The Empire Of The Senses

Les Inrockuptibles, June, 1995
By JD Beauvallet
Submitted by Ana
Translated by me

Between intimate wounds and dubious memories, Jeff Buckley can not be sorted, both authentically tourtured and annoyingly bold. At the time of the return in triumph-Olympia and gold record-visit a secret garden ignored by breaks and speech: the discs of a marvel child who would like to be his father, Miles Davis and Jim Morrison at the same time.

Miles Davis So What

Music forever associated with Los Angeles, my childhood, my discovery of Miles...I started around 1984 with his quintets, with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock, whom I listened to 24 hours a day. fascinated by the sound, it was the first time a jazz musician spoke to me so much: I was certain that his trumpet was his voice. I immediately felt his sprawling love for music... I began to read, to listen, to look at everything that concerned him, dazzled by his elegance, his innocence, his anger. The funny thing is that I feel that he learned his art en route, that he began to record being a very approximate musician. On Koko, it's not even he who plays but Dizzy Gillespie, because Miles could not. But while the pros played in his place, he did not miss a beat, he was fiercely determined to find his own way. I am in love with this period of bop, by the legends surrounding 42nd Street. Even though he has never stated them himself, I have taken up many of his doctrines: seeking excellence in other musicians, pushing them to give their best and, above all, being pitilessly demanding with oneself. Without Miles, I would never have had my entry card into jazz, I would have stayed at the entrance. He invited me and then, while extinguishing, he killed the jazz, which remained only furniture music, without odor and without taste. A jazz without art and without danger, which has abandoned its physical side and the contact with the street. Keith Jarrett said that Miles was always trying to get past his music, that he let it go for fun. At my level on stage, I too like to be myself and someone else at the same time. My music has inherited its harmonies, its economy of means. Keith Jarrett also said that Miles had beginner ambitions, that he always remained a novice, sounding like a novice. I can not sing like a child. I sing like a woman.

Piaf I regret nothing

So romantic, so French that it could become disgusting. Yet, with her, we feel that nothing is simulated. Every emotion becomes epic because she saw the slums, death close up. There is such a weight in this voice, like a flower that would try to break under pavement. I have always had an attraction for these characters who invite the tragedy to their table, which come from troubled waters, forbid comfort and ease. For me, Edith Piaf is a junkie who has transformed the outside world into a syringe needle and injected it in large doses. When you discover it, like I did at 16, it's a shock. I, too, had a terrible need for fuel, but California had nothing left to offer me. For a little white Californian, such an intense passion for Piaf is not the best way to fit in...No one with who to share these emotions for hundreds of miles around. The first French people I met disappointed me a lot: rich kids who, like me, were taking music lessons in a very poor school in Los Angeles. They spent their lives talking about Coltrane and Bird and intellectualizing everything, smoking and playing too much for my taste. Fortunately, at Willows High School in Northern California, I met a French woman who had grown up in Algeria, who changed my image of France. We took guitar lessons together. Her voice and the rhythm of her broken English fascinated me. And then, whenever she made a mistake on the handle, she had a little way of sticking her tongue out that was irresistible. Me, it was more like "God damn shit!", but she was this delicate little piece of tongue. I fell in love with her and started to stick out my tongue too (smile)...I only discovered Paris last year, and here I am playing at the Olympia, like Piaf or the Velvet Underground (silence)...such an honor, just terrifying. How do I follow Piaf? I don't understand why I'm successful in France. Maybe because the French love the underlying stories and that's what I give them. There's a whole novel waiting to be told. They love the poetry and lyricism of a certain idea of ​​America.

Led Zeppelin Going to California

(He sings at the top of his lungs)...When I was a kid, this album totally blew my mind. All I had to do was listen to it and life was reborn in me. I loved the depth and ferocity of the sound, even more than the songs. But this one proudly defends its place in my heart...It was the perfect blues for a little white boy, moving music like never before. Even without drugs, their music has an unmatched aura and ambience. For guitars, for such a dense production, there's only the English, from Led Zeppelin to Johnny Marr. There is mystery, romanticism in every riff. My first joint when I was eight was listening to Led Zeppelin. For years, they were the soundtrack to every second of my life. When I was walking around with my half-brother Kieth, while I was skateboarding, when I got lost in the woods, it was with a song of them in mind. I remember the endless baseball games where I stood planted on my base while listening internally their fourth album. One of the layers of my epidermis is called Led Zeppelin. My mother's husband listened to their records all the time, he used to play them to me in the car on the way to my grandmother's house...At school, no one was allowed to listen to them, which made me even more of a curious beast...This music was too adult, too weird. I've learned so much from Led Zeppelin, the magic of group work for example: how ordinary guys become geniuses when they get in touch with each other. Exactly the case with Prince, whose talent is dwindling as he cuts himself off from the outside world, he refuses to share his art. Without my band, without the support, the breath, I'd be lost. I never thought of music as a dictatorship. No one is the sole owner of his talent. I'm only here as a smuggler: I get songs, I pass them on. That's all. I don't mean to interrupt, to disturb...It's not my fault if these songs that go through me have such an effect on me...On stage, there's nothing I can do about it: I'm carried away by the music. The first time I saw a video of me in concert, I was terribly disturbed. It's like filming my penis for two hours.

