Music Life, April 1995

"Even if my music enters the mainstream, my outsider-like-mind doesn’t change."

Interview & text by Yasuhumi Amatatsu

Submitted by Ananula

Translated by Tutu Fujimoto

  Is it also because of his father’s influence? Anyway, Jeff Buckley, holding the guitar and singing in a one-and-only voice that can be called a natural talent, has tended to be called a singer-songwriter of a new generation. Yes it’s true, not a mistake at all. But the music he expressed in front of us had depth and breadth far more than we imagined, also beauty and intensity, and sometimes poisonous eccentricity. It was also Jeff Buckley, who played the guitar feedback wildly and broke the strings.

******

  At this point, I can't say that Jeff Buckley's music gives us a bird's-eye view of the whole rock world, and it’s also unclear how he will be remembered in history from now on. Rather, a discussion of the matter itself doesn't seem to have particular meanings. But I really felt that the delicate, youthful, and mysterious dynamism of his voice exuded a strong uniqueness. He dislikes making a fuss outside of his own music including about his father who was considered a rock myth, and it seems he talks, and tries to be talked about, life-size himself. However, apart from that, I just want to remember clearly that Jeff Buckley's album “Grace” was released in 1994, and that he sang and performed in Japan this winter in the next year of “Grace.”

  Jeff Buckley's live performance was so wonderful that it made me think like that. Sometimes it’s with prayerful piety, sometimes it gives off a challenging-like wild taste. There’s no falsehood on the stage. The sound played by four members of the band, including him, had more gaps and stood out as rougher than it was on the album. But even that silence exists as if it understood the meaning of his words, and it says something to me. The next day afternoon, I was able to interview him at the hotel where he was staying.

Have you ever performed live in other than English-speaking countries like Japan?

Yes, in European countries such as Germany, France, and the Netherlands. I don’t think it’s too hard to have communication because it’s music. I mean, music is the only common language in the world other than sign language or love.

What was the impression of the Japanese audience last night?

It was more than I expected.

Is there anything you can gain from meeting various cultures and peoples while traveling?

Not really. Even though it's traveling, there are interviews like this. I can't write things in a relaxed way or look at things calmly. That’s too bad for me. I don’t even have time for songwriting. But it's definitely a valuable experience, in particular, I'm glad that we have the advantage of deepening our ties in the band since we're together all the time during our tour. Musically, that's an important thing.

As I watched you sing last night, I felt that I wanted to ask you, “ah, what is this person singing for, and for whom?”

That’s a difficult question.

At the same time, it made me think about the entertainment matter. Regardless of no decorations at all, it seemed as if everything in the hall was focused only on your song when you sang “Hallelujah.” That was beyond any entertainment that outstanding.

Thank you. I think there's something more to music than so-called entertainment. For example, when I sing and play, my heart starts beating and my heartbeat gets stronger, I can say it has the same feeling as that. So, it's more like “sharing music” than entertainment.

The show last night was something much more than the impression I had in “Grace.” For me.

“Grace” is an album we made about three weeks after the band gathered. It’s a concept of an early stage and all the live shows are after that, so it surpasses “Grace” of course, and so does the energy. Looking back now, the album "Grace" may be like an unbaked cake.

Is there anything you should be careful about when recording?

First of all, I was careful about the wording of the words so that the lyrics wouldn't become obsolete. Also, I was very careful to see if it could live together well with the parts that went according to plan and the things that overflowed from me illogically.

It takes time from signing a contract with a record company to actually recording, is that what you intended?

Release a live EP at first, and after that, I’m sure that taking time deliberately was in my mind. Why? Because, I wanted to have a proper band. I didn't think I would play with the band Columbia decided to use. I had to keep going with them all the way around, so I wanted to find a good company by myself. That’s why it took time. I didn't want a band whose members change from album to album. It would kill my music, and also the music would never bear fruit.

A band is a simple organization, isn't it? For example, don't you want to add a keyboard to it?

