The soul poet

Marabo Magazin, July, 1995

Written and submitted by Ines Philipp

Translated by me

One of the most exciting singers, songwriters, guitarists and performers of our days, the son of the legendary US folk-psychedelic Tim Buckley, gives a guest performance in NRW-Ruhrgebietler unfortunately have to drive 100 kilometers.

  Somehow this Jeff Buckley just won't let you go. For days you have this image in front of your eyes, the way he speaks, moves, the gestures of his hands and those eyes. Somewhere. To anyone...Who only? And then on Saturday evenings on the third channel there is this old film, "The Ship of the Dead" (1959) by B. Traven. The longer you look, the more Jeff Buckley pushes himself in front of the main character's face.

  Doesn't anyone notice that Jeff Buckley looks strikingly similar to the young Hotte Buchholz and draws parallels to the rebel from back then in "Die Halbstarken" from 1956? No, everyone is just talking about Tim Buckley. Sure, he was Jeff's father. Yes, he is cult, because he died early (on June 29, 1975 at the age of 35 from an overdose of heroin and amphetamines) and released nine albums "Folk-Jazz-Blues-Experiments with psychedelic white Soul" in eight years or so. But who here today knows Tim Buckley (and has one of these nine LPs at home?)-and what does that have to do with Jeff Buckley? In 1995, not Tim, but Jeff Buckley is cult. His five-track EP "Live at Sin-é" and his debut album "Grace" caused some uproar in professional circles and among the public in 1993 and 1994.

  Jeff Buckley is such a gifted songwriter and singer that it just rips your soul out. Others just sing-Jeff screams and pleads and whimpers and cajoles in a vocal virtuosity that blows you away. The man there on stage lives and loves and leads his songs with an urgency that leaves no one untouched. He himself is exhausted every time after his concerts and is unresponsive for hours, he says. And because that's the case, there must be some dramatic story behind it.

  Already, Buckley Jr, who lives in New York, is considered difficult, to talk to and in general. True, he does not talk to every journalist standing on the packed interview schedule, yet will only talk to him about his father. Jeff, 29, is more than tired of it: "The stuff about my dad is more of interest from a journalistic perspective than for myself." Jeff had known his father for barely a week. His parents had already separated before Jeff was born. The boy was eight when his father died: there he had seen him for a week on tour just two months before. So there is hardly any question of getting to know each other and influencing each other. "There are other people who have been more important in my life-but a workholic mother and a grandmother in Panama just aren't as media savvy."

  Sometimes he does go in for his "poor-little-scared-orphan-of-the-last-of-the-Buckleys" image, probably more for peace of mind. Sure, he moved around a lot his acting mother, from one place to another; nowhere was he at home for long. Nevertheless. Jeff wasn't one of those lost street kids or hiding behind computers and self-pity. His childhood was that of a "normal" American boy, lost in vast cornfields, putting a penny on the railroad tracks, playing soccer (at the AYSO Soccer Club), and afraid of the old lady down the street.

  And that's it in terms of drama and mystery in his life. Because of his extroverted introversion, people interpret a lot of things into him that are not really the case. It is probably more our own dark sides that find morbid thoughts and gloomy images more exciting than a sensitive soul-poet with a clever head. Jeff Buckley does not need to be saved. He is not standing on any precipice. "Looking into the past is an enormous waste of the gene pool. The present is all that matters." Does he sometimes think about death or suicide? "Yes. Often. Very often. But differently. I don't think it's wise or even heroic to live your life with emotional cancer eating you up from the inside. Life has too many gifts in store to reach out and understand. I don't want to be one of those wandering dead people. But I have my melancholy moments, oh yes, I have the great world-weariness in me, sometimes." Who doesn't?

It is these feelings that Jeff Buckley knows how to charismatically translate into music-so that he fully grips each and every one of them to the core. That's a rare gift and yes, maybe he got that from his father. But a piece like "Mojo Pin" or "Grace" was not written by Tim Buckley...

8.7. Köln, E-Werk; 12. 7. Bielefeld, Hechelei