Hank Williams Lost Highway

The song that I dared to slaughter...For years, it had become my road song. A hymn for anyone who ran away, put everything down and got lost. There is in these words the very familiar feeling of waking up each morning in an unknown place, with people met drifting randomly. When one has depended, for their survival, on the troubled characters that haunt bars and saloons, we understand Lost Highway. The counter romances, the intrigues of drunkards...It's in bars that people are revealed. The Lost Highway characters, these drifting guys, I've met them all. I belong to this song. I understand perfectly when he warns neophytes against this lifestyle. I went there, I had bad meetings, I followed bad influences. You need a trunk if you want to depend on, for your survival, strangers, if we need them for certain things, certain substances...We must be ready to follow them into infamous streets to finally dig up what we need, to see them go away forever with your money (silence)...It's like living in wartime-but at the same time, it's a danger that imposes a little freedom. However, I can not help but live on this side of the fence: that's where I breathe, I like the human functioning of this underworld, the way people rise above the reality, refuse the comfort of an organized life, a safe bond, a job in the offices of a multinational corporation. I like the initiatory rites of this ambiance, I always felt at home there-more than at my mother's. I have never been afraid, because I have always been surrounded by people much older than me since I was a kid. I like to be left to myself, that there is nobody there to protect me. I do not even trust my own friends. I am perfectly alone, without witnesses, without safeguards and it suits me perfectly. When one is so alone, there is no question of feeling shame, modesty, inhibitions, complexes-all these ridiculous emotions. You can get married to sadness, make love to sadness, just like Hank Williams. From the age of 10, I was attracted to this dark and slow world, but I waited 13 years to start attending it. That's where I found that name: Jeff Buckley. For the civil status, I was Scott Moorehead. But that name belonged to the past: it was that of my stepfather, the name of a man with whom I had nothing to do with physiologically. And then that name, Scott, I was tired of hearing him complaing: "Scott do this, do not do that"...It was the name of a little boy who was constantly scolded. I needed a new identity to totally detach myself from this first life. I thought of all the names: Greg, Steve, Richard, Gunboy, Godzilla (laughs)...I needed a radical change, to become someone else, to simply become someone.

Leonard Cohen Hallelujah

(He pouts)...His instrumentations are sometimes crazy. All the songs he recorded after Songs From A Room remind me of these little girls dressed by their mom: very cute and perfectly ridiculous. Leonard's arrangements have that ridiculous side. And yet, I know people who, without him, would not have friends, would not survive. The real fans have always amazed me by their sect: I have always felt they despise me, the fan of the last minute, who has never masturbated naked in the sun while listening to such songs of the Master-Teachers or The Stranger Song...he must be the best lover in the galaxy, which makes me crazy with jealousy...A gifted, dirty lover, probably diplomatic and attentive. Cohen is Marlene Dietrich, while Dylan is Little Richard. Even when he sings, he can not help but use his appalling power of seduction, his magnetism. He has a unique talent for making poetic and surreal everyday life-the most difficult way of writing. Yet, on Hallelujah, I much prefer the lyrics rewritten by John Cale for the compilation I'm Your Fan. This is the version I picked up, not Cohen's. I would like so much to write a song that could move him. It was at this price that I would agree to meet him: so that I feel less inferior. "Oh yes, hello, Jeff, thank you for picking up one of my songs." But it's impossible to compete because he comes from a time when we still had time. The time to experiment, the time to live, the time to have a real sex life, the time to have a confrontation with pleasure...Today, we are too overwhelmed with distractions, amusements, fears...We came back to 1961, in ignorance and conservatism, we wait for the Beatles to finally start a sexual revolution. We have been so hurt in our flesh that we consume the culture frantically. When Leonard was 30, he did not check his watch all the time. His detachment and his tranquility were still possible. I did not meet people as viscerally a music fan as I was: I saw all kinds of bands, listened to millions of songs, and yet I've seen only one Leonard Cohen. He has a unique and sexual way to penetrate me with his songs. It's his goal: to fuck again and again.

The Doors Roadhouse Blues

At 16, I was sure the Doors were a common band for bikers. The Brechtian and poetic dimension escaped me completely: I saw only a band of old rockstars of the sixties. Then suddenly, I stopped seeing them as a trademark, a multinational American memory, I fell in love. It's Break On Through that made me give in, that made me tolerate, then love Jim Morrison, that irresistible brat, that too charming bastard, that bunch of muscles that imagined himself Rimbaud. At once perfect and grotesque, solid and pathetic. It was the excess that made him so sexy, so sensual. I'm so enclosed within myself, so I admire his extrovert side. He made it acceptable for American hicks perversion, darkness, sadness, the fall of inhibitions, debauchery, ridicule...We should not treat the Morrison myth lightly. We should immerse ourselves in it, see it as a model of life, venerate it, loot it. So much bullshit is told about these legendary rock deaths-and I'm in a good position to talk about it. So many cowards need artists to live, by proxy, danger, death, darkness...Jim Morrison attracted such feelings, he was the perfect emissary. People around me push me to excesses and they have the impression of living through me. It's so romantic and so comfortable to send others to war in your place.

Dead Kennedys Holiday In Cambodia 

Good old Jello Biaffra...I would have loved to see them on stage at the time, but I lived too far from Los Angeles. I was stuck in my neighborhood, condemned to listen to my own records of Sex Pistols, Social Distortion, Black Flag, Minor Threat...I lived near Anaheim, California, in the middle of nowhere, when I saw a TV show warning American parents of this new threat: the punks. I thought "Finally a threat, finally the forces of evil!" Despite my passion for the music, I quickly decided to keep only the groups that knew how to write-I can not help but look for this quality. The Germs fascinated me. But I was not a punk: I was so opposed to everyone, so reclusive that I refused to share anything with anyone. I refused to participate in anything collective. I was worse than a pariah: a non-person. A zero, nonexistent. All these punks at school, I already knew them: they were, before that big, dirty dicks and their new image did not fundamentally change anything. It was not a new generation but a recycling of the same mediocrity. Yet, I loved the songs, the din, the ethics. Punk rock taught me to refuse bullshit, uselessness. The ethics of these stupid hardcore groups-especially not learning to play-is a very narrow vision of punk. All these new punk bands that have a hit in America are appallingly conservative, dogmatic, and chain-produced. How can a movement born to kick the ass of the establishment dare to become a new establishment? The real punks are Sonic Youth and Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. Not The Offspring or Green Day. I will certainly not receive ethical lessons from brats who grew up listening to Billy Joel. Me, I want to progress, learn while keeping in mind that none of my solos, none of my sounds can be useless. That's the lesson of punk. That and the death of the gurus, the death of the myths. Jesus Christ could enter this room, I'm sure he would smell sweaty. Jim Morrison could enter this room, begin to talk and I would say "Jim, big pile of shit, stop your bullshit for a bit, you make us tired." This is the legacy of the punks: there are no more heroes but just human beings.