Now, I don’t. The four-person group, including two guitars, a bass and a drum, produces a simple but heavy sound. I love it.

So called the new generation, like Beck, G. Love & Special Sauce, and so on, appeared conspicuously before and after your appearance. I felt something like a milestone of the era in it.

I don't feel like I'm part of a certain generation. I don't know if I belong to something like the so-called youth movement. Rather, I think I'm the type that's always out of what's called a movement. For example, even if my music enters the mainstream, I mean, if it becomes so popular that it's on the same level as current popular music, my outsider-like-mind doesn’t change.

Now that the expression “mainstream” is mentioned, what kind of music does mainstream mean to you?

I don't know if it's going to be an answer, but if it's going to be the mainstream, the media will be paying it a lot of attention, right? First of all, that’s one. And, those that everyone understands, everyone knows, it’s going to get boring sharing the same thing with everyone. It doesn’t have any potential for music, at least it’s not good for my music, I think.

I understand, but sometimes the view of the times changes with the appearance of someone, as if a hole was opened by the wind. For example, it might have been the case with (an appearance of) Bob Dylan, or Led Zeppelin, too.

And Sex Pistols, too.

I agree. So, it might be rough to bring up the word “generation,” but when they appeared, you weren't there, right?

I wasn’t there when “punk” appeared, too. 

Right. But when you came out, there was Dylan, Zeppelin, and punk already. We can see the expressions that can't be created without them. That's where I can feel the newness of the generation.

Yeah, I can see what you want to say. In that sense, various things already existed for us. But watching through my eyes, it seems that our generation is also musically incapable of digesting it well. For example, someone is doing music like Billy Joel with a punk style appearance, and saying “we’re doing punk”, like that. They follow trends only superficially. Of course, it would be alright if you dismissed it as a trend, but a real career should not be controlled by the public. The Smiths, Nick Cave, or Sonic Youth, you know, they have their own unique expression, and they are the only ones that don't exist anywhere else. Beck too. Beck is nothing but Beck.

Do you sympathize with those people?

That’s what I mean.

Now that you mention the name of The Smiths, their “I KnowIt's Over” was inserted when you were singing “Hallelujah” on the live show last night?

Yeah. It suddenly came to my mind before the show. The chord was the same, so I tried it.

Back to the point, don't you find it new in that music, for example, like G. Love & Special Sauce, that combines traditional blues with rap, the most modern way of expressing it?

I don’t feel it’s new. I mean, I don't think mixing different genres of music is new. A real mixture is something that comes out after everything has been digested. And if you don't show your own uniqueness with it, I don't find it fun. If the meaning you are referring to is expressed by the word "fresh,” that’s quite right.

Yeah, the expression "fresh" may be more correct. In fact, I'm skeptical that this can be classified as new music or old music. At least, the unusual style doesn't mean it's new. Let's change the expression.

And yes, Jimi Hendrix was undeniably innovative. So, sometimes I think, for example, if all the people, all the human race had a guitar in their hands and each played it following their heart without being influenced by anyone, there would be countless genres of music. I feel sorry that there’s a tendency to copy each other, especially to start music with copying successful styles.

Opened Once Instrumental

 One of my favorite songs off Sketches, Opened Once, and its instrumental version, take their place here today ❤ I've been told a few times the videos are unviewable, so if that's the case, try using "desktop version" on your browser, hopefully that'll do the trick!

