanted.

I think the live show is an important part of your music.

That’s right.

There are two characteristics of the situation about the live show. First of all, it's hard to redo, and the audience is right in front of you.

Yeah, it creates a unique situation that is different from recording an album or giving live shows to radio or television. The music originally comes from there, and it always goes back there. If you can't do that, you can't do anything else.

Could you tell me a little more about it?  Especially in your case, I think the recording and the live performance have completely different values.

Yeah. On the one hand, it's like drawing a picture. That's the studio matter. On the other hand, it's like tap dancing or a 100-yard race. (imitating tap dance)

How do you prepare for that tap dance?

I just have to do this. Many times, again and again. Open your mind and relax as much as possible...Even if you've got a fuzzy head by drugs or too much alcohol around, that moment would be still okay. Only that moment. It's becoming difficult to live for the moment in this world now. Everyone is thinking about the past and the future, worrying about both, and trying to do something about both, but now is the time when it's really important. What we're actually living is “now”, the moment. I guess you remember about it only when you are having sex, when you are having a fight, or when you are creating art. And if you are a woman, when you give birth to a baby. Everything hangs on the moment, no doubt about it. I think it needs those moments for human beings. I'm determined to build a better live performance and make it fruitful as one part of myself.

The recording is to freeze the moment, right?

CD? Yes. The moment is frozen and comes back to life again and again. Even John Cage said he didn't know whether it was such a great idea to record music or not. I love records. But I can agree what he said. I don’t agree with the opinion that someone shouldn't do recording. Because I love records. Magnetic tape is a canvas, and you choose your favorite paint and keep your color on it, then you mix-down and put your finished-work in a black box, your soul pops into the room...it's like that. That itself is fabulous. But recording and live shows are completely different experiences. There is no overdubbing in the live show, and the energy and sound are all only right then. It's hard to compare with anything else. And, having both the strength to perform such a tough job and play well, it’s also hard to compare. That's the point. Well, I won’t say we’re doing good all the time. (lol)

The new single also includes live takes. They're each about 15 minutes long.

Does it? “Mojo Pin” and “Wetlands”?...Oh, “Kangaroo”. That’s right.

Both of them are great performances, and I feel as if you’re committed to the flow of sound.

Thank you. It's great to hear by car. Start the engine and drive for about 15 minutes while listening to Kangaroo. Screeeeeech (sound of a brake)!!!! (lol). I'm not trying to write a song for 15 minutes however, “Mojo Pin” has an intro and then the main story, so it's actually two songs in one, “Kangaroo” has happened to come like that. That’s the second take out of three takes. That’s recorded live in a Sony studio. Well, I like to write both short and long songs. Time length doesn't matter to music, it doesn't matter where you start and where you end. I get to start anyway. It's just like I'm on the train.  Get on, and get off. You may want to ride for 3 minutes, or you may want to ride for 26 minutes. I don’t care about that. As long as there's a stream and you can feel good energy. That's all right if you don't lose the flow or the excitement.

Did you write the song that way from the beginning?

Yes. In short, I’m not a self-controlled person at all, I don’t recognize myself what I’m doing.

Why don't you make a live album with only one song from start to finish someday? It’s like one piece of music spread out variously, and the phrases of another song in and out of it.

If you're going to do that, you have to be a super genius.  At this stage, it will be impossible until around 80 years old I guess (lol). Yeah I think it could be, but it’s impossible as long as you are a genius like God. No drug will help, I guess. Because I don't want to do it like The Greatful Dead if I do, and I want to create 74 minutes of non-stop music that really attracts me and that I don't want to cut along the way.  If it isn’t like that, it’s going to be rubbish.

By the way, you seem to be close to Gary Lucas, the former Captain Beefheart Band. How did you get to know each other?

I happened to be with him at a gig in Brooklyn. I knew him and Beefheart, so I talked with him and went to his house. He said he had an idea for a song, so we put it together, then we made a project and had gigs about two times together.

You mean you were a fan of Beafheart, right?