Cocteau Twins Sugar Hiccup

Together they have achieved something very rare and precious: creating music without origins, opening a new breach. Unbelievable songs for a guy who plays guitar with only one finger...Liz has invented her own language, which I don't understand any more than Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn's. And yet, I worship both of them. I've never met anyone as hard and ruthless on herself as she is. That's why we get along so well. For me, the Cocteau Twins are as important in the history of music as the Doors. Except that, for once, a group is important without any of its members having an overflowing ego. I've never heard such innocence, such humane music.  It's the melodies that separate the men from the boys, the artists from the clowns. And for that, she really has a charm of her own. I told her, but she refuses to acknowledge any talent. I call her mentally retarded when she tells me that (smile)...She'd want me to write songs for her, but I'd never be up to it. I love the way Liz lets her strangeness speak, never restrains herself, never listens to reason. Even if they don't belong to the general public yet, these records will remain. I distinctly remember stumbling upon it in a Tower Records store that had Carolyn's Fingers playing in the background. A shock. That's how I find out what's new: by leaving it to chance, which places on my path wonders such as Stereolab, the Palace Brothers, Beck or Shudder to Think, amazing melodists...Shudder To Think are the Orson Welles of new rock-and I'm the Ed Wood.

Nirvana Come As You Are

Kurt Cobain was so funny, I miss him a lot. I never met him, I was only touched from far away by the Nirvana tornado and yet I admired him. Because we had in common a passion for the Melvins. They had such good taste...Since then I met Dave Grohl and Chris Novoselic and I was stunned by their gentleness, their kindness, their availability, their simplicity. Just good guys who loved to have fun playing rock. Apart from punk rock, everything bored them to death. Except for potatoes: Chris can talk about them with passion, he has plenty in his garden. He explained everything to me. Kurt Cobain's problem is that he never supported himself, he grew up in hatred of himself-both on his part and that of his mother. He was conditioned for his suicide. Even though I also lived in the streets, I always had a house where I could come back, people to confide in. He was born so naive, so much in need of love that his parents should have been his best friends. But parents are too often just mom and dad, give lessons and do not understand this terrible need for affection and understanding. I have always tried to have adult relationships with my parents: I did not want this ridiculous link between the child and the mother's breast, but quickly move on to the next step...I had already admitted that my father no longer existed, he had gone: he was already a possible confidant for less. When I see what happened to Kurt Cobain, I have a feeling of unfairness: there was not the slightest difference between what he said, what his music represented, and what he was everyday . Perfect match. And the pain of being used, of being a junkie, of hating himself and being a public figure has misplaced him: he did not even know that he had succeeded, that he was the truth itself. It would have been easier to hide behind lies. I feel that adults would screw up my life if I let them into my secrets.

Jeff Buckley Last Goodbye

Since last year, I haven't been able to write a song. Always on tour, no way to take the slightest break. My muscles have tightened and the frustration is becoming physical...It's hard to tour in such a heterosexual country when you're just a group of little fags...I feel cheap and useless. I have to start writing again (silence)...When I see myself, I'm ashamed, I'm just a puppet dragged from room to room. But these endless tours were my decision. I can't even stay at home anymore, my system craves these sleepless nights, these adrenaline rushes...I am an employee of a multinational company that I owe hours of work for a salary. These tours are my long-term investment. 

I'm too proud to be sold on the strength of a TV ad. So I go on tour, everywhere, nonstop. It represents me better, it sells me better than a magazine insert. Besides, it's a physical need. Revenge? No, not yet. The people who put obstacles in my way still don't know that I make records. I can kill myself tomorrow in a plane crash or by following the wrong people down the street without having been successful enough to exact my revenge. So I keep on working, as if I were an employee in a garage, in order to buy my independence, my own business. My job is song trafficking. I receive them, I sell them. With the inevitable drawbacks that go with it: I never asked to become a sex symbol, but it's part of the job. That doesn't make me particularly sexy. I still don't like myself.

Life Is Elsewhere

Les Inrockuptibles, February, 1995
By Gilles Tordjman
Submitted by Niella
Translated by me

Awakened by European rumor, America discovers in Jeff Buckley a new prodigal son. Grace's archangel does not feel any nostalgia for the California where he was born. Fatherless son, John Lackland, he can aspire to wider horizons. In the meantime, an account of the capture of Los Angeles.

November 22, 1994. "Spending a night at Hotel Mondrian is like spending a night in a museum," repeatedly looped the internal television channel devoted to self-promotion. Designed in the style of a Mondrian canvas, full of gray, steel and marble, the palace boasts a hanging of three hundred original works: Calder, Vasarely, that kind of thing . During the last earthquake, the Mondrian remained standing. There is no justice. It is 12 pm when Jeff Buckley appears at the bar. On the coffee table is the latest issue of Rolling Stone which saw "the future of rock": REM, Meat Puppets, Porno For Pyros and others. Jeff Buckley was given an untagged photo. "I do not do much of that, and if Rolling Stone could decide the future of rock, that would be the case. The American music press as a whole is not very interesting, except for Creem. As elsewhere, it is the small magazines, resulting from the alternative movement, which are the most engaging. They are very pleasant to read in the bathroom. But what does "alternative" mean?" He sweeps the room with its obvious luxury, the deep black sofas, the atrocious little low-voltage lights, and smiles. "To destroy this room would really be alternative rock."

