Submitted by Gabby
I adore this one ❤
Saturday, November 23, 2019
Thursday, November 21, 2019
A Singer With a Voice Beyond His Years
By Peter Watrous
The New York Times, March 16, 1992
Submitted by Gabby
Precociousness is a strange thing, and it made its appearance at a concert by Gods and Monsters, a new group led by the guitarist Gary Lucas and the singer Jeff Buckley. Mr. Buckley, 25 years old but looking closer to 18, is almost surreally gifted. When he sings, it's as if his voice, and the melodies that come with it, were emanating from a far older person, somebody who has had the time to do all the studying it takes to learn as much has he has. Mr. Buckley was the focus of Friday night's show at the Church of St. Ann and the Holy Trinity in Brooklyn Heights, partly because he is immensely charismatic and partly because of his ability. The band, made up of B-team musical celebrities, including the bassist Tony Maimone and the drummer Anton Fier, didn't have much to work with. The group's songs, short on melody and barely arranged, with absolutely no dynamics, were plain rock, as gray as yesterday's potatoes.
The show really began when the rhythm section trundled offstage, leaving Mr. Buckley and Mr. Lucas up there alone. Mr. Buckley is oddly clumsy onstage, and between songs he alternatley hanged himself and showed his talents. Introducing a reggae song, Mr. Buckley spoke in a Jamaican patois; it was embarrassing at best. And when introducing a song by Edith Piaf, he mixed the sound of Piaf (coming from a record player, tinny and thin), and a human beat box, exposing a real gift for mimicry.
That mimicry showed up in a gospel tune he sang alone, accompanying himself on guitar. Singing in a pure falsetto, his voice surged and arched over the guitar, passion in the form of idiomatically correct gospel singing. At other times, he fluttered his voice as if he had been studying ethnographic recordings; sometimes his voice bounced off bad notes, as if it were a drunk sliding off a sidewalk.
When he and Mr. Lucas worked together, they gathered some real momentum, with Mr. Lucas's finger-picking driving them on, while Mr. Buckley's voice etched strange melodies against the harmonies. They played blues tunes and other pieces, and Mr. Buckley let himself be vulnerable, not only in the traditional sense of singing about love from the wrong end (on the reggae tune he sang "How long will it take me to be your man again?" until it seemed like the most profound lament ever written), but also by the sort of emotional exposure that comes from taking a chance.
Friday, November 15, 2019
Slow-Burning Star: the Smouldering Appeal of Jeff Buckley
Cosmopolitan, November, 1995
By Paul du Noyer
That voice, that talent, those cheekbones, that brilliant first album. And he's single. No wonder the whole music world is talking about Jeff Buckley. Just don't mention his father...
He has cheekbones you could hang your coat on. When he's performing on a hot night, he often takes his shirt off, and then grown women climb on nightclub tables just to get a better view. In fact, since a UK tour in June (that took in the Glastonbury Festival) and the release of his debut album Grace, a lot of people had been yearning for a good look at Jeff Buckley - and not entirely because of his phenomenal talent. But he would be scornful if you told him so. Off the stage, that celebrated face remains unshaven, the hair unwashed. His scruffy clothes look as if they've been donated rather than bought. At 29, Buckley is careless of his appearance, as only the truly good-looking can afford to be.
"First there were my mother's breasts, then there was music," says the American singer, declaring his life's primary passion. Call him a star or, worse, a sex symbol, and he takes a long, dismissive drag on his Marlboro cigarette and looks away. But about his art he is eloquent. "I'm completely chemically altered by the end of a performance," he says, "due to the places I have to go in my head for my songs." If that sounds unworldly, so does Buckley's music. It's a darkly beautiful hybrid of the folky, the experimental, and the deeply sensual - a sound that shimmers rather than rocks. And he sings in a dreamlike reverie, as if possessed by ancient spirits.
To sample the sheer talent, listen to Grace. It won Buckley major acclaim and sales were encouraging for a newcomer, but low enough to preserve his cultish aura. Right now, you can be a fan and still enjoy that feeling of exclusivity.
Buckley can come over all mean and moody about any kind of praise but the sort he least appreciates is that comparing him to his father, Tim Buckley. His dad was a hippie troubadour of the Sixties, a restless soul who didn't take to family life. When Jeff was born in 1966, Buckley senior hit the road. The pair were reunited, briefly, in 1975, when Jeff was nine. His father died of a drug overdose two months later. He was about the same age that Jeff is now.
Despite the similarities in looks and vocal style, the younger Buckley bristles at comparisons. "Actually," he says, "I'm the son of Mary Guibert." His Panama-born mother raised him in California, where they led a wandering existence. "We moved so often," he says, "I used to put all my stuff in paper bags. My childhood was pretty much marijuana and rock n' roll." He remembers getting a part in the school play, only to learn he was leaving town that night. "I was the new kid everywhere," he says. But, having to sort potential new enemies from potential new friends, he developed the observational skills a songwriter needs.
As an infant, he had discovered his grandmother's guitar and, with his mother, would sing Joni Mitchell songs as they drove through California. At 17, he graduated to post-punk bands in Los Angeles, and, in 1990, he moved to New York. Regular gigs on the coffee-house circuit got him a deal with the record company Columbia.