Yeah, since my high school days. I was totally a Zappa-head. That is, until around 16 years old? I got “Bongo Fury” at that time, then got into Beafheart. Since then, I much preferred him to Zappa. I don’t mean I quit being a Zappa fan though. It’s just, “Oh man, Beefheart is fabulous“, like that. But it wasn’t so popular at all in my high school back then, everyone was into Depeche Mode or Spandau Ballet and so on. Interestingly enough, it's now turned around and those people changed their attitude as if they liked it for a long time. Stop kidding, baby. I’ve watched it. I was there the time when you called me dork. It makes me laugh. I still remember, I brought that stuff to high school and played them on the stereo...but everyone at that time gathered to A Flock Of Seagulls, Wall Of Voodoo, The Stray Cats...or "I know this music is true! (“True” by Spandau Ballet) Yeah, when I brought Zappa or Beefheart, they said to me like “that’s so lame!”. How about that now? They're all classic rocky.

In your case, how did you know the music like Beefheart?

I've been quite a bit contrary ever since. I'm a vinyl geek. I loved those that nobody had. And those albums gave me happiness that other pop records didn't have. The Smiths or Siouxsie And The Banshees were good and I still like them though. I think they’re still great and have their records...but how can I say, perhaps it’s one part of my rebellious stage and also an intuitive thing that I felt like "This guy is fabulous. The lyrics are amazing."

You seem to have been a great record buff, some people listen to everything and make their music that have everything. But in your case, you have a steadfast style.

I've learned myself the first thing from the experience of perfect hero worshipers...when you’re into with it much deeper, for example, The Birthday Party, Miles Davis, The Sex Pistols, or The Smiths, the more you’re into them, the more things that are given from them. Or The Velvet Underground is fine, anyway, it turns out there is no way to imitate someone who is not yourself. But I love them after all. So the only thing you can do is to channelize with the person you're longing for naturally by being yourself. There's a lot of self-criticism, but that's the only way. Everybody did it, Patti Smith as well. Every artist begins with imitation. Some people get out of it and others don't get out of it. Only those who can get out of it and have a completely unique eccentricity will give you a different experience. For example, Tom Waits.  He is so unique, isn’t he?  How can I say...(lol), Tom Waits is nothing but Tom Waits. That's it. To be honest with the people you love, you have to be yourself. In the future, I want to establish more of what this is about my style. By all means. I haven't gotten that far yet.

*****

I think it’s a sincere statement. In fact, there are not many artists who can survive the temptation of imitation and self-repeat. And you have to know others to establish yourself especially. Jeff seemed to be listening to so much music, they certainly become the flesh of his music, even though they are not directly reflected in his music. Even during the interview, tapes of an Egyptian singer were running. I asked him “Do you like ethnic music?”, the answer was “Garage bands are also the ethnic music of white people.”

*****

By the way, you participated in The Jazz Passengers’ album “In Love”. Do you have a close interaction with the people of Knitting Factory?

No, no. I wasn't a member of that scene. I know a few people, that’s it. I know Marc Ribot or Elliot Sharp, but not so close. Roy (Nathanson, a leader of The Jazz Passengers) is more close. But I’m not in that scene. Roy and I are going to play together on Piaf’s album by Hal Willner. That is what I’ve always wanted to do, Roy is going to be a music director. Ah yes, I had a show with The Jazz Passengers. Debbie Harry was there, John Cale also...and one more, a beautiful Puerto Rican lady (lol), and Mavis Staples sang, too. Debbie Harry sang her own song, that was fabulous! She is fantastic. She is a Diva. I was so nervous, but I was honored.

You often join the projects of other people.

Yes. They all end on a daily basis, but it's fun. There’s a lot to learn, it’s fun to write songs with friends together as well.

You do cover songs of Edith Piaf, Van Morrison, Leonard Cohen, Hank Williams so far.

Bad Brains “I Against Thy”, The Smiths “The Boy with the Thorn in His Side”, MC5 “Kick Out The Jams”, Ride “In A Different Place”... I've done a lot of other songs, but that's what I can remember now. And I did The Creatures “Killing Time”.

Is there anything common that you want to sing in those songs?