Instrumental version

Sketches version 

UR Magazine

September, 1994
By Hilary Meister

"Alternative Press thinks I sound like Whitesnake," said Jeff Buckley while we sat upstairs at The Point in Atlanta on a blustery September day. "They don't think I'm alternative. They think I'm some sort of metal boy!" he grinned. I had the music of Grace, Buckley's first full-length album for Columbia, playing in my head. There have been comparisons to Led Zeppelin and Robert Plant, but overall...
"Waking up and finding out you're actually not alternative...You and I both know - I could take "Psychic Powerless, Another Man's Sack" by Butthole Surfers and clear the fuckin' room. That's alternative! Or Bartok or Ornette Coleman or Captain Beefheart - that's some stuff that will annoy parents anywhere." Buckley was visibly agitated at the thought.
We began our conversation, though who can remember what set us off, discussing Geraldo Rivera interviewing Charles Manson. That got the 28 year old Buckley off and running for quite a while, postulating on the nature of evil that is Manson, and the buffoonery of Rivera. "He's got this commercial - he's the father of two, a loving husband, and he's crassly on camera kissing his kids, kibitzing with his wife, totally politician because he's been such a neanderthal, artificial fake all his life!"
Eventually, Buckley leads the discussion to music critics, still maintaining his firey attitude, quick-draw response, and New York savvy. "It's easy to be a music critic. It's a strange past-time and it's a strange job to have. Everybody can do what he's doing, but he can't do what I'm doing. I suppose that job has to exist but not so much power put upon it. The music and the experience of it is so individual." He proceeds to narrate tales of criticism heeped upon himself and others such as how one writer in Toronto took offense to Buckley's quiet demeanor on stage, calling him arrogant and here, Buckley impersonates the writer, "'his arrogance belies the passion of his music.'" Jeff's face twitches as he nasally expells the words etched into his memory. Jeff Buckley took most of us by surprise during his '94 solo tour across America and the big pond. There were few people at those shows, little hype behind the singer, and little radio airplay. He was going for the throat touring Live at Sin-é, a 4-song live acoustic solo performance recorded at New York's tiny Club Sin-é. Buckley had been performing in New York for several years while record company mongrels stood drooling in the aisles. He wanted the chance to hone his craft, something so few musicians these days are willing to take. He had already rejected his Southern California upbringing, the connections that his famous avant-folk father, Tim Buckley, left behind after his drug overdose in the early '70s, such as a manager who kept tabs on Jeff waiting for the right moment to pounce. And Buckley tried it all - hard rock, reggae, session work, guitar school finally giving in to the call of the East - New York. "I knew I would fit. I knew I would thrive. There's great stuff that happens in California but as far as living there I'm better off in New York," Buckley exclaimed.
Though Jeff would rather not discuss his father, and constantly fights off comparisons and mere mentions, the genes are still there - the good looks, the voice, the pension for unusual sounds and musical hybrids. "Some things he did were great and some things were embarrassing," said Buckley of his father. "Like, Star Sailor I will hold up to any fucking album and say that this is really something. I have a very intimate relationship with the whole story and it has nothing to do with me. I have my own life. I make my own money. I make my own music. I have my own friends."
It's ironic that while Jeff began on a journey to stake his own territory, to claim his piece of the musical rock and to shed any remaining attachments to his father's music that he would perform at a Tim Buckley tribute concert. It was one of Jeff's first major appearances in New York at St. Ann's, a church in Brooklyn that sometimes holds hip concerts, organized by producer Hal Willner. He was so swamped with Tim Buckley fans, music business people, and others wanting to bring the ghost of Tim back with Jeff that it caused the young Buckley to forage deeper into the underground confines of New York in places like the Knitting Factory and the new Thread Waxing Space. He had a brief and shining near-to mainstream moment when he joined forces with Gary Lucas, ex-guitarist for Captain Beefheart, bassist Tony Maimone and Golden Palominos' eclectic drummer Anton Fier in a project called Gods & Monsters. The band dissolved allowing Buckley to wander off and explore his voice as his main instrument.
He wanted to pay his dues by performing in coffee shops in Greenwich Village learning the craft of songwriting by listening to some of the greats - Bob Dylan, Van Morrison. In reading stories about Buckley the tales of limos leaving off record company execs, swarms of A&R suit and ties, leaches, and musicians is enough to break anyone's doubts that Buckley definitely had something going. He held them all at bay, keeping to his ideals of a slow climb upwards, leaving room to meet the musicians that would eventually form his rhythm section in a natural setting, and escaping the hunt with only a few scratches. He lived on his own merits at this time, soaking up the underground culture, music, and life experiences that would ultimately lead him into a deal with Columbia and the promise that Buckley could basically create without pressure.
So, here sat Buckley on his first run through America with his band made up of Mick Grondahl on bass, Matt Johnson on drums and Michael Tighe on second guitar. He's already thinking of things to come. "The next album has this song that we're working on called 'Chocolate' that's all about sex - having the person," Buckley explains. "I dig joy. The thing about Grace, on my end, on one part it's me, Mick, and Matty gaining each other, but the material is a lot of me putting things to rest so we can go on. I'm not really all that attached to the debut-just the thing we're going to come up with later. Stuff like 'So Real' and 'Kanga-Roo' is more pointing to the future and even beyond." Buckley said, referring in one part to his take of Alex Chilton's "Kanga-Roo" on the teaser Peyote Radio Theatre EP released prior to Grace. "We don't really rehearse, we just create, which is better. The guitar sort of lead the arrangement but Matty started doing this thing on the tom soloing and then Mick started hearing this bass line-I thought it sounded like an old man snoring, just like this weird thing. And I remember my step father snoring and having it scare me. That's what it reminded me of."