He is allowed everything

1 pm. On Sunset Boulevard, the car slides quietly. The future of rock makes an excellent driver, and a very zealous tour guide. We cross places of various importance, here, the studio where Nilsson recorded ("I grew up with his records"); there, the Guitar Center where a lot of dreamy guitars are made. Girls looking like the girls pictured in Calendar girls, are seen in big convertibles, glancing at the males in convertibles. None escapes the driver's lust. This guy has a stunning charm. He is allowed to do anything: be vulgar with grace, friendly with indifference, funny with depth, mocking without acrimony. He jokes, makes different voices, acts silly, gets angry for laughs. A slightly magnificent  winner, he attends to his youth. As he drives to the places where his childhood came from, no nostalgia dominates him. "In New York, where I've lived since 1990, I sometimes regret little things: driving, the sun, a kind of nonchalance peculiar to California. When I'm here, my skin is more supple, it has more radiance. but I will never come back here. Over there, the contact is easier, the people are more loyal. there is a proximity between people. All I have to do is lean out of my window to see if my friends are around. Here, there is permanent mistrust, we look at each other, we evaluate each other. It is extremely difficult to have social relationships. Everything is subject to the power and money you earn. You already have to have connections to meet other people." How do people meet under these conditions? The answer is: "They don't meet."

First bachelor apartment 

2 pm. A city of classes, built on the unique staging of consumerist domination, Los Angeles quickly admits to being repressed. As soon as you leave Hollywood Boulevard and its stupidly armed sidewalks, the streets are much poorer. It is in one of them, at the intersection of Yucca Street, that the Buckley house, the first bachelor apartment, is located. An unattractive building where the corridors distributed around a dark patio guarantee almost total absence of privacy. It is not enough for the poor to be poor, they must also see each other as poor. We also live happily in all the places that misfortune invents. Jeff Buckley mechanically searches the tenant list for a known name, but to no avail. Knowing that the building is still standing is enough consolation. Near the parking lot, an Italian transvestite was working with some success. He left, too. A few blocks away, we arrive at the Magic Hotel on Franklin Avenue. The seemingly ordinary motel takes its name from the neighbourhood of the Magic Club, a kind of baroque castlet where old retired illusionists who were once famous find themselves. A few meters away, another motel housed Janis Joplin's final overdose. "I worked for three years at the Magic Hotel, I was a bit of a handyman, I had to be polite to everyone. Showbiz people, the mafia were coming down here. There was also an old Sufi man waiting for death. One day he slipped in his shower and broke the window. There was blood everywhere. It's probably the most dramatic thing that's ever happened here. Otherwise, ordinarily, we had to deal with all those who had abused a little coke." Work, write, move, dream of a Prometheus future behind the counter of a motel: live. Much further, on the heights of the Hollywood Hills, there is still this studio no bigger than a hotel room, at 3720 Oakshire Drive where, for two years, he battled depression by writing Eternal Life and Last Goodbye. It was in 1988. The past is a journey with no charge. There's still Anaheim-where we will not go-and the tasty burrittos of the Poquito Mas- where Frank Black has a habit of worsening his cholesterol. The soundcheck hour is approaching, the tension is rising. We're going back to the drawing board. Money is proven in a multitude of flashy villas. An insulting sun crushes all that.

3:30 pm at Luna Park, 665 Robertson Boulevard. Litany of flight cases carried in the half-darkness, guitars tuned, jacks taped to the ground. A theory of intermediaries is active in the bays, manager, road-manager, product manager, guitar manager, cable and spoon manager, sous-chefs of all kinds justifying their existence by testing their mutual powers. It's because Jeff Buckley's European (French?) success has shaken up the American apathy a little. With the help of economic realism, we convinced ourselves that we might have the next big thing with him. Hence a rather caricatural eagerness to complicate what is simple, to multiply the problems that are not, to cut schedules to the minute, in order to once again affirm the unbeatable proffessionnalism of the professionals of the profession on this side of the civilized world. Ritually, Jeff Buckley hangs out, breathes the atmosphere of the deserted club, soaks up an atmosphere to come. In a few moments, he is on stage. With a good exterminating angel smile, he lets clear and violent sounds, as beautiful as disasters, burst forth. Three pieces later, the case is in the bag. The cars go back to the radio where the group has to play live.

Sometimes alive, sometimes dead

6:30 pm Modern Rockline, Ventura Boulevard, Sherman Oaks. American Music Club, who are scheduled to play after Jeff in the same program and will perform tonight at the Roxy, are prowling around. Seen sleeping on a couch, Mark Eitzel falls in our arms: "Hey guys, what the hell are you doing here?" Good guy. We discuss everything and nothing, Mark always looks overwhelmed by life or the absence of something a little serious to put in his throat. After rehearsing a good hour to the maximum of his abilities, for the pleasure, Jeff takes a five-minute break before the live performance. "This Mark Eitzel is really someone," he says, "but rather like a coward. I don't know if he likes me a lot." Think again, dear Jeff. He gave us your eulogy less than a month ago. "No kidding? I'm really happy about that." The atmosphere relaxes. The bassist from Americain Music Club explains very seriously that his great ambition is to remove more and more strings to his bass, in reaction to the crazy slappers. He plays on three strings and does not despair of doing even less. Everyone laughs heartily as they read the lyrics of Jackyl's latest album, a kind of serious Spinal Tap. It is 8 pm when the band starts playing "So Real", repeated a good dozen times before. But, as if everyone sensed that something special could happen, the studio filled up. Something special happens. Like a gap between these guys so young, messing around, but terribly attentive to each other, and the music of a monsterous beauty that escapes from the control monitors. In the moment that follows, the joke takes over. We put the listeners' questions on the air. Lea plays the smart one by giggling like a little girl: "Oh Jeff, you're so fantastic, amazing...Uh, are you married?" Felice plays the intellectual role: "What inspires you, what is your writing process?" Jeff responds very kindly "Well, that depends. Sometimes I'm alive, sometimes I'm dead. Everything you are, even what you are ashamed of, must appear in writing, including things that are ridiculous or unimportant. And always write from your daily environment, never use ready-made formulas." There are many always and never in his sentences.

