Jeff Buckley: Without Tears Or Irony

The Space Age Bachelor: Issue 4, Winter/Spring 1995 (released Dec. 94)

By Jason Anderson

Submitted by Steven

  All of the press has been written (well, almost all of it) and the Jeff Buckley Hype Machine has settled down after a year of frenzied activity. And although it's been rightly acclaimed, Jeff Buckley's Grace (Columbia/Sony) doesn't quite reach the heights it promised, largely because it was recorded prematurely, when Jeff Buckley's band was just weeks old. As anyone who's seen Jeff with his full rock warrior ensemble since (even if the other guys seem to have drafted in order to pump up the collective cute factor), that inexperience is nowhere to be found onstage. The swoops from angelic ecstasies to monstous guitar damage that sometimes sound strained on Grace are now pure magic. The guy's so golden it's scary.

  The glazed eyes and expressions of reverence among the largely college-aged audience at a late October gig in a church in Toronto proved the point. Clearly, Buckley's becoming the object of the attentions of all the youths who feel cheated over missing the '60s, for better or worse.

  I envy his talent but I don't envy his position. Jeff Buckley has had to grow up in public over a year of other people's expectations, of journalists either mentioning or not mentioning the legacy of his space-folkie dad Tim (thereby heaping the hopes of Buckley Sr.'s audience on poor Jeff's shoulders), of the prerequisite Rolling Stone piece that reeked of condescension. But Buckley has gained something-an understanding of how NOT to become just another product.

  In a phone interview from New York, he says he's reacted to the big Jeff Buckley Sell with "equal parts apprehension and the most sophisticated humor that I can dredge up. For one thing, it's not a good time to be asleep about it. I have to ask myself, 'How do you deal with this and still be honest?'"

  It's a sediment I recently heard echoed by director John Waters-he claimed to be done with kitch since his trash is now mainstream. The burning question for both Waters and Buckley is now that everything's hip, how do you convince people you're being honest? How do you say, "This is what it is," and have them believe you?

  "That's an act of defiance now, to say 'I'm not kidding,'" says Buckley. "What I love about John Waters' films is that he he's just being honest, I think he's got the most unfortunate existence now. People say, 'Oh well, he's just doing established trash circa Russ Meyers, ect.,' or, 'Oh, he's got the death angle now. That's genius.' Rather than this being an honest expression. We're spoiled on this because we're the TV generation.

  "Did you see Natural Born Killers?" Buckley asks. "Eloquent, that's the only word for it. I don't own a TV, but Monique, my good friend's wife, does and I wanted to throw it out the window after seeing it. It's about people in the world who live their lives according to pure fiction. And TV is fiction, even the news. But what you don't taste, you don't know-you have no real experience of anything. That's the deficit. People say that our culture is wack, and why is is that? Because you don't do anything yourself."

  And one reason why Buckley has stirred up such excitement is because he is doing it himself, in the tradition of the musical ARTIST. And onstage, he's at his most beautiful when he isn't something someone down the line can drop into a high-concept project-he's beautiful when he just IS.

  "I do try to be things sometimes," Buckley says. "I try to be a hero or a lover or some impenetrable jewel boy or even ugly. But most times, I wanna speak my heart, just like John Waters does," he says. "John Waters' heart just happened to be vinyl."