Buckley shifts position on the torn couch when Mick comes upstairs and sits down. I ask him about "Eternal Life," the most rambunctious song on Grace with crunching guitars and thrashing rhythms. He goes back to his agitated state, pursed lips, knitted eyebrows, and revives the earlier Rivera/Manson discussion. "I've been obsessed ever since I was a kid with the attrocities. Yeah, really fucking heinous shit. [The song] had to be heavy. It had to be very heavy. It wasn't even half as heavy as it should be," Buckley explained. Mick nods.
"I've had run-ins with it on the very street level, just kids. Like, going to school with kids that are highly, highly diluted. I had a friend, for a long time, and we rode the bus together at high school and she said something about there were only two black people in the whole school and I'd been to so many different schools and lots of situations and finally, by some twist of fate I end up in Anaheim behind the Orange curtain and there were like two black kids in the whole school, two or three. And this girl said something that made me smell that she was kind of prejudice and I said, 'do you actually think that black people are inferior to white people?' and when she said 'yes,' I called her something I've never called any woman ever. I called her a 'cunt.' 'You stupid, fucking, blah blah blah. I can't believe that you...' and it wasn't her fault at that point, she was very young.
"At some point you really have to look at what it does. In every human being, in everything someone tells you, either they tell you they love you or they tell you they think that you're stupid or that you're ugly or you're wrong. And you can defend youself by saying, 'well, I'm not, you know. I'm worthy. People love me and there are people I love in my life,' but there's something that always listens. Something in there. So people that are hurling racial epitaphs, it still hurts on both sides, on any side. Wasp, spick, kike, whatever, faggot, john, bastard, every single human being and nobody's exempt. Not one person, not even Ghandhi. But he saw it in himself. The thing is, in order to be affected by it in other people you have to have it in yourself. Everybody has the same components it's just that certain things take the stage at certain given times in their character. So, a prominently, hate-oriented family is going to breed a real violent kid. There's honor in him and there's love in him but it's just that it's squanched down in the mix." Buckley strode into The Point earlier that afternoon with a barrage of Sony people and promoters. Sitting comfortably on a barstool in the main room surrounded by music biz types didn't stop Buckley from quietly flirting with an admirer - something he probably is not at a loss for. Later, when he steps on stage a young girl hands him a bouquet of roses which he whisks up and promptly places individual buds on various pieces of equipment and throws one to another young lady in the audience.
It's not a wonder he attracts such a response. Grace is filled with sexual innuendo - the loss of love, the discovery of another, sexual awakening. The album is so sensual it prompted one interviewer to ask Buckley if he sings while making love. "Ask me later," was his response.
The album opens with Buckley's erotic mourn on "Mojo Pin," the title itself a talisman Buckley uses as a metaphor for obsessive love, like a drug addiction. "It's derived from juju which is African for magic. Mojo pin, it's a euphemism. It's a needle with smack that you stick up your arm. It can be anything you want. Or something just as good. No matter how much you love somebody, somehow there's always something that can take them away and that's usually people's fear - that's usually why people try to control other people in love and it happens all the time."
He sings "I love you, but I'm afraid to love you," in "So Real." An elicit love affair I ask? "All those lines are derived, except for the first line, from a time when I was about 5 or 6 and my mother and my stepfather were divorcing and I noticed 'I love you but I'm afraid to love you' is all about them. What I came away from in my older years is that people are just afraid to love each other and always want to come out of things right and wrong. Between men and women it just has to be accepted that part of their relationship is a power struggle."
He croons over this power struggle repeatedly on Grace in an array of vocalizations including Nina Simone's "Lilac Wine" to Leonard Cohen's "Hallelulah," which Buckley magnificently out-Cohen's Cohen - a hard feat to accomplish. Buckley utilizes harmonium and dulcimer to offset his fretful guitar playing but at the bottom of it all lies the passionate plea of a scorned lover seeking solace. And there's a connection, for Buckley at any rate, between lover and the act of love that his songs try to embellish. "There's no separation. I'm not talking about sex with parts. Every relationship I've found between male and female is a sexual energy. Not the prurient, but the psychic."
In the end, after deciphering Rivera, Manson, sex and love, music critics, and anything else that stream of consciously skidded through our conversation, Buckley summed up his intent. "I think about the fact that by any power of mine to communicate and convince people of my ideas, not against their will, but in a dialogue, that I shouldn't be handed over like Special K or Cheerios. That's why I tour before each release - so the people can either turn away and leave and go have coffee down the road from the gig, or stay there and be with us and we'll have a good evening together. But for them to make their own mind up, for them to come to the gig, because this is where the music happens."