It’s all just fun to listen to. And it's a song that you can feel real soul. It's hard to explain in words the background behind doing cover songs like Leonard Cohen's music. Actually I've done only one song by Leonard Cohen. I’ve done many of Dylan’s though. A few of Piaf’s, quite a lot of Nina Simone. I’ve done Zeppelin, too. I’m not going to be Van Morrison. It's a different world from me. To tell the truth, my friend dreamed that I was singing "The Way Young Lovers Do" with him, it's all out of that without much thought. I felt that song settled for me when I played at the cafe, I'm still playing the same way I did then. I'm not the kind of artist like Morrison, however, I like the feeling when I play that song, so I'm going to wear the fur of that song to get that feeling.

Is there something different from the song you wrote yourself?

Yes. It’s a simple curiosity about what chemical reactions will take place, for example, “Sweet Thing” or “I Woke Up In A Strange Place”, “The Last Goodbye”, “Mojo Pin”. At that time, I didn't think I was going to sign a contract. I wanted to start with a band first, and then get a contract. But everything started from the other side. I can’t help it because that’s how it goes. (lol)

Are you a fan of Leonard Cohen?

Leonard is fabulous. What's great about him, he is still...still...he is still at the height of his power, even though he is old enough for when almost all the artists are exhausted and disappear or die. He’s been still sending songs that won't waste a second. That's the good point. Even Johnny Lydon can be any good now, huh? I wish he'd be like Leonard Cohen. It's wrong to think that you can rock only when you're young. Because those young people I see on TV are not attractive to me. In short, this industry discriminates too much by age. They’re much too obsessed with how old the person is. Age has nothing to do with art. Picasso also did my favorite work at the age of 60. I'm not interested in reflecting my life only up to the age of 30. I want to know what kind of shocks and nightmares and love and life and sex and drugs and dreams are given to my life. It's a destiny to die one day. It's like...we're going to be made to disappear.

Can you imagine yourself being the age of 60?

No. I can't imagine a year from now.I don't even think about it. The future is like...a white blank TV screen.

Can you rewind that TV screen back to the time you start singing?

That's when I was a kid.

I heard you've never taken formal lessons.

Yeah. I've taken it once, it’s like $60 for 30 minutes, and the teacher, they leaned over the piano and doing like “Ahhh!”. I thought I didn’t want to be like that when I saw them, then I quit. So, yes, my songs are almost instinctive. But I want to find a teacher in the future. Because it would be nice if there’s someone to tell me something I don’t know. Provided that it must be a really excellent person with whom I can feel sympathy.  

Do you currently do anything special to keep your voice by yourself?

Nah. To tell the truth, I've been doing all the bad things for my voice lately.

For example?

Well, I promised to start smoking in the New Year, but it got worse recently. In any cases, smoking cigarettes is addictive. Now I know why everybody got addicted to nicotine. I just wanted to know what smoking was like (lol). Now I’m smoking one after another.

When did you come to realize that you could sing and what was the reason?

I’m not sure if my voice is good or not. But about singing, as long as I remember, I've been singing the whole time. For example, if I sang a song listening to the radio, I was able to harmonize nicely. I’ve been aware of that since I was a little child. But I don’t know what my voice is. Give me a few more years for the answer.

Can you explain in words what “singing” means to you?

It’s a way to speak my mind, what’s more, in a room with no guards or being watched. But my room was a little guarded. Yeah, I mean it’s to speak my mind.

Your recording career has just started, but you already have a short but bright career of it.

I'm surprised myself.

What’s your next plan to brush up on your music and your career also?

Just continuing. The success of this album is certainly a wonderful thing. But it's not that big a thing. I’m not sure but is it big in Japan? Am I big!? Big as same as Elvis? (lol)

I don't think you've got any real feeling because you haven't seen the audience in Tokyo yet.

I take this success rather calmly. Real success is what you see in your work, it’s up to how wonderfully you can create your work. It doesn't matter whether it's big sales or not. Because there’re some of those people who seem to forge things around that and they always hit the big sales. I didn’t mean that I don’t care about it, but I don’t think that you love art, or you’re loved by art, just because you got the big sales.

Do you start thinking about your next album?

I’m thinking about it all the time.

Can we listen to it soon?

I want to release it as soon as possible. It’s in the process of struggling and assembling in my head so far, but the ideas come up all year round. I'm making up my mind to release it this year. That’s only my wish though (lol).

