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.
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.
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