Nothing's sacred anymore

Chicago Tribune: February 9, 1994

By Greg Kot

 Guitarist Jeff Buckley offers up his secrets in a dynamic debut

  Trudging out of a blizzard, heads fogged in by the weather, listeners found sanctuary, hot coffee and a lot more at a Wrigleyville hole in the wall called Uncommon Ground Monday.

  It was at this unlikely location, in front of a pastry counter and accompanied by the whir of a cappuccino machine, that Californian Jeff Buckley made his Chicago musical debut, and it was a stunner.

  The singer, 27 going on 17 judging from his boyish appearance, paused only to regale a hardy band of listeners with a rambling tale of his first night in a tough part of town a couple of years ago.

  It was the one moment when Buckley came up for air. Otherwise, he was a study in rapture, riding a spectacular multi-octive voice and an electric guitar from one musical peak to the next.

  The son of the gifted folk-soul singer Tim Buckley, who died of a drug overdose in 1975, Jeff Buckley shares with his father an almost shameless willingness to share his most intimate longings and secrets. His voice breaks into androgynous squeals and erotic moans as though as though possessed, and he's got lyrics to match.

  But even though the music seemed utterly spontaneous, as though it were being made up in the moment, Buckley also brought an unerring pitch and dynamic control to his performance. Clearly, he's no newcomer.

  Indeed, after moving to New York from California in 1991, Buckkley has been a fixture in the East Village coffee club scene, where he was recently signed by Columbia Records (his debut album will be released in the spring).

  Over two hours, the singer's catholic taste became readily apparent. In an original like "Eternal Life" he pushed an ancient blues riff hard, wailing in torment. Even better was "Forget Her," in which the singer rushed from whispers to falsetto pleadings over the girl who "was heartache from the moment you met her."

  In two songs associated with Edith Piaf, "Je n'en connais pas la fin" and "Hymn to Love," Buckley's tender voice was caressed by the harp-like gentleness of his guitar playing. And on Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," not just the singer but the entire room seemed lost in reverie.

  Buckley can be heard again Wednesday at Schubas, opening for Joe Henry.

Out on the edge

Chicago Tribune: November 4, 1994
By Greg Kot

  When Chicagoans first encountered the music of Jeff Buckley face to face, he was sitting with an electric guitar in front of a pastry counter at a Rogers Park coffee shop last winter, slipping into the mystic despite the whir of a cappuccino machine and a blizzard outside.

  Buckley's astonishing voice, with daring falsetto leaps and fractured, jazzlike phrasing, and equally adventuresome taste in cover material-Edith Piaf, Leonard Cohen, Big Star, Nina Simone-made a startling impression. But it was only a beginning.

  Buckley recruited a band from his Lower East Side base in New York and within a month had them in a recording studio, banging out his first album, "Grace," for Columbia Records. A few months ago, Buckley stormed through town again, this time with his new recruits, and the music became even more expansive and risky. On Tuesday and Wednesday, they return to play the Green Mill, normally a jazz club but well-suited to Buckley's rarefied musicality.

  "I like to play places where people actually go, someplace whete I teally have to deliver, with no escape," Buckley says. "My personal aesthetic is to be affected directly by everything about what you're seeing...

  "It's what I like when I go see a movie or a play. I want to be freaked out, I want to be ripped apart, I want to see something that feeds and replenishes, or that totally sucks the life out of you. I don't mind being dashed on the rocks."

  That's where Buckley found himself a few years ago, adrift in California. The son of mercurial jazz-folk singer Tim Buckley, who overdosed fatally in 1975, Jeff Buckley had met his father only once but found himself always compared to him.

  "Moving to the East Side from California was the most extreme and successful self-rescue operation I'd ever implemented," he says. "Otherwise I was going to rot from the inside. It was do or die. I've always done music, been in bands, but at the time I was staring at the walls, with no hope and no confidence. New York is stinking with industrial waste, but it's also stinking with purpose."

  After a brief stint with guitarist Gary Lucas in Gods and Monsters, Buckley began forging a reputation as a solo act, getting "to a place where I could let my deepest eccentricities out. By that, I mean I just see things a little differently and I express myself a little differently and I think it's because I haven't been in one place for very long (in four years, Buckley attended three high schools). So I was seen from my childhood as hyperactive, homosexual, weird, insane, obnoxious, offensive, funny...It's a tremendous point of pain, my inability to relate to the status quo."

  But Buckley learned to turn that into a strength, finding a line of soul that connected everything from Edith Piaf to Robert Plant, and exploring that connection in his loosely structured music, which has the power of rock but the feel and intimacy of acoustic jazz.