Rockin'on October 1994

“I'm Jeff Buckley. Tell people stories and invite them on a dramatic journey, I want to do a thing like that.” A strong, beautiful, and overwhelming presence. Gospel after mourning, the first interview with Jeff Buckley.

Interview: Hiroaki Tanaka 

Interpretation & photos: William Hames

Translation by Tutu Fugimoto

Submitted by Ananula

  It's as if he jumped out of the screen of New Cinema in the 70’s. Intelligent and neat features with a wild appearance. Crude. Delicate. Silent. Sobbing. Milky coffee and stubble. A sooty sofa and a guitar that is always in good maintenance. Many emotions and landscapes flash back when I look at his snapshots. I fell in love with this man at a glance.

  Jeff Buckley, who was introduced in “character & disk review” in last month’s issue. He is the brightest 27-year-old singer-songwriter in East Village, NYC right now. The EP “LIVE AT SIN-E” was released earlier this year as his record debut (not released in Japan). I tend to think, in these days, "This is what it is," even before I listen to the music just because it’s by the singer-songwriter who plays alone. For me it's like, that along with his appearance, it was a greeting card or like the gospel. It meant the emergence of unmistakable "talent."

  The album "Grace" that finally released shakes our sensory nerves from the first sound. And by the time the vocal (an amazing range of voice that captures all the fluctuations of his emotions) arrives, listeners are invited to a completely different height. And it's absolutely beautiful. Not to mention “Grace” or “Eternal Life” which is full of sublimeness as the title suggests, even "Mojo Pin" which is sung like a dreamer's babbling, dizziness and fascination, everything that passes through this person's body shows universal grace. Cover songs such as "Lilac Wine" (Elkie Brooks) and "Hallelujah" (Leonard Cohen) also ring as originally written for this person, just like the blues that oozes from his insides. And his guitar-playing that has become more free with the band, sounds super-skilled! I'm on the verge of prostration for him.

  I went to see Jeff Buckley on a U.S. tour out from coffee houses in the East Village. The place is “La Luna” in Portland, Oregon. The first thing that surprised me was the smallness of its capacity. The cafe is only about the size of a school audiovisual room with a few tables and sofas. His shows are always sold out in NYC, but is he simply not well known in the West Coast?