******
  I went to Jeff's live show days after the interview. The first thing that surprised me was that he was more popular like a “Singing Idol“ than I expected. Shrill voices were buzzing from all over the hall. The audience is very young. Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah from Grace was more responsive than when he sang his father's song, it shows what they want is Jeff Buckley, not Tim Buckley's son.
  As he said, his live show was as if it were a living thing, as the song went on, it steadily increased its tension and reached its peak in encore. To tell the truth, I had some points about him that underrated a little bit at first, however, I want to write down here that Jeff’s vocalization has both robustness and delicacy and was worth a “fantabulous”. His beautiful falsetto on the intro of “Mojo Pin” reflects in the air inside Shinjuku Liquid Room.

  We don't know what kind of road Jeff Buckley will be going to take. The only thing I can say is that no matter how much time goes by, he will just continue singing on...where, nobody knows...on the stage in front of the big audience, or in a small club, or on the street.

A Rare Sound

Télérama, February 8, 1995
by Stéphane Jarno
Translated by me 

After the father (Tim), the son, the announced myth of American rock. Thanks to "Grace", his latest album, and his exceptional voice.

The youthful ardour, the height of vision and especially the ability to solve inextricable problems. In a single album, Grace, 27-year-old American Jeff Buckley avoided repeating and clichés. A feat achieved in the purest forms of art, with the eternal formation, guitars, bass, drums.  The result is surprising, both neoclassical, since it assumes the musical heritage of the last three decades, and at the same time modern, because it is free from the originals. This means that Jeff Buckley's music, under familiar guise, resembles nothing known. So much so that it is attributed with disparate influences:  Led Zeppelin, Cure, T-Rex, Queen, Robert Fripp or John Cale...The more signposts there are, the more lost we get.
  As if this avalanche of putative fathers were not enough, there is also the civil status. When you are the offspring and the spitting image of Tim Buckley, considered one of the major artists on the rock scene in the 70s, it is hard to believe that you are anything other than your father's son: "Not only is it easy, but it's also completely unfair. He left six months after I was born, I was raised by my mother in California. I only met my father once, when I was 8 years old. He died in 1975, I don't even have his albums, I listened to them when I was a kid and later, at 17-18 years old, when I wanted to know who he was. I have a very personal relationship with him and that's my business. As for artistic proximity, I feel much closer to James Hettfield (the guitarist of Metallica, the famous American heavy metal band) than to Tim Buckley..."
  The only kinship he claims is that of the great singers, these exceptional voices, to which our man devotes a particular cult: "For me, musical genres don't really matter, what really matters is the voice I hear, the soul that expresses itself. Maria Callas, Hank Williams, Marvin Gaye, Edith Piaf, Robert Plant, Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn or Nina Simone, they are the same family. The voice is a sound, but it is also what we have experienced, that gives truth to the words. That's why there are songs that only actors can sing."
  This does not prevent him from often performing covers as eclectic and inspired by Leonard Cohen (Hallelujah) or Van Morrison (The Way Young Lovers Do), Elton John or Porgy and Bess, Gershwin's opera. Because on stage, Buckley Junior is capable of anything. And if he likes to joke between two heart-rending songs, it's not out of lightness, but to relieve the tension and show that he's not so different from the people who came to listen to him.
  Little Jeff didn't forget that he was playing, until recently, in the back rooms of New York's arty pubs, and that was enough for his happiness. He does not rule out coming back to it one day. Probably because "the rising star of American rock", as the newspapers call him, is above all an authentic idealist who speaks of music as a quest and not as a slot machine. 

Buckley and Son

Libération: August 19, 1994
By Barbarian
Translated by me 

Son of Tim Buckley, a little "cursed" boy from the folk years, Jeff tries to perpetuate the tradition while liquidating the father. A neurotic disc, its analysis.

