Cesena

By Federico Guglielmi

From his blog, lultimathule.wordpress.com

Translated by me

  Jeff Buckley is a son of art, but on this subject he prefers not to mince words: not because he wishes to erase his kinship ties with the late Buckley Sr. (how could he, with that face and voice?), but because his relationship with his father Tim-known only by hearsay and hearsay(?), because he disappeared when he was still a child-have been too brief and too fleeting to influence him. Chromosomes, however, do not lie, as attested by the beauty and personality of Jeff's songs: intense and insinuating music, reaching into the deepest and most hidden recesses of the mind and heart, ranging from folk to avant-garde, from free-jazz to quasi-psychedelia, from intimate ballad to rock. It is no coincidence, then, that young Buckley has already won a place of honor among the stars of the 1990s, thanks to his two splendid records-the 1993 mini-CD Live At Sin-é and the 1994 album Grace-and to his charisma in holding the stage: a quality, the latter, also amply brought out in his Cesena concert last February 17, which captivated the large audience and offered the writer the long-awaited opportunity to meet and converse with him. Albeit for less than half an hour, and as part of a press conference made quite chaotic by the noise of soundcheck and the rumblings of a Vidia still being set up.

Is this your first time on a challenging tour like this?

No, the second one. In fact, the third, if you also consider the solo concerts of the first half of last year.

Hot comments?

It was outstanding in France, and it went very well in Germany as well. In Britain, however, it was harder, too much pressure...I mean because of the attitude of the press, the public had nothing to do with it.

Anyway, are you satisfied? 

Apart from a few setbacks, I am really enjoying myself. I enjoy playing, and besides, having to focus on the tour keeps me from dealing with other problems: for example, what I will have to do when I return home, or prospects for the future.

Is that what you've wanted since you were a child?

No, not at all. I never thought of anything like that as a child.

 
How is it, then, that you find yourself in this situation?

I honestly don't know. It happened like that, without deciding anything at the table. It has always been a definite choice of mine not to plan my life more.

Do you feel more comfortable as a soloist or a band leader? 

Almost all the music I like best is by bands. The soloist, however capable and eclectic, precludes himself a lot of possibilities, and is too limited by the obligation of having to hold up the entire show. It is good to experiment together with others, to expand the instrument-park and to be free to indulge in one's own sonic whims while the group thinks of everything else...provided, of course, that the companions are the right ones.

What, in your case, are the differences between recording in the studio and performing live?

Working in the recording room is very similar to composing: you go step by step, adding or removing something until you arrive at a synthesis. On the stage we let go, and the changes depend more on the feeling of the moment than on reflection. My concerts are very improvised, although song structures and setlists do not undergo major changes.

Have you already started writing for the new album?

Not yet. I take a lot of notes, but the actual songs have yet to come. As I mentioned to you earlier, life "on the road" gives no respite, and allows no room for anything else.

In your opinion, is Jeff Buckley's music of joy or melancholy?

It depends on the piece, and the mood of the listener...but, at the end of the day, I'm not sure that's really the case. Agreed, some things suggest sad images, but often even happiness can hurt someone.

Your opinion on success?

I am happy with my business and the reception it has received, but I am also concerned: in such situations it is all too easy to lose your mind and become something different, and worse, than what you were before you achieved notoriety. I am flattered and surprised by all these endorsements, but success-at least in the most common meaning of the term-doesn't interest me that much: playing and telling what my heart tells me is much, much more important.

How do you deal with what's written about you?

I generally try not to read it. I believe that music is something highly personal, and I don't like anyone taking it upon themselves to explain to others the merits or demerits of my songs, or to tell them whether or not they are worth listening to. The intent of every artist is to make works that will be remembered in time, that will somehow remain in history; magazines, on the other hand, are meant for quick consumption, cannot rise above the subjects they cover and make assertions and judgments that are too categorical.

What about video clips? Do you also consider them a "necessary evil", the price you pay to be known?

No, I'm not that extreme. The problem with videos lies in the fact that, since they are mostly a kind of "visual translation" of the song, they kill the imagination and hinder freedom of interpretation; this does not mean, however, that a clip cannot be ingenious-just think of those by the Residents-or that it must necessarily show off dozens of beautiful girls and who knows how many expensive special effects. As far as I was concerned, I wanted something simple and atmospheric, in tune with the way I understand music.