9:30 pm at Luna Park, 665 Robertson Boulevard. Brenda Kahn's band goes on stage. Disserting topic: how can such a cataclysmically pretty girl play such a big double? The hicks accompanying her compete for the super-heavyweight title and finish in a tie. All the cheesiest shots will be played, from the predictable drum break to the funkiest pseudo-funky solo. At the end of the set, the guitarist who makes rock 'n' roll poses will leave the room with his briefcase. The following concert is a special experience. There is something definitively terrifying in the way Jeff Buckley is acting through the music, as if it goes through him. Not a look at the instruments, the eyes look at a very distant point beyond the club's walls. Mick Grondahl and Michael Tighe don't move,  letting the sound storm pass through. Extreme tension allows extreme freedom: twice, the improvised introductions will extend beyond several minutes. New sounds are born, flexible and sumptuous layers that make you forget all the great orchestras of the world. Scott Walker has been right to hide in his bunker for three years.

On the same peaks as Elllington

November 23, 11 am, Sunset Boulevard. Los Angeles has its place in Pigalle, less the little women. Around the Guitar Center, some more secret stalls, like Valdez's, exhibit extremely rare instruments that, taken together, could pleasantly tell the whole story of American music: Gibson's harp guitar, tenor four-string guitars or ukuleles from the 1920s, oversized super-400s, Dan Armstrong in plexiglass, Martin 00, Gretsch unknown to the battalion. Contrary to what some people think, it is not entirely indifferent that Jeff Buckley is, moreover, a singular guitarist: "For me, music is intimately linked to the guitar, it's normal that I try to explore all its possibilities. However, I have never tried to be weird. If I have always been passionate about different tunings, it is because of the frustration I felt about jazz. There is a harmonic richness in jazz that doesn't give much back on a normally tuned guitar. By changing the way we tune, we deeply modify the approach of the instrument, we can approach it like a piano or an orchestra. That's probably why I'm not interested in "orthodox" jazz guitarists, at least not as much as people like Jimmy Page or Johnny Marr. Apart from Jim Hall, I think jazz guitarists are perfectly lame. Might as well listen to the real big ones, like Duke Ellington, whom I love. I'm an incurable romantic. There is a darkness in him that comes from the same place as his joy: his music is a kind of perpetual celebration, whatever the feelings he expresses." If you look carefully, you could certainly find ten or twenty collusions between Elllington's mysterious sound paste and Buckley Junior's ferocity. These two breathe on the same peaks. Memory: in France, a long time ago, a journalist had dared to call Prince "the Duke Ellington of the 80s." We no longer hear about either one.

Fatigue accepted

2:30 pm. Sony Music headquarters, Santa Monica. What was supposed to be a simple mixing session turned into a real closed-door session that severely disrupted the sacrosanct schedule. The manager goes out from time to time, annoyed and admiring: "It must be the fifth layer of voices. It doesn't look like anything you've ever heard of, it's incredible." The firm's bunker spreads its power and glory over several thousand square meters. The atmosphere is businesslike and conflicts are carefully avoided, disappearing under this kind of unbearable relaxed politeness thanks to which we've made it clear that you are only tolerated in these places. In the very modern and very dull cafeteria, old beards of the trade meet young people who are first satisfied with their fate. Jeff Buckley agrees to leave the studio, holding his two fetishes, a hat and a strange book with blank pages blackened with a few doodles. An American photographer is elbowing his way in, upset that there may be French photographers. The session is finished in about 20 minutes. We are given the distinct honour of taking a seat in the limousine that will take the prodigal son to the concert venue. "I'm trying to fight to save myself some time. Everything that I write in these difficult conditions is more spontaneous. Musicians are very involved in the development of the songs. Maintaining a friendly relationship with the people accompanying me is essential. I don't see myself playing with session musicians. I have too big a mouth for for that. It's going to play tricks on me one of these days." Fatigue is visible but accepted. "Pressure is mainly about preparation. As soon as things happen, when the music starts, everything else is swept away, the whole mess no longer exists. The obligations, all these intermediaries, there's only one way to deal with them: be very polite, but at the same time assert yourself in your refusal, show your rebellion. I'm not afraid of losing control, because I'm not trying to control everything. The only thing that bothers me is that I no longer have time to solve the simplest problems." He shows his pants, badly torn and patched by a row of safety pins. "Look at these pants, what can I do, change it? Impossible, I'm too superstitious with clothes." The voice is low, the eyes are tired and lost in the traffic of Santa Monica. "I have never had a so-called normal life. It's not for me. If I pulled over, I'd loose everything."

5 pm, Melrose. Los Angeles has its Halls, minus the Sebasto. A trendy shop displays its piercing accessories. A slogan: "You've experienced everything. Try genital mutilation." Five meters further, a large window illuminated like daytime. Inside, a bric-a-brac of disparate furniture, sofas with faded colours, a TV on in a corner. It looks like a deposit-sale. Old people in dressing gowns are sitting in the armchairs, under the neon lights in the window, offered to passers-by. This is not a deposit-sale. It's a retirement home.