  "I've always been more a party to girls' record collections, because boys tend to like their one thing, whether it's Slayer and the odd Cannibal Corpse album, or whatever, while with girls you get the soundtrack from 'Days of Heaven,' an old Styx album, Siouxsie and the Banshees, something they feel," Buckley says. "Music is something that makes you feel and girls have always been a bit better about knowing their emotions. Boys know who, what and where about all their albums, which is fun, but it's mostly a distraction and most boys I know play like that. Fortunately, once in a while you see some weirdos that get through. That's the best music."

Chicago Tribune Quotes

Jeff as quoted in the June 20, 1997 Chicago Tribune from an interview done shortly after an Uncommon Ground show February 7 or 8, 1994.
By Greg Kot
Submitted by Ana

"It's all about getting to a place where I can let my deepest eccentricities out, I just see things a little differently and express myself a little differently and I think it's because I haven't been in one place for very long. So I was seen from my childhood as hyperactive, homosexual, weird, insane, obnoxious, offensive, funny. . . . It's a tremendous point of pain, my inability to relate to the status quo.
  "Moving to the East Side from California was the most extreme and successful self-rescue operation I'd ever implemented, Otherwise I was going to rot from the inside. It was do or die. I've always done music, been in bands, but at the time I was staring at the walls, with no hope and no confidence. New York is stinking with industrial waste, but it's also stinking with purpose.
  "I am a storyteller, lounge singer, I am the entertainer, I am the rock star, I am gay, I am wrong, I am there for the story to go down, the cocktail host-shaman, the little romantic chanteuse wanna-be. All the men hated my Judy Garland jacket (trying to explain the cover of Grace).
  "Sometimes it's life-affirming to say you want to kill yourself, because I've felt that way, that I'm useless, a withered old flower, but there's something murkily beautiful about living this life, and to recognize it and sing about it is tremendously nutritious. . . . That's why when I go see a movie or a play or a concert I want to be ripped apart, to witness something that totally sucks the life out of you. I want to be dashed on the rocks. That's what I'm going for when I make music."

Pathetic, Galvanizing

Buckley's Show Sobering For All But Its Vocalist

November 10, 1994|By Greg Kot, Tribune Rock Critic.

Jeff Buckley didn't think much of his performance Tuesday at the Green Mill.

But whereas most performers might keep such feelings to themselves, Buckley loudly proclaimed his dissatisfaction from the outset: "I'm drunk, and I (stink). . . . This is a total gyp. . . . I feel so cheap."

What started out as seemingly good-natured, self-deprecating humor became more twisted and spiteful as the night wore on, finally concluding with Buckley announcing, "Anybody who feels tonight has been a lie, I promise to play another show for you."

All this because of a bottle of tequila downed before the show, apparently in response to a phone call. The story involves a record company, a magazine story and MTV, and Buckley doubtlessly would have filled in all the details if pressed by an indulgent audience. Along the way, however, his music got lost.

Based on an extraordinary series of club and coffeehouse concerts in Chicago earlier this year, both solo and with a band, Buckley (the son of the late folk-jazz singer Tim Buckley) established himself as a riveting performer and daring vocalist. His music, at once rapturous and fragile, meanders like a stream rather than following the verse-chorus pipeline, the singer beholden to the moment.

As routinely as most performers clear their throats, Buckley puts his emotions on display for all to examine. He sings softly in a sobbing falsetto, seethes through gritted teeth and warbles like an Indian qawwali singer. A mixture of awkwardness and grace, Buckley seemed almost too sincere for his own good when he told the audience, "My whole night will be spent trying to feel it while I make love to you."

The best thing that could have happened was for Buckley to shut up and sing, and that he finally did midway through a performance marred by aborted songs and monologues. But with a tremulous solo version of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," he crawled from the wreckage and rediscovered the music.

For the rest of the set, Buckley and his band set about transforming the tension and self-loathing into something rare and beautiful. If they didn't always succeed, it was fascinating to watch nonetheless.

Mick Grondahl's bass often played counterpoint melodies to the singer's voice, while the guitars of Buckley and Michael Tighe shimmered and spiraled, and drummer Matt Johnson navigated the surging tempos.

Buckley repeated "Grace," which he broke off early in the set, and then fused "The Way Young Lovers Do" with "Lover, You Should've Come Over" into a passionate, ebb-and-flow suite.

Pathetic one minute, galvanizing the next, Buckley refuses to hide behind the mask of professionalism. Even when he stumbles, he's something to see.