 With his air somewhere between the vanished and the maudit, which the malignant will deem a bit constructed but which to yours truly seemed entirely sincere, Jeff Buckley bids farewell to the platoon of journalists just when his passionate flirtation with a bottle of red wine had begun to make him less wary and more talkative. A couple of hours later, in front of an ecstatic audience, he will immolate all of himself in the cathartic ritual of the live show, parading with authentic, infectious emotional transport an intense and seductive repertoire like few others. Auteur rock imbued with flair and poetry, mostly subdued and enigmatic but also ignited by sudden bursts of vivacity, over which Jeff's singing twirls like an unattainable phoenix evoking ghosts of the past - a Song To The Siren almost on par with his parent's, as well as the now classic Hallelujah by master Leonard Cohen - and scattering around him new gems of dazzling splendor (Mojo Pin, Eternal Life, Last Goodbye). He's already great, Jeff Buckley. So great that more than one, mesmerized by the solemn mysticism of his Grace, has already elevated him to the rank of Messiah. Who knows if Our Lord would be satisfied with the role, or if he would reluctantly accept it like the protagonist in that old Richard Bach novel.

Taken from Audio Review n.149 of May, 1995

Vidia, Cesena, 17 February 1995

There were quite a few of us, and certainly not out of mere curiosity, eagerly awaiting the only Italian date of Jeff Buckley's European tour; young and old, arriving at the Vidia with the notes of the splendid Grace echoing in our hearts and with the certainty that we were about to witness something different, and bigger, than the usual rock concert. What was immortalized in Live At Sin-é, the splendid debut mini-CD of Our Lord, could not, after all, have been a joke of chance. 

They vibrated almost to the point of breaking, the strings of the soul, on the evening of Feb. 17: not only because of Jeff's velvety charisma, the extraordinary intensity of the repertoire and the reckless balancing acts of a voice that almost fears no comparison with the mythical and unforgettable one of the never-too-missed Buckley Sr, but also for the joy of verifying-no small feat-how this cynical and plasticized world is still capable of conceiving true artists, and how music-biz still has the ability to recognize them and the desire to promote them despite their absolute refractoriness to the games of calculation and fashion: pure and brilliant artists like Jeff Buckley, who turn performance into a catharsis with a mystical flavor, and songs-however nervous, melancholy or pained-into touching hymns to joy and life. As also in the case of Song To The Siren "stolen" from that father known only by heard and hearsay(?), which proposed as a surprise in that of Cesena even tore us a few tears of emotion.

Taken from Noise No. 39 of April, 1995

Finding his way in the city

The Record, December 16, 1994

By Arthur Staple

Submitted by Sai

Music Preview: Jeff Buckley performs with Brenda Kahn at 9 p.m. Saturday at Irving Plaza, 17 Irving Place, Manhattan, (212) 777-6800. $12. Also 9 p.m. Sunday at Maxwell's, 1039 Washington St., Hoboken. Sold out.

Jeff Buckley was kicking around his native Southern California a few years ago, playing in a variety of nands just to make music and money, an aimless lost soul in Hollywood. He longed to be in more creative, more sensual surroundings. He thought of New York.

  "California was a lot of time for reflection, to the point where it becomes a self-devouring thing," said Buckley, who arrived in New York in 1990. "I was too much in my head. I came to New York so I could live in my body.

  "It's lonley to only find magic in my private places. So I fought my way out by coming here."

  Fought his way up to playing solo shows at Cafe Sin-e, an East Village folk-rock hub. Fought his way to a record deal with Columbia, which released "Grace" in August. And fought to make his own way in the downtown music world that had once embraced his father, Sixties folk singer Tim Buckley, who killed himself when Jeff was a boy.

  Judging by the overwhelming buzz that's been droning since a packed show at The Supper Club during September's CMJ Music Marathon, the younger Buckley is no longer standing in shadows. "This guy is something special," CMJ president Bobby Haber said when asked to name the artist to watch there. "He's extremely gifted."