Last frontier

9 pm at Roxy, Sunset Boulevard. The debonair audience, come there to have a drink listening to good music, can't believe their ears. On stage, the white energy is palpable. Jeff Buckley and his men are crossing another border. Once again, songs are invented in the moment, long melodies unwound ad libitum before the sound, all massive and airy, devastates the audience.Between the songs, Jeff Buckley defuses the emotional tension by imitating an average slob: "Hey, little slut, bitch, you suck?" A disarming smile. Some girls are a little overwhelmed. Then it's Kangaroo and its noisy radicality. Then Hallelujah, hanging by a thread, the voice on the verge of silence, flirting with the stratosphere of the high-pitched. A few hours before, he said again, "There's no danger, no injury in the music. You can never be too intense. Everything else is a physical problem. There is a scene in Janacek's opera Jenufa that is really dangerous for the voice, and all singers fear it. There are also people like Robert Plant who have lost their voice for pulling too much. In my case, I don't sing beyond my limits and I would say that you can sing anything natural in the spoken voice without any problem, there are not as many differences as we would like to believe. I can easily imagine one day reaching a turning point in my life, because some things will have been completed, but I believe that nothing will stop me, that there will always be new paths. I will reconstitute myself, I will continue." Fear is absent from that life.

November 24th. 5 pm, La Cienega. "of all that is very good, but always in quality. Of all that is very good, there are always very few; what there is a lot of is underestimated; and, among the very people, giants usually pass through it as real dwarves. Some estimate books by size,  as if they were made to load the arms, rather that to exercise the minds. Extension alone has never been able to cross the line of mediocrity and it is the misfortune of the universal people to excel in nothing, for wanting to excel in everything. Intention gives a prominent place, and makes a hero if the material is sublime."- Baltasar Gracian, The Court Man

King Oedipus

Les Inrockuptibles, October, 1994
By JD Beauvallet.
Contributed by Ana
Translation by me

Bastard father, that Tim Buckley: never there when it came to raising Jeff Buckley but an omnipresent ghost when it comes to poisoning the forgotten son's early career. A weight that Grace, the gifted first album, sends to hell with dazzling ease. A frightening maturity, a generous personality, a tormented and luxurious sound: if he resists family demons-bad living, drugs and excess-Jeff Buckley will forever distract the castrating father from his company. Art and the way to make a first name for yourself.

I don't feel like things are moving too fast. I even have the impression that they are evolving at a slower pace-at my own pace. I don't want to be overwhelmed by my reputation, but only to be judged by my songs. I want people to come to me by choice and not because it's fashionable. My place is not in magazines, but on stage, in front of the audience, man to man. The rest is just bullshit.

You have a serious image clinging to your skin: a very decent songwriter, playing for New York students and intellectuals in trendy cafés, like Fez or Sin-é.

People who see me like that don't know where I come from. I play for ordinary people every Monday night, people depressed by their work who join their few friends at Sin-é. And even intellectuals are made of flesh and blood. When they're tired of facts and knowledge, their soul needs sensations unguided by their intellect. They need to leave their value judgments, their opinions, to abandon themselves like the others at the Sin-é coat-check. I'm not the private property of the intelligentsia. My neighborhood is the Lower East Side of New York. I live right on the border. All the outcasts live there, so it is both a creative and down-to-earth place, where people have to struggle to make a living from their art. There, eccentricity is recognized, accepted, everyone can live it to the extreme and prove that they were right. Everywhere else in the United States, they would be pointed out, beaten, burned like witches-or made to understand that they are less than nothing, lost.

Do you look at them as a voyeur or do you see yourself as one of them?

I can play both roles, but I feel good in this neighborhood. This is the first time in my life that I have found a place where I feel good, where I don't feel like a freak of nature. It's my home, finally. In California, where I grew up, I was beginning to slowly exhaust myself, like a car with a leaky tank. And my mind consumes a lot of fuel (silence)....I was dying. California drained me for years, New York reinflated me, it's a generous city. I signed with a major (label), but in my neighbourhood, no one has changed towards me. I remain this poor guy with his guitar, who spends his life looking for musicians. No richer than before: rather than asking for millions of dollars, I preferred to secure my freedom for the long term. Success, to me, it's that: to last, to continue. I could play for centuries in Sin-é. As long as I live, I'll come back and visit these bars. I like their space, their authenticity. It's such a challenge to keep so few people on their feet for hours in a place the size of a room. What a difficult and wonderful task it is to be a good storyteller! One day, I want to be one, to take up the torch.

When did you realize that California wasn't for you?

Since I was a child, I've always hated comfort. I was a daredevil who refused stability, the surrounding lethargy. In California, everything was straight, clean-Americana in all its horror. Terrible suburban life, baking cookies, the horror...Yet, there was the desert, the mountains, the sea, incredible artists. But I was too young to understand it then. Fortunately, my mother spent her time moving, it spiced up my dull life. It was exciting, scary not having roots. But sometimes I was ashamed of it. For my friends, I represented failure, the lack of continuity. They never trusted me, they felt like I could disappear overnight. When I was 12, I decided that my future was in New York.  For a kid like me, for an  uncouragable dreamer, New York was an obsession. All you had to do was turn on the TV and New York would come to me: the soap operas, Bugs Bunny's accent, King Kong...I was bewitched by the image and the atmosphere that emerged from these images. And then there was Lou Reed, Patti Smith, Creem magazine...I still remember that picture on the cover: Lou Reed on stage with a syringe in his arm. When I met him, I told him about this picture, it made him mad.

On what occasion did you make the great journey from west to east?

I was asked to participate in a concert in tribute to my father. I sold everything I owned in Los Angeles, didn't tell anyone and left. I could no longer stand the ostriches from California who claim that everything is fine as the country is falling apart. In New York, at least, the violence is palpable, we don't hide our faces. There is no way to escape reality. For years, I lived in Harlem. Everyone called me by my first name, I was never robbed or attacked. It wasn't by choice: I had just been dumped by a girlfriend, I found myself there in despair, next to what is called Needle Park-where you can find the best heroin in New York. Yet I've never been disappointed by this city. I had just given up on the area where I had grown up, my friends, my family, everything I knew and understood, but everything I expected was there, within reach. Even if both my arms had to be cut off to be allowed to stay there, I would still choose this city. I was even afraid of being swallowed up by the city, but I survived.