Now with a band of his own, he has created a genuinely new sound with impressive ease. "Usually when you get young guys," he says, "they just wanna rock, rock, rock. But if you can burn at a slow tempo, that's everything." It's precisely that slow-burning intensity, inspired by everything from blues to classical church music, that offers such sensuous support for Buckley's voice. And that voice is the most exotic element of all: slipping across the octaves from a deep-breathing murmur to an imploring falsetto scream, it will soar, then suddenly swoop like a bird of prey. Women and men alike find the effect mesmeric.
"I love anything that haunts me and never leaves," he says of his music, "Like an old flame who has something about her you can't resist." Jeff's own old (and new) flames are subject to fevered speculation: there were rumours of romance with Liz Fraser of the Cocteau Twins, and lately he's been seen with hellraiser Courtney Love (lead singer of Hole and the widow of Kurt Cobain) but, apparently, there is no one special: he lives alone and his taste for solitude is well-known.
What's on his mind at the moment is his next album-the all-important follow-up to Grace, due out next year. Will he fulfill his early promise? The anticipation is immense. An admirer of Buckley senior once said, "There's no name yet for the places he and his voice can go." Prophetic words, but will it be the son who lives them out?
By Paul du Noyer
That voice, that talent, those cheekbones, that brilliant first album. And he's single. No wonder the whole music world is talking about Jeff Buckley. Just don't mention his father...
He has cheekbones you could hang your coat on. When he's performing on a hot night, he often takes his shirt off, and then grown women climb on nightclub tables just to get a better view. In fact, since a UK tour in June (that took in the Glastonbury Festival) and the release of his debut album Grace, a lot of people had been yearning for a good look at Jeff Buckley - and not entirely because of his phenomenal talent. But he would be scornful if you told him so. Off the stage, that celebrated face remains unshaven, the hair unwashed. His scruffy clothes look as if they've been donated rather than bought. At 29, Buckley is careless of his appearance, as only the truly good-looking can afford to be.
"First there were my mother's breasts, then there was music," says the American singer, declaring his life's primary passion. Call him a star or, worse, a sex symbol, and he takes a long, dismissive drag on his Marlboro cigarette and looks away. But about his art he is eloquent. "I'm completely chemically altered by the end of a performance," he says, "due to the places I have to go in my head for my songs." If that sounds unworldly, so does Buckley's music. It's a darkly beautiful hybrid of the folky, the experimental, and the deeply sensual - a sound that shimmers rather than rocks. And he sings in a dreamlike reverie, as if possessed by ancient spirits.
To sample the sheer talent, listen to Grace. It won Buckley major acclaim and sales were encouraging for a newcomer, but low enough to preserve his cultish aura. Right now, you can be a fan and still enjoy that feeling of exclusivity.
Buckley can come over all mean and moody about any kind of praise but the sort he least appreciates is that comparing him to his father, Tim Buckley. His dad was a hippie troubadour of the Sixties, a restless soul who didn't take to family life. When Jeff was born in 1966, Buckley senior hit the road. The pair were reunited, briefly, in 1975, when Jeff was nine. His father died of a drug overdose two months later. He was about the same age that Jeff is now.
Despite the similarities in looks and vocal style, the younger Buckley bristles at comparisons. "Actually," he says, "I'm the son of Mary Guibert." His Panama-born mother raised him in California, where they led a wandering existence. "We moved so often," he says, "I used to put all my stuff in paper bags. My childhood was pretty much marijuana and rock n' roll." He remembers getting a part in the school play, only to learn he was leaving town that night. "I was the new kid everywhere," he says. But, having to sort potential new enemies from potential new friends, he developed the observational skills a songwriter needs.
As an infant, he had discovered his grandmother's guitar and, with his mother, would sing Joni Mitchell songs as they drove through California. At 17, he graduated to post-punk bands in Los Angeles, and, in 1990, he moved to New York. Regular gigs on the coffee-house circuit got him a deal with the record company Columbia.
Now with a band of his own, he has created a genuinely new sound with impressive ease. "Usually when you get young guys," he says, "they just wanna rock, rock, rock. But if you can burn at a slow tempo, that's everything." It's precisely that slow-burning intensity, inspired by everything from blues to classical church music, that offers such sensuous support for Buckley's voice. And that voice is the most exotic element of all: slipping across the octaves from a deep-breathing murmur to an imploring falsetto scream, it will soar, then suddenly swoop like a bird of prey. Women and men alike find the effect mesmeric.
"I love anything that haunts me and never leaves," he says of his music, "Like an old flame who has something about her you can't resist." Jeff's own old (and new) flames are subject to fevered speculation: there were rumours of romance with Liz Fraser of the Cocteau Twins, and lately he's been seen with hellraiser Courtney Love (lead singer of Hole and the widow of Kurt Cobain) but, apparently, there is no one special: he lives alone and his taste for solitude is well-known.
What's on his mind at the moment is his next album-the all-important follow-up to Grace, due out next year. Will he fulfill his early promise? The anticipation is immense. An admirer of Buckley senior once said, "There's no name yet for the places he and his voice can go." Prophetic words, but will it be the son who lives them out?
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