  "Grace" is quite a piece of work. "Mojo Pin" opens the album with a slowly building guitar intro-this song and the title track were co-written by Captain Beefheart guitarist Gary Lucas, who also contributes guitar to the two songs-before you hear Buckley’s voice.

  It's a caressing sound, high, soft, warm-Buckley rarely dips into any low registers, instead using a powerful falsetto on several tracks. His voice drips emotion, wrapping around lines like this one from "The Last Goodbye": "Kiss me, please, kiss me/Kiss me out of desire, not consolation..."
  That song and a stirring solo cover of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" are among the album's best. Buckley and his band also show they can step out of the folk-rock mode with "Eternal Life," which grabs a thick bass groove and gives the song a little grunge tinge. Not bad for a group thrown together three weeks before the album was recorded.
  "We really became a band during the album," said Buckley. "Even now, we're evolving, working into a common thread."
  Touring, which Buckley was doing for a few months before the album came out, has also sharpened the group, which added guitarist Michael Tighe for live shows.
  "The biggest shock we got was in Amsterdam, about a week before CMJ. The response there...we were just flabbergasted. It hasn't been like that yet here, thankfully. We don't want to be some big sensation that's forgotten quickly. Besides, you could tell the industry types that some opera singer who eats dirt is the next punk rock, and they'd believe it."
  But Buckley hasn't bristled at the corporate side of music-besides the weekend shows, he's playing a free midnight gig at Tower Records (Broadway and Fourth Street) tonight. Being hot has its price, but Buckley said he won't give in to fame.
  "I want to do something vastly different the next time around," he announced. "Then we'll see how disposable I am."

The Music Faucet: January, 1993

Another Music Faucet gig, but a bit of confusion here as this show has been labeled as being done on January 24, 1993, yet according to this gig listing, there's no bootleg, and the track listing is different. Nonetheless, I'll go with what's been listed on the original audio...enjoy!