Did you need such a change to find your balance?

 California is huge, but I didn't have a square inch to grow there, and in a small space like New York, I found a great place to push (myself), to blossom. However, the competition is permanent: to get to the subway gates first, to take a taxi...but I'm zen: I have other ways to raise my blood pressure than fighting for first place in line for a hot dog (laughs)...I feel like I share my apartment with two million people. Nothing pleases me more than to help someone find their way. I had never had the impression of belonging to a community, of living in a village. I don't remember ever being interested in music: all my memories, even the oldest ones, are just music. It was my food, a real bulimia. I think I sang before I spoke. My grandmother taught me songs in Spanish, nursery rhymes that told me how to wash my hands properly. My mother was a classical musician. Every night, she would put me to sleep humming lullabies. These memories of nursery rhythms are linked to songs by Simon & Garfunkel, the Beatles, Barbra Streisand. The drum sound of Come Together disturbed me throughout my childhood...to me, it was the sound of a monstrous telephone dial. In the car, we listened to music all the time. I was fascinated by sounds, like the one of the wah-wah pedal. I imagined crazy solutions: to me, it could only come from a tortured animal. I had made it a point of honour to solve all these sound riddles. So much so that at the age of 5, music became a very personal business. There, for the first time, I was allowed to buy records, to use the chain. I was following in the footsteps of my mother's second husband-a mechanic who only agreed to repair Volkswagens. Very broad, with beautiful blue eyes. To me, he was Santa's look-alike, or his son. Every two weeks, he would come back with five new albums. It was a ritual, which filled the house with new sounds: the Moody Blues, Grand Funk Railroad, Joni Mitchell, Cat Stevens, Booker T...As soon as he got in the car, he played Led Zeppelin 2. I spent hours examining the covers. Some, like Pink Floyd's, scared me.

Have you kept this almost bulimic curiosity?

Never has there been so many good records as there are now: Stereolab, Codeine, Melvins, Cocteau Twins-an old love story-Pavement and Morissey of course. I fought for the Smiths, to defend the honor of the last great band. I'd give anything to work with Johnny Marr someday.

Do you feel a connection to anyone in particular?

I feel very lonely right now. They compare me to American Music Club, but I don't see the link. I'm also told that I belong to a kind of folk renewal. For me, folk died years ago, murdered on stage by Bob Dylan's electric guitar. Just because I'm alone with a guitar doesn't mean I do folk. One day, I know that Thurston Moore will leave Sonic Youth to release a solo guitar album: I can guarantee you it won't be folk. Liz Phair owes more to Violent Femmes than to folk and Beck is too crazy for this music. I don't like people saying anything about music, it's a much too serious subject. But not serious in the academic sense: I feel I come from the punk philosophy, from this contempt for technique. Yet, I need it more than anyone to express myself. I'm a hardworking person, I like to progress. But to keep a certain naivety, I keep buying new instruments. Especially harmoniums, which I'm passionately in love with, so I'll always stay an amateur, an innocent. I keep the innocence of the beginner. If I took driving lessons at my age, it would probably be dangerous. But I don't see how I could kill someone with a harmonica.

On your first single, you cover Piaf. Did you listen to this kind of record at home?

It would take a sick heart not to fall in love with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan or Piaf...I discovered Piaf at school, during an educational program. She immediately held me spellbound, but strangely enough she was more and more necessary for me as I got older. At 22, I couldn't do without Piaf anymore. It was totally beyond reason. I hated some bands for years and one day I realized that I physically needed one of their songs. My mother was magnificently tolerant, we went from the joy of Sly & The Family Stone to Judy Garland without question. Eclecticism is a real quality of women: my girl friends buy Johnny Cash as well as Snoop Doggy Dogg, Les Meilleurs moments du piano and Metallica. Boys are so sectarian.

Your mother and father both lived on music. Many children would have been disgusted for life.

My mother dreamt of playing Mendelssohn instead of cleaning up. When her husband would come home from work unexpectedly, it drove him crazy to find her sitting at the piano."What the hell are you doing?" What's this pigsty?" The poor girl had to tell him that she was dusting the piano-even though she had been playing Chopin all afternoon. I loved this atmosphere, everything became music for me: the trains on the railway track next to the house, the planes flying over us at low altitude...

In school, you must've passed for a martian.

I had friends, but no one to talk to about music. I didn't want to share this with anyone, it was my secret. I spent whole days memorizing some albums. When my aunt came to watch me at home, she would bring her friends and make me recite these albums. At the age of 6, naturally, I started playing piano and guitar. My mother watched all the classical music shows on television, the kinds of piano competitions. As soon as I heard the slightest melody, I would run down to watch the TV, especially Elton John, who I loved. I knew I wanted to make a living from music-but without ever considering becoming a rock star. I hated having any power over anyone.

Were you a social child ?

 I've always been a loner. I felt-I still feel-ackward, clumsy, ugly. So I didn't go out. Being alone was a way of not getting attached to a place or people: I could leave overnight without any regret. I was always a stranger who watches with disgust at guys his age talking like their fathers. I walked a lot, smoked a lot-all those things that took me away from my schoolwork. Suddenly, I decided to do nothing anymore at school. A teacher had explained to us the bell curve grading system, a kind of upward levelling.  If I worked hard and got good grades on the exams, my success would benefit the dunces in my class, pull them up. It was inconceivable that I would do anything to help those fat bastards who were only thinking of beating me up at lunchtime. So I rested my arms, waiting for the  first-class eggheads to kill themselves trying to raise the average. That didn't stop me from reading and learning at home. My great shame is that I was a class leader, that I represented these losers, that I compromised myself with the system. I had the longest hair in school, I was constantly called a faggot. One day, after a hockey game, I took the scissors and cut off my hair. My only regret is that I never told Ruth Wilcox-my European history teacher-how much she meant to me. They all hated me at my high school and I despised their ignorance. It was inconceivable to work with with these monsters, to live among them, to lead an existence identical to theirs. I only had one guy friend, Jason, with who I went to a teen club called Woodstock. On our good days, we were left to take care of the lights; we could even play, talk to girls. I wasn't very lucky with them. But it didn't bother me more than that: the girls there weren't very exciting.