One can imagine the faces of Tim Buckley's friends and faithful on that day in April 1991 when, as part of a tribute to the legendary singer-songwriter in St Ann's (Brooklyn Church), they saw Jeff Buckley arrive. Same angelic traits, same flexible voice, he interprets "Once I Was".
  Yet the legacy is purely genetic: in 1966, the year Tim released his first album and left his first wife Mary Guibert, Jeff was born. He was only to see his father Tim Buckley eight years later, a few months before his death-by heroin overdose+morphine+alcohol, etc. Today, Jeff doesn't want to hear about the one he didn't know -Today, Jeff doesn't want to hear about the one he didn't know-"or invited into his life or his funeral" -, to the point of giving up the inheritance, for the benefit of the grandmother he found three years ago.
  Jeff, Tim's son, grew up with his mother, a pianist and cellist, a mechanic stepfather, who made him hear the Who, Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, bought his first record, Physical Graffiti, when he was nine years old, and saw the country: "I was born on the road. We kept moving. When I was 17, I got tired of it, I moved in. To Los Angeles."
 There, Jeff comes and goes between various small reggae and hard rock groups, learning that "we shouldn't be in so many groups at once; but that it is also good to disperse, to be chaotic, undecided and pushed. The only way to be authentic, is to follow your nature. I thought these bands would make me a better musician. At the time, I wasn't singing. I was depressed, I didn't approach my guitar. Finally, I got rid of everything. I wanted to make some money, but normal jobs weren't for me. I'm only good at music. I was not even able to fill out the forms asking which schools I had attended-they are so numerous that there was never enough space. No, I didn't suffer from it, but I'm scarred for life."
 With no luggage, Jeff kept the habit of moving. To meet people, but also to leave them behind. In 1990, he abandoned LA, "city of isolation", for New York, "city of contact, of the world, the great singers of Pakistan or France pass, where Lou Reed goes through the garbage to build sculptures, where Allen Ginsberg and Quentin Crisp are walking around." At first, it's a mess. He left for LA, then came back, Jeff meets Gary Lucas, ex-guitarist of Captain Beefheart, whom he joins in Gods and Monsters.
  "With Gary, I came across a special being. I felt like him, isolated. The Gods & Monsters were my last group."
  Then starts an initiation period, cemented in the summer of 1992 by small recitals in bars in the lower New York area, mainly in Sin-é (an Irish club in the East Village). "I was obsessed, I wanted to play, play, play and play again, until I could no longer think. Go home to sleep and start again the next day. Work on the songs I liked, to enter them and, in this way, learn to sing again. Around 18 years old, I had completely stopped. I couldn't align a note. It was too painful for me. I still don't know why."
  He covers Ride or the Smiths, Bad Brains, Ray Charles, Louis Jordan, Hank Williams, Bob Marley, Led Zeppelin, Van Morrison, Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn...With a predilection for the last ones, "since the important thing is that the songs came to me at a specific moment." The common point is "soul". "Everyone has one. No one can really lie. The voice is the vehicle of personality, whether you're Bon Jovi or Serge Gainsbourg. I also appreciate the way in which it can be disguised as a cover-up, like the singer from Devo."
 During this interview, in the bar of a London hotel, Buckley Jr. cannot help but put CD's in his K7 player. Edith Piaf for example, if you will, "Je n'en connaît pas la fin" on a live Big Cat EP. A whim, or a fondness?
  "Genius! She's from the street, punk. Edith Piaf is one of the reasons why I performed in front of strangers who came for a drink to forget their daily worries. I sing with all my heart to touch them. She had this extraordinary voice, with an incredible vibrato, thanks to the street where she was supposed to be heard. I understand her. To be psychologically in the middle of nowhere, lost in a sea of despair, I know what it's like."
  But, according to the principle that "to pay tribute to the things you love, you must become yourself", Jeff Buckley does not forget his compositions.
 Lover You Should Should Have Come Over, his favorite, talks about waiting, capturing the moment before it disappears. Is it for these provisions, or for obvious ones, cynical, name reasons, that the labels fought over the right to sign him? Prudent, aware of the danger, attentive to his father's shadow, Jeff Buckley took his time to choose...Columbia at the end of'92.
  Recorded with Mick Grondahl (bass player) and Matt Johnson (drummer), "guys who see me as I am, that is, a guy forcing himself to strip away as much as possible," produced by Andy Wallace (Soul Asylum, Guns N' Roses, Nirvana), the album is released this summer. Illustratively unknown again, Jeff Buckley's on a little bit of a roll in Europe. For example, in London: at the Borderline, he was recently the first part of an unknown group.
  A Face between Tim Buckley and Jimmy Dean, the style still indeterminable but which has already made him compared, wrongly, to this season's loser hero, Beck, run by New York concerts, he has a relative ease that is hardly arrogant, so fragile.
  His voice, "the oldest instrument in the world", is elastic, with acute tendencies that are a little stressful. "My name is Jeff," said this smiling son of no one to the audience. Forty-eight hours later, it's the garage, greeted acoustically. Word of mouth has already worked, Chrissie Hynde and John Mac Enroe came to see the bird, stuck again between two insignificant combos and apparently served by an imperfect sound system. Intense, sincere, indisputably marked by an ambivalent past, which poisons him but on which he feeds, he closes his eyes.