Ultimate Understanding

The Irish Times, January 20, 1995
By Kevin Courtney

  It's a wet Saturday afternoon, and bright new music star Jeff Buckley has just touched down in Dublin to start the second leg of his tour, only right now he doesn't look so shiny and stellar. Huddled in a corner of the Tivoli Theatre, where he's playing later tonight, smoking Marlboros and snuffling with a cold, the son of Tim Buckley looks knackered, drained of all energy, sapped by the rock'n'roll circus.   He's already done two interviews, one soundcheck, and he's got more interviews after this one-a pretty busy first day in Europe for Sony's golden boy, and a million miles away from when all he'd have to do was just strap on his guitar and play.
  Now he's got a band, an entourage, and a schedule as tight as an E string. When he finds out that tonight's gig will be his only concert in Ireland, and that he's due to be whisked over to London in the early hours of Sunday morning, he reacts with tired resignation: "This is the only Irish date? Drag. I thought we were going to do more dates in Ireland. I love Ireland, especially Dublin."
  Does all this music biz baggage get to you? "I don't really fit into the rock'n'roll circus. The music we play is enough of a circus. I'd rather we all be alone in the room and just forget about what rock'n'roll's supposed to be. It's so confining, very unromantic. In the future, when we have more time, we'll take a van out, me and the guys, and go to places where nobody knows."
  But wherever the 27 year old Buckley goes, the "Next Big Thing" tag follows close behind, and plaudits are piling up around him like firewood around Joan Of Arc. What if, despite all his efforts to remain unaffected, Jeff Buckley finds himself thrust into the role of demigod?
   "I don't want that to happen because I'm far from being a consummate artist. I mean, this is just my first album, and the work is very new and it's just, em, beginning. I'm certainly not worthy of demigod status. There's absolutely no danger of that."
  But while not every artist wants to be Jesus Christ or John Lennon, doesn't everybody want to be liked and accepted?
  "I do too. It just depends on what you hold as important. I don't know any artist who doesn't do what they want to do, and doesn't do what they hear and feel. Aphex Twin can only do what he does, and Suede and the Grifters and Patti Smith, they're just doing what they do, even The Archies. It's an honest statement."
  Not everybody has taken to Jeff Buckley's singular style of music; for every laudatory line, there's also a twisted maze of misunderstanding and misinterpretation. Could this be because Buckley's songs are too intense, too close to the bone for some people to swallow without choking?
  "Those people wouldn't tell you that, though," he asserts. "They'd just tell you it was a load of shite. They'd just want to kill me. Some people just completely hate me on sight. I remember hearing an account of (one critic) getting drunk in a bar and just saying I was a complete fake. I've never even met the man. He doesn't really know me at all. I'm certainly not a fake, and I'll certainly outlive him, I'm sure."
  "It hurts when I'm insulted, and it makes me angry, but it's just the nature of music. Nobody can like everything and not everybody needs a certain kind of music. It's a huge world, and I don't seek to dominate the world."
  If he did want to rule the world, though, he couldn't have picked a bigger record label, the giant multinational Sony corporation, which owns Columbia Records.
  "I really got on to the label because of the chemistry of the people I knew I'd be working with. With them I was very comfortable, and to this day I still am, and I think we'll do good work, because I'm terribly, terribly paranoid of the music business."
  Did you feel you were entrusting your soul to them, that you might have to compromise on your vision? "No. I felt that because I was entrusting my soul to them, that I'd have to over communicate what my soul was, for them to gain an understanding."
  Buckley has been saddled with a "loner" image, partly because of his James Dean good looks, partly because he made his name as a solo artist, and partly because he's still seen as the orphaned offspring of Tim. Yet he's always had a family and he's always had friends, although solitude is something he values very highly.
  "I gain a lot from solitude, and I need it. Everybody does, you know. We need space from each other, and we need each other. I need the relationship. If I played solo for years and years and years I'd probably go crazy, completely insane. And it would be very sterile."
  The media tend to focus on the famous father, but the Jeff Buckley we hear is very much the product of his mother's influence.
  "I'm actually the son of Mary Gulbert," he says, pronouncing the French sounding surname softly. "My mother was born in the Panama Canal zone, and came to America when she was five, with her family, my grandmother and grandfather; and that was the family I knew. My uncle's name is George Gulbert, and he sang - he was actually the first person I ever knew who was in a band. Everybody sang; everybody loved music. It was just all around. My stepfather is a car mechanic, but he was always an inveterate record buyer, and to this day I still have the bug, and my place is filled with records."
  Perhaps it was Buckley's eclectic collection which started him off doing covers of other people's songs, but by the time he moved to New York, he was interpreting a range of songs in his own unique style. How does he choose which songs to cover?
  "The songs just choose me. There are some songs that I just like to make live, that are not necessarily mine. There was a part in my life, there was a time during the solo shows when I was a bit of a human jukebox, but of my own tastes.
  Put a coin in the jukebox and, along with the covers of Leonard Cohen and Benjamin Britten, you'd have also gotten Van Morrison. Was he a big influence?
  "No, he wasn't ever. I love and admire his work, but he wasn't, like, one of my seminal heroes. Basically the reason I did "The Way Young Lovers Do" was because Michael (Tighe, Buckley's guitarist) had a dream that he and I were singing it. And so I sang it for him. And I just got the song, and I fell in love with the album, Astral Weeks, and I absolutely played it out, played it out of my system. But you know, six years would go by and I would go right back to it as heavy as ever. It's just the way I am, I'm very copious with an album, I'll stay there and obsess on it."
  Buckley tackles his own obsessions through his original songs, seven of which feature on the debut album, Grace. Listening to them, you're immediately struck by their unconventiality, their defiance of set structures and sequence. It's certainly not your straight 12 bar rock'n'roll.
  "It's just my taste. I mean, take something like "Last Goodbye". It's a song that doesn't halve anything really repeating, it's just all one thing, and that's good. 'Coz you know, everybody's heard the standard forms over and over and over again, and people make them work, and sometimes they just buzz by you like flies and you don't notice them. I prefer to go from my deepest eccentricities and provide a different slant on this whole thing. And the thing about songs is, songs can hang around for a long time, and you may hate them and totally despise them, but somewhere down the line you may need them. They just fly into your life and have meaning somehow."
  People have said he's deep and mature for one so young. Doesn't that imply that anyone under 30 is frivolous?
  "I am frivolous. Terribly childish. Bob Dylan was deep. Rimbaud was deep. Joni Mitchell was deep. Just because somebody, is younger doesn't mean they're stupid. That's a known fact. Because there's still a mind there. The trend I've seen is that people are more audacious when they're younger, and their ideas are better. I don't plan to have that be the case with me. I admire a whole career, like Picasso or Billie Holiday or like Leonard Cohen. To this day he can still deliver a song and it's all you hear. You're completely captured. Or Iggy Pop. The man, like, rocks over every band I've seen. He just rocks his ass off.
  "I dig maturity. I don't like complacency in anyone. Neil Young is still doing it. And he's done lots of things that failed in the public eye. But it'sall necessary. You need to have ups and downs, it's a human thing. You follow what music demands of you, and through it you can get it's gifts."
  Right now, Jeff Buckley's music demands that he share the stage with bandmates Michael Tighe, Mick Grondahl and Matt Johnson. Is it difficult to weave the delicate fabric of his music in this potentially fractious band situation?
  "No, not at all. The emotion of the song dictates the arrangement, it dictates the sound and the texture and the colours that you use, and it's not hard to do with Michael, Mick and Matty. I'm completely a part of them and they're a part of me. It's just that was there from the beginning."
  So where will the music take Jeff Buckley in the future? He has no big career masterplan, but does he have any ultimate artistic goals?
  "What I really want is to have a life where I learn more about my poetry, learn more about myself as much as possible. I wanna get as deep into it as I can, 'coz that's how more work, is possible and more understanding is possible.
  How much more understanding? "Ultimate understanding."