  I was sitting on the sofa watching him who had already started rehearsals. Well, I was confused that I had met him so easily, moreover, the instrumental surf music was full-volume and loud in the bar behind, so I felt somewhat uneasy. Jeff is playing drums along with Ventures and Dick Dale music from the bar even after the band left. Kind of... a weird guy.

  His manager calls Jeff to bring me in. He’s smaller than I thought. I’m about 170 cm (5.6 ft) or so, and he looks smaller than me. He shook my hand with an apologetic face but I heard that he was actually very nervous because he thought he had to bow to Japanese people at this time. The interview was held at a nearby taco restaurant.

It seems that quite a few record companies talked about contracts, but you were very cautious about that, weren’t you?

Yeah. I guess six companies were talking about contracts at the same time. But it's very intuitive to find out more than to choose. Because it's like finding a compatible woman, huh? Columbia was the best fit in the end. It’s a very big girl though (lol).

I heard you have much distrust of the music industry.

Right. I don’t trust it. I grew up in California. I’ve seen a lot of people who have lifted up to fame and quickly thrown away the very next week. So I can't help being cynical. Anyway, I can't trust someone who can say "You're amazing" even though he's never seen your show before.

For example, "Musician" magazine featured 6 pages of yours. You only released one live EP at that point, and I thought it was an exceptional treatment.

That was too early, and too long. It made me a little disappointed. It was like over-complimenting and a bit romantic perspective. Now I only have myself, friends and the music. So there is no room for the past to intervene.

I think that "romantic perspective" must be related to the story of your birth. Do you have any resistance to interviews that suggest your father's presence? But I dare say that it's an unavoidable fact that you're Tim Buckley's son, right?

What I know about my father is something I heard from someone. Because he broke up with my mom before I was born. If you want to know about my father, I'll give you the phone number of someone more familiar with him. Well, it’s nothing to do with me.

But it’s not good for our side (that tells your story to the public) not to touch your “bloodline” at all. 

That’s none of my business (lol). My stance on the matter is that if you try to get access to my music through another person, you will lose or waste something for sure. I am Jeff Buckley, that’s it. My life, my music, is very different from anyone else's. So I'm not thinking of attracting my father's fans or hippies in the same way at all.

Then why did you go out of your way to perform at Tim Buckley's tribute concert?

Uhhhhh! Every article I read about that is made into something romanticized. I'm in trouble.

But you've at least managed to reconcile your mixed feelings towards your father by appearing on the show, haven't you? Like it became a step for you to get refreshed and do your own musical activities.

I gave a quick performance instead of saying, "I want to go home early because I'm uncomfortable." In that sense, it's a step, isn't it?

Okay okay, I see. I heard you formed a band with Gary Lucas from former Captain Beefheart after that appearance.

It's a project called Gods & Monsters that lasted only a few months. We wrote almost 12 songs. "Mojo pin" and "Grace" were made with Gary then. I was the only one in that band who was directly inspired by the music after all. Then I thought I should do it solo. Well, we broke up amicably, but that's why I lost my means of making money. I booked every gig I can anyway. It was as if I’m hurting myself. So I think it was good that I was able to push myself to such a point by being alone. I've come to the conclusion that it's a waste of time and a boring life to spend on anything else.

Was the musical direction fixed when you were alone?

No, rather I was trying to let the music find me. And...I wanted to be a chanteuse. It's like a pub singer in French, you know, a singer in a cabaret or some bar like that. It's just a word for female singers, but men can be one too. I’m doing it pretty much. It's like going out close to an audience and telling a story, you know, something like a storyteller. Tell people stories and invite them on a dramatic journey, I want to do a thing like that. About roots, it would be old blues singers. Robert Johnson, Howlin' Wolf, John Lee Hooker, I've been listening to them over and over. I grew up in the lower middle class, so I can sympathize with them a lot. So I admit that I'm modeled on those people. But I just want to get the blues out of me, not just copy them.