Hero of the Midnight Hour

The London Times, May 5, 1995
By Caitlin Moran

Caitlin Moran tries to find out why Jeff Buckley has dreams about having his skin flayed by a mad sculptor.

  The last time I attempted to telescope the emotions that Jeff Buckley's music inspires into mere paragraphs and words, the phrase "Soon to be awe-inspiringly famous" crept up with as much regularity as the word "genius". That was last August, when Buckley's biggest UK gig to date was before an exceedingly cramped hundred people Upstairs at the Garage in London. Nine months later, and Buckley has sold out the 2000 capacity Empire and had his debut album, Grace, lauded as the best of 1994 in several magazines.
  "I told you so", is such a pinched-mouth phrase I won't even begin to utter it; but...
And so my powers of cognition have brought me to New York, Buckley's adopted home town, and a conference room in the massive Sony Records building. Buckley's been doing phone interviews all day. He's greasy-haired and his eyes are bruised with lack of sleep, but he's as polite as ever, leaping around trying to make everyone comfortable before dropping back into his chair and spilling his Bad Dreams when requested.
  "I tend to forget my dreams," he says. "They seep out of the room as I wake, and the more I try and clutch at them, the more ferociously they wriggle... but I had a dream a couple of nights ago where, to cut a long story short, this mad artist wanted to cut my skin into strips and weave me into rococo shapes. So I'd be like a living sculpture, beautiful in his eyes, but horribly disfigured and unable to do anything but die."
  Erm, that's a bit heavy. I was kind of expecting the old, "Well, I'm walking naked through a supermarket when I see my old math teacher..."
  "I have those kinds of dreams as well, I guess," he says. "It's just I don't remember them."
  Does he think the bad dream had anything to do with the reams of cod-psychology written about him in the past year by people looking for his dark side; for the fissures in his personality that mean he will turn into another rock ghost whose untimely death will haunt us all?
  "No one has really come anywhere near to describing me as the person my friends know, let alone me," he says. "Perhaps my personality is all in the inflections and can't be transcribed."
  So let's see if Jeff can do the impossible and describe his own music. Go on, give it a go. "Music affects people in different ways," he says. "We've all got different chemicals swishing around in our bodies; we've all got different emotional imperatives. With some people, the chemistry will cause an explosion or a breakdown, or lust, or extreme joy. I can talk about what I feel when the music takes hold of me, my posture changes. I hold my head high, stick my chest out; my bones seem to bend easier; the shape of my face seems to change. I feel I can do anything. It's almost sexual."
  That is the end of the interview. Buckley starts striding around the building, muttering "And what's wrong with being horny?" under his breath. Nothing at all. 