The Lost Jeff Buckley Interview

February, 1994
By Jay Sosnick
Submitted by Angela from the book L'impressione di Essere Eterno (The Impression of Being Eternal)
Translated by me

Did everything happen faster than you thought?

Faster, but not early enough.

Columbia has a great tradition of folk songwriters: Dylan, Leonard Cohen. Does it make sense that you stay with them?

I do not know exactly what they see in me or why they want me to represent a genre. For me the Sex Pistols are folk. All these labels that record companies and the media create do not belong to me. When someone talks about singer-songwriters, they immediately think of James Taylor, any guy with an acoustic guitar, people like Marc Cohn. But there are also singers who write songs, so fuck it. Jimi Hendrix was a singer-songwriter.

Was it a problem for you to switch from taking care of only the creative aspect to the work you have to do for the label?

No, because it's all creative. All art is made 75% for problem solving. The attention, the photos...are annoying because I come from a place where you only think you're shit, when you're not. I wonder every day if I release too many interviews. I do not think we need to make a lot of fuss.

Is it different to be in front of a camera than to be the center of attention of an audience?

No, because I'm up there and there is all this energy directed towards me that I give back to them. So it's the same thing. We are beings made of energy. Seperate life in these terms. I always understand when someone lies, they haven't grown up or are full of fear. The biggest fear that people have is that everyone knows that they are full of fear. People can not completely hide themselves, but they spend their lives trying to do it.

What's the weirdest thing about being the center of attention? Are you embarrassed at times?

The real discomfort comes from noticing how people allow you to carry this light on their behalf, they refuse to do it themselves. But it's a transitional phase, maybe one day I won't feel the way I do today while doing the same things I do now. Maybe that's just the kid hiding inside me who doesn't want to be rejected, I guess. The only downside is that I spend so much time being photographed, interviewed, meeting people, that I don't have much left to compose. I want to improve as an artist, and I have so little time. I feel like I'll never have a steady girlfriend, that I'll never have a home. I am constantly on safari.

What do you think about the interviews?

I think they are very dangerous. I make the mistake of talking to these people as if they were my friends, as if they were able to understand everything I say. But then there is the transcription, the revision, where the shit is cut, or maybe added something I did not want to say. You must speak very clearly and defined. If I were not afraid of being misinterpreted, things would be easier. I am rather shy about this aspect. I'm more for concerts. The live experience is essential for me if not, I'd die.

What is your biggest fear about success?

What will fly away, what will be taken away from me. But fear is an indication of exit, fear is only a door that leads you to both transformation and enlightenment...or perhaps just a tragic illusion.

Have you ever been aggressive in order to stand out?