Do you mean you grew up in an environment where you had to store blues in yourself?

Well, I'm not going to go into detail, but I can't empathize or sing without experiencing it. I can't sing a song, even a word, that I can't put my soul into.

The artists you've covered so far are Van Morrison, Leonard Cohen, Alex Chilton, they're connected on a certain line. It's kind of cult people or like that. Do you select those songs consciously?

It doesn't matter who's song it is. I did it because each moment in my life matched the song so well. For example, Leonard's "Hallelujah." One day, I was intoxicated with so much sadness, I was totally wasted after drinking whiskey and practicing this song. Right after that, I went into the gig as I was, and I was screaming like an animal. I'm singing that song with those experiences in mind. I have to be myself before the song exists.

I see. By the way, your improvisation seems to be very interesting. Compose songs suddenly, or sing on the spot inspired by the appearance of the audience who came to the gig.

Yeah, I do it often. Basically I make good use of the space. I'm the one who makes up the music, and so do the people who are in the same space, the events that are happening outside or in the news, or anything like that. It's important to exist there in the very moment. It's nonsense to have a boring joke or any meaningless conversation.

Then, please write a poem about how you feel about a weird interviewer who suddenly came from Japan.

I don’t think you’re such a weird, hmmm...I don’t know. If it's a special place like a live music club, something will come out, I guess. Then I think I'll do something when I play in Osaka. I'll do it specially for you.

Why Osaka? Does it have any special meaning?

Nah, I just thought Tokyo was too big (lol). It's hard to share moments in a big place, isn’t it?

I can’t make it to Osaka. I live in Tokyo.

Okay. I'll sing your name. And I'll recite you a poem.

No thank you, I would be embarrassed.

I’ll do it for real.

Okay, alright, Thank you. But I expected you to be a difficult and quiet person just by looking at your photos...

I talk a lot, don't I? Wow! Tell everyone, “You should be very careful, especially girls, because he's such a dope! You’ll never know what’s going to happen! Wheww!”

  I waited for the show to start after this, waited, but the audience didn’t gather much. It was about 40 people in the end. Jeff brings out a candle from the table on the darkened stage and starts to string new strings from the light. After 10 minutes of tuning, the guys behind me who were chatting and laughing over coffee went on stage. The band members. This is the way it goes all the time. But when I get caught up in the whirlpool of excitement that comes right after this, I want to think even that was an exquisite presentation.

  Is this the same guy who said "Wow" or "Wheww" while devouring Mexican food? First of all, I was overwhelmed by his presence in holding the guitar and singing "Mojo Pin" standing still. Indeed, there might have been some people who had gathered to find the image of “somebody” on him that day. But that's quite a misconception. Who was standing there was Jeff Buckley, the overwhelmingly outnumbered individual. I can't help thinking that being in the same space with him is an incredible happening for me. The reason why he held my mind until the last “Kangaroo” is, not to mention the beauty of the songs and his rich and soulful voice in them, because of Jeff’s overwhelming presence. That’s it, no doubt. I'd love to say this, too. "Wow! This guy’s show is damn heavy and you must be captivated by its beauty that you've never seen before, Whewww!"

State of Grace

The List, August 26-September 8, 1994

JEFF BUCKLEY's new album proves that he is destined for greatness. Alastair Mabbott talks to the singer/songwriter who will play one night in Scotland.

  Whipped up a full nine floors by the wind, a small plastic bag drifts past Jeff Buckley's hotel room window. He takes this as a good omen-as if the auspices weren't already favorable enough. At 27, with movie-star looks and enough raw talent and vision to overcome the tribulations that inevitably face the son of a legend, things are already looking remarkably good for him.