A State Of Grace

dB Magazine, #99, August 16-29, 1995 
By Murray Engleheart

  "It looks like ultra industrial Vancouver during a hard rain," soft spoken Jeff Buckley commented poetically of his surroundings in Japan before deciding to put the line to music. "Vancouverrrr, during a hard rainnnn" he crooned. The thought of putting out a ten CD bootleg boxed set with that one single line with a colour book - nothing too elaborate-tore through my mind for a brief moment. After all this man whose heart murmur inducing album, Grace has established him as the heartbreak genius of the year.
  Long departed semi-legendary America rock critic, the insight filled Lillian Roxon once said of Jeff's entirely legendary father, Tim Buckley, who died in 1975 at the tender age of 28 after a fateful flip with an incorrect heroin dosage that "There's no name yet for the places he and his voice can go."
  Jeff Buckley is working the same side of that unmarked street as his old man, the place Van Morrison's Astral Weeks or even Dylan's Blonde on Blonde hails from where there's no area code, postcard or major landscape that could serve as a meeting place.
  "Stream of consciousness is all I have really," he explained "I really don't know what I'm doing."
  That involuntary mindset aside, young Jeff has been known to thrash away to The Smashing Pumpkins' Siamese Dream album and wants to come to Australia to see where The Birthday Party used to "stomp around."
But ask him if he believes in reincarnation and you have to wait for a few seconds before you get a response.
  "WHY? What are you doing this weekend?" came the initial cryptic reply. "I have no preconceptions whatsoever about the void and about the end. I have not. Except that I feel there is none, really no end. I learnt long ago not to attach it to either myth or truths or mystic truths or special books written by people on earth from a long time ago. Not that I don't listen to it but I don't hold it as the ultimate truth because I haven't gotten there yet."
  The strength of his work has allowed Jeff unlike someone like Julian Lennon to step clearly and decisively away from the far from inconsiderable shadow of his father's greatness. Acclaim has registered worldwide ("It's not something I expected or thought was owed me.") but it seemed to all come together as one when he palyed in London last year and all "the tastemakers" as he put it came out of the woodwork. His appearance at The Reading Festival was from all reports stunning which is hardly suprising though it was his first slot playing upstairs at The Garage when he jammed with Chrissy Hynde and what's left of The Pretenders that really sticks in his mind.
  "I was a Pretender for 45 minutes! A very precious happening," he said perhaps unintentionally punning on the title of The Pretenders' tune Precious. "An awesome woman"
  Like most artists whose work touches souls and hearts that were previously thought to be made of stone, gifts and good luck charms shower the stage when Buckley plays. There's probably been the odd bunch of roses placed respectfully on the stage as well, the sort of behaviour that Leonard Cohen-a version of his "Hallelujah" appears on Grace with the addition of a couple of verses-could probably identify with. But none of it distracts Buckley or detracts from the performance.
  "I've had white businessmen together with their bimbos at a table in front of me when I was playing cafes and one of them was trying to impress the others and was howling like a wolf throughout most of the set. He was there for a good time. He was in the part of the neighborhood where weekenders come in and then they go back to their houses on Long Island or the houses in New Jersey and beat their wives."
  "There's been riots outside, there's been fire engines going by. There's been a couple of mentally ill homeless people that happen into the cafe at night sometimes because they live on thestreet and the cafes are on the street. They're fine so long as you talk to them for real and if they want to talk you just let them talk and you talk to them and maybe even sing. The thing is not to resist it just to go with it. But if it's something really hurtful the f--k 'em! Might as well go ballistic and be offensive!"
  Grace sounds anything but offensive, the amp buzz of "Eternal Life" aside. Instead it's probably one of the most romantic recordings in every sense of the term of recent years. Someone that pens such music must surely I figure have a devoted love interest somewhere so I asked what his girl thinks of the album and received several seconds of silence for the intrusion. Then just as I thought I was about to get the brush off...
  "My private life is sort of shattered and re-attaching itself." he said carefully. "But the girl I used to live with loves the album."
  Though he carries no marking Jeff Buckley sounds like one of the few people on the planet who should have a single heart and a woman's name tattooed on his shoulder. No full sleeves of work or anything like that just some compace indelible memories...
  "I've been thinking about it for years," he said. "But it would have to be the right thing and I would have to have gone through something so transformational that it'll never go back. I have other things...on me," he laughed quietly. "But a tattoo has something to do with art and somebody else drawing on you and usually I don't really dig the art. Some things are really great but in New York it's illegal so the persons are hard to find but people get them all the time. You just go to Brooklyn or you just go to some secret guy's place. I just never felt the need so far, but I'm open to it."
  It seems he's open to a lot of things. Like other prolific artists Buckley has used the spoken word arena as a spillway for some of his work. He has only done two shows or so but found the experience enjoyable and would like to do more.
  "If I were a better writer I'd definitely do it all the time."
The scary bit is I think he was serious...

"You Rock"

Courtesy of IG user hardvinyl72

Not 💯 if this is the same Pat, but my feeling is yes...