Did you already write then ?

At the time, I didn't even realize how frustrated I was. When I wrote, I felt good, safe. It was by writing that I realized how inadequate I was. I grew up in Anaheim, the city of Disneyland, a well-off Judeo-Christian suburb...God, did I hate those motherfuckers...and they made me pay dearly for it. Writing was a real pain because, little by little, I discovered myself. And it wasn't a pretty sight. I was immature, I was very disappointed in myself. If I record under the name Jeff Buckey, it's a combination of circumstances: I played guitar alone to attract musicians with whom to form a group and to find my way. And I was signed like that. However, I would not be able to make this music without my drummer, without my bass player. It was them who allowed me to achieve what I was looking for in music. I've always played with bands since I was a kid. To me, there are no solo singers. Even Bob Dylan, what a great band...He was thrown off the stage with The Band, with Robbie Robertson and yet he'd never had such a good band with him. He was a lot better than that asshole Mick Jagger. On Ballad of A Thin Man, he goes crazy, dangerous. I never get tired of watching this video. I need others to support me. On stage, there is something happening that I can't control.

You're scary: you look like you're in a trance.

For me, the trance is the perfect unity between this body and this spirit (he looks at himself with disgust)...There is no longer any separation between what I say and what I feel, a feeling that has always attracted me. It's like sex: there always comes a time when you can no longer intervene, when you have to loose yourself. For me, only sex can save this world. All combinations, all positions are possible but in the end, there is only this precise moment where I let myself go with the feeling of being eternal.

Are you looking for this state by other means?

Without a band, without the drums, I couldn't reach this state. Or you could use drugs. It also works with alcohol, but I'm less interested (in that). All the information is already in me, it just comes and opens the doors to free it. It's not the heroin that thinks for me, that drives my car, that raises my children. It's just a substance that circulates in the blood and stimulates a specific point in the body. It's a very old and natural practice. Heroin has never created endocrine glands in anyone, it simply awakens some of them. It's good to have this control over yourself. The danger is to blame everything on drugs, to no longer accept responsibility by blaming the heroin. Now you've become like a blind man who can't go out without his dog. The dog doesn't necessarily know where to cross the road, how to avoid being run over. In Pakistan, there's a word that means "a form of wisdom that can only be achieved by being intoxicated." The common man can't approach this wisdom. I like to take drugs. There's nothing wrong with that, it opens up new avenues. However, I wouldn't give it the keys to my car (smiles)...I don't mind losing myself, as long as I don't put anyone in danger. Usually, when I'm high, I reach a state of euphoria, which is similar to the one you feel when you first meet someone you've always loved. Then, when you tell them you love them, there's this explosion of blue sparks. You could do it without the drugs, but it makes the work easier. I could do without it, but between it and me, it's an old story that goes back to childhood.

Are you ever afraid?

 I was never afraid of drugs but rather of the people who sell them. I know what I'm doing. It was even my mother who offered me my first drugs because she was afraid of what I was going to buy on the street.

Afraid you'll end up like your father?

I don't remember his example. He left the house before I was even born. His only influence is his absence. I was the man of the house, I didn't miss him. I only met him once, shortly before he died, and then I realized I missed him. It would've been nice to grow up with a real father and mother that got along well. But I've survived.

Do you understand that you're being compared to him?

He influenced my life, but not my music. I never really listened to his records for pleasure, I just observed them. Comparing myself to him is a facility I understand: the precision and accuracy of analysis don't weigh as heavily when compared to approximate shortcuts. I know they're not true. But I can't blame him for anything, he had nothing to do with it. I'm tired of seeing these old hippies coming to meet me and hoping to find my father. I'm going to dissappoint them. You can't ignore the voodoo. For thousands of years, it has been passed from generation to generation. There is a real link with the earth, with it's forces. It's not from tv, this white wizard's voodoo...I have to admit, I'm religious. But I can't believe in the earthly organizations made in the name of God. Priests, all these so-called representatives, they're stuff for the mentally ill. So, then, God would be there to punish, again and again, but never to reward? A father, but no mother. No woman in the Holy Trinity...What a huge mistake! It's appalling to see that the only woman without blame in the Bible is Mary, who has never fucked in her life. She made a baby with her ear. No, but frankly, what a load of crap! I will never in my life take any important advice from someone who has never had sex and who, moreover, is proud of it. The Pope, what an insult to sex, what an insult to women! All our religions are in favour of men, they disgust me. No wonder we treat the earth with the same contempt: we rape her, we destroy her, we ignore her opinion. This is all very disturbing. I'm a very disturbed boy (smile)...

Very pessimistic ?
I'm an optimist who refuses to wear pink glasses. My music is never pessimistic, it's melancholic. It's a feeling I'm comfortable with. I hate self-indulgence-it disgusts me. But I couldn't write without putting a little bit of myself, a little bit of my soul, outside my songs. That would really be behaving like a male. My words, in that sense, are rather feminine. All the music I like is like that: dark, melancholic. Except Duke Ellington, whose visceral joy often heals my wounds. The next album will probably be more joyful but this time, it was impossible...You can be cute, funny, generous, there's always the danger of a break-up in a love relationship. No one is safe. Grace, this is the album of a jealous, poor guy who just got dumped.