  Already, he's been responsible for a head-turning live solo EP. Now comes one of the year's most essential albums, Grace, which features shrewdly-chosen covers of Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah", Elkie Brooks' "Lilac Wine" and Benjamin Britten's "Corpus Christi Carol". But it's Buckley's own songs that are the heart and soul of it. The opening track, "Mojo Pin", is an instant classic, delicately-picked verses shattered by thrashed climaxes of brittle, ascending chords. Hear 'So Real" once and you'll be singing it for the rest of the week. And tracks like "Eternal Life" and "Grace" show that contemporary American rock has bitten him as deely as jazz, blues, and everything else he's absorbed in his life.

  Jeff Buckley grew up as "rootless trailer-trash" in Southern California, moving from town to town with his mother and stepfather and feeling like a misfit everywhere he went. His natural father was the late, great Tim Buckley, but Jeff, with understandable tinges of bitterness, plays this down; he only met his father once, spending nine days with him, two months before Tim's untimely death. He prefers, instead, to credit his mother with his musical backround.

  Nevertheless, hearing Jeff Buckley in full voice inevitably brings on the sense of a family tradition being kept alive. And it's not just down to the fact that both were blessed with angelic vocal cords. It's also a shared eclecticism, a respect for jazz and a taste for improvisation, a passionate struggle the voice and merge with the infinite.

  His mother never gave him lessons, he says in his rambling but engaging way, never pointed him in any particular direction. "But we always sang. It was very important to us, music. Always. There was nothing we ever really talked about. We never really talked about our relationship to it, we just lived it."

  In his teens, he recorded his own songs at home and did session chores for friends ("for grocery money"), but between the ages of sixteen and twenty he stopped singing for anyone but himself and submerged himself in bands. "I was just depressed. My life had been pretty weird."

  "I had been obsessing about being alone, and I was in a band at the time and I was in a lot of pain, and just rotting away in Los Angeles-which is pretty easy to do-and I just didn't want to die anymore. I wanted to really learn, you know, that learning that you want to get for yourself, so I just obsessed about how to do it and I would write it down, write it down, how to do it..."

  "What I was gonna do was hang out on Venice Beach, get a permit and just play and play and play and play and play...anything that anybody asked and anything I knew and anything that came into my head, even if the song turned out to be fourteen minutes."

  What he actually did, in 1991, was relocate to New York and front a band called Gods And Monsters with ex-Beefheart guitarist Gary Lucas and Bob Mould's old rhythm section. The collaboration didn't last long, and despite the excellence of the musicians involved Buckley seems not to look on it as a very significant episode. "It was important, because it showed me that everything else was a complete distraction. It was just an impetus to get me into this with all the more conviction."

  So he followed his initial instinct, setting about solo gigs in Greenwich Village and its environs, the same stomping ground that Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell had cut their teeth on.

  "I started out with a lot-a lot-of old-time Delta blues; precisely to get it out of my system, because there's a propensity for white people to do old-time blues and it sounds like complete shit. Just sounds fake. That was one thing, but the real reason was to find myself in the songs. Because the whole thing about the blues, and the reason it's so beautiful, is that it comes from a very disturbing part of American history-I don't know any part of American history that isn't disturbing-just that you speak exactly about where you are and what has happened to you. And you make it very simple and you make it groove. The poetry in the blues is very biting, ha! I just got a taste for the metaphors and the sights and the visions that you see."

  One of those gigs, at a hip Irish cafe-bar in New York in August last year, was the basis for the Live at Sin-é EP. A disappointment by his standards, but a stormer by most other people's, Sin-é was the sound one young man with a Telecaster makes when he's standing in the corner of a bar blowing minds, playing anything from his own material to songs by US hardcore band Bad Brains to Judy Garland to Cocteau Twins.

  Did his audiences get off on all these different things being thrown at them? Didn't they get restless?

  "No, not at all, because it would depend on what would come before and what would come after, 'cause it was all about the show. The shows are like dreaming, and dreams will grab anything they can to show you the movie."

  What about your dreams Jeff? Do they inspire many of these songs?

  "Of course," he says. "Sure. But...mostly, my dreams help my life.

Jeff Buckley plays La Belle Angele, Edinburgh on Tue 30.