No not at all. The only thing I do aggressively is express myself, even when I'm passive; it's still penetration. It's part of the movement. I am only interested in glorifying the energy of music for what it is. Exalting myself in it, learning its gifts, unhinging it. I get it wrong a lot of times, you know? But I'm not competitive. If I were, I'd be way ahead of where I am now. Even David Bowie would ask me for a job.

Did you have to work a lot on music, or is it something that simply came?

I've never made the conscious decision to play or sing. It was like a toy, another parent. It was my best friend, because I was almost always alone.

And now? What is the priority now?

Having the freedom to go where I want. Not to control the music, but dance with it, instead of making it dance with me. It is like growing, becoming mature and not burning like a piece of wood, like Jesus.

What do you mean?

The crucifixion is a monument to what people really want to believe, which is the unhealthy idea that suffering is the ultimate expression of this life. Don't dance, don't make love, but sacrifice. This view is quite insane. But without us, this God that people talk about wouldn't be able to dance, laugh, cry or whatever. I am therefore aware that we have a direct, daily relationship with the creator. I mean, when we become disinterested by acting like drunken children, we have war in the Gulf. But there's no point in getting pissed off at Him to make your life better.

What is the biggest challenge you have to face?

Being a person and bringing this to different levels, to the point that everything I get from music is completely altered.  I want to find different ways to show joy, sadness, discover all that I have to offer. And to do this you need discipline, time to develop ideas, to create different sounds.

And a nut that does not make the guitar seem out of tune.

No, I like that too, it's still a possibility. The possibility is music.

Voice of an angel in a hard and dirty realm

Prince Patrick Hotel review
The Age, September 4, 1995
By Dugald Jellie
Submitted by Sai

A CONFESSION. I first heard Jeff Buckley only several months ago, early on a Sunday morning on the car radio. The Triple J announcer, Francis Leach, I think, was talking about an evangelical New York singer by the name of Buckley. The song was Hallelujah.
  I heard there was a sacred chord/That David played and it pleased the Lord/but you don't really care for music do you?
  On Saturday night at the Prince Patrick Hotel, Jeff Buckley, and his music, were alive. From the moment he started crying-his voice transformed into the sounds of a sitar as if to tell the audience: "if you want me to, this is what I can do"-everyone knew that tonight, in the bowels of a pub somewhere in Colingwood, they were in for something special.
  Buckley, squeezed into a pink top with the words "take that, love you" across his chest, mesmerized the audience for an hour-and-a-half with his visceral voice, playing the hymnal tunes from his debut album Grace.
  At times, with songs such as Lover, You Should've Come Over and Last Goodbye, his body writhing and contorting to each lyric, it was as though rock music was merging with the ecclesiastical.
  Was it that the lone spotlight shining down on the singer, guitar slashed across shoulder a halo?
   But between moments of haunting elegance, Buckley's voice and music also divulged, as with So Real, a hard and dirty realm, immersed in anguish.
  When I first heard Buckley's voice on the radio I didn't know it came from the son of the venerated late-1960s Los Angeles fringe folk singer, Tim Buckley; that the song he was playing, Hallelujah, was penned by the post Leonard Cohen.
  And it's not a cry that you hear at night/It's not somebody who's seen the light/It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah.
  I didn't know that Jeff Buckley only met his father once, aged eight, before he died of a heroin overdose. Or that he grew up singing with his mother, a classically trained pianist and cellist, in the car, bundled around southern California.
  All I knew was that his was an exquisite voice. It was as though an angel was singing for us.
  The highlight of the show was a mournful solo rendition of Morrissey's I Know It's Over, perhaps the saddest song ever penned. The audience, many of whom had queued for tickets (which sold out in two hours) for this small venue tour, were breathless.
  The only lowlight was the background clinking of drinks being served, and the sing-along vocals of over-exuberant fans.
  When it was all over, the audience exhausted, my companion turned and asked: "Did I just die and go to heaven?" Such was the mood of the room.

Dream Brother at Howlin' Wolf

Live at the Howlin' Wolf in one of my favorite cities, New Orleans, LA on December 2, 1994. ☺

Original location today, still doing live music ❤️ (website)

Current venue (907 S. Peters, website)