... in Words: Interviews
"Mother Knows Best," by Simon Wooldridge
An interview with Mary Guibert
This interview was originally published in Juice Magazine, June 1998
Special thanks to Michelle Dodd for transcribing this article
When Jeff Buckley accidentally drowned in the midst of recording for My Sweetheart The Drunk, his mother, Mary Guibert, picked up the pieces. Simon Wooldridge speaks to her about her son, his father and assembling his legacy.
When Jeff Buckley drowned accidentally in Memphis Harbour on Thursday 28th May 1997, he left a legacy of recordings made with legendary guitarist and producer Tom Verlaine in New York in mid-1996 and early-1997. The next day he'd planned to reconvene with his bandmates at Easley Studios (where bands like Sonic Youth, the Grifters, and the Breeders had recorded albums which had impressed Buckley). Working with Andy Wallace, who'd produced Buckley's debut album Grace, he hoped to make a second record that would satisfy his ambitions. Instead he left fans with the many preparatory recordings he'd made of his works in progress -- from full studio sessions augmented by strings and guests, to simple, homespun four-track recordings, rudimentary sketches of songs yet to fully form in his head. After his death it fell to his mother Mary Guibert to oversee the release of these songs. With Andy Wallace producing, ex-Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell (who was a long time friend to Buckley) taking Buckley's creative place at the mixing desk, and Guibert adding her blessing, the Sketches (For My Sweetheart the Drunk) album came together. Guibert was Jeff's long term musical foil. While his famous father Tim Buckley was often noted as a primary influence, in fact they barely knew each other when Tim overdosed in 1966. Guibert is a classically-trained pianist who oversaw Jeff's development as an artist and individual. For her, the Sketches... album came to represent a closure, and a chance to share the talent her son displayed in the last months. When she talked about the irony of making the record, she's speaking about many facets -- the fact that Buckley, who'd often been troubled by his rising profile and the pressures of performance, was happier than he'd ever been at the time of his death; that despite her refusal to enter into the music industry to make comment on Tim's death she is now so involved with her son's record; and that through taking on the life of the troubadour artist Jeff managed to make some peace with the father who abandoned him.
How did Jeff grow up musically?
We sang together, we would harmonise, we would stop in the middle of running the vacuum cleaner if a particular song came on, and myself and Scotty [Jeff] and Tory if he was in the room would burst into a little song. Whenever I played the piano he was at my side turning the pages. It was part of our relationship. We appreciated different kinds of music together, and there was an atmosphere of importance for music. When he was not more than ten months old he was vocalising along with my mother and I singing to him. And as soon as he could talk he was singing little songs.
Was there any discussion when Jeff decided to change names from Scott Moorhead to Jeff Buckley?
It was the summer after his father... after he met his father briefly at the Easter vacation. I took Jeff to a one night only performance that Tim was giving at a club, and made arrangements with Tim and his then-wife Judy to take Jeff with them for a visit. He stayed with them for a few days and then came home. The following 28th June, Tim was dead. There was a period of time right after that where Scotty thought a lot about what his relationship was with his father, and when it came time for school to reconvene that year, he asked if I wouldn't go into the school and re-register him under Jeff Buckley, and I said I would.
Did he say why?
He didn't explain, and the way he asked it of me, I knew there was no need for an explanation. It was a way for him to honour his father and make a conscious choice to be called a Buckley.
Obviously there had to be discomfort between Jeff and the memory of Tim, just through people perpetually asking him about it and not letting have an identity outside it, but also because of issues with abandonment.
There were some notations in a draft of a letter that he had intended to send to someone that was an acquaintance of Tim's, and he said that he had got to the point where he could understand how someone... Think about it -- in '65 Tim was 18 years old, just starting a career, and in those days it was really, really difficult. And I can see how he might not have imagined his life could include a wife and baby. He lost his way and wanted to come back and meet his son, but he was afraid to broach the subject now with a son who might have bad feelings for him. You can imagine whatever might have gone through Tim's mind that would have kept him from seeking out his son, whatever guilt or sad feelings or ambivalence or even indifference. But as he grew older and became more of a man he began to understand how a man could make those choices and -- even though he regretted having made them -- not know how to overcome them. I feel sure, absolutely sure in my heart, that had Tim lived that that would have been overcome and they would have had a fine relationship.
It's part of the irony you talk about that in following his father's career, Jeff got closer to understanding the circumstances which separated them.
Precisely. And at the moment of his death he was more positive and more in control of his life and himself than he had ever been before. For someone to have lived each moment, in the moment, and loving freely, unconditionally? That boy loved everybody. He was an incredible man who was about to accomplish incredible things, and he left not an enemy in this world. [Tears] There aren't many men who can say that.
Was it obvious that you should release the songs when you heard them?
The first song I heard was "Everybody Here Wants You." And I have to tell you, Simon, this was on the plane coming up from Memphis the Tuesday after the Thursday night he had gone missing. The official word was that Jeff was missing, but by then the police and I knew we weren't dragging the river looking for a live Jeff Buckley. I was on the plane going to New York to begin the job of securing his apartment and all that stuff. The person who was holding the tapes was playing one, and he said, "Oh, you've got to hear this Mary," and clapped the headset on me before I could protest. And the first strains I heard were those first notes of "Everybody Here Wants You." When he got to the part where he sings, "I'm only here for this moment," I was a quivering mess, but the song itself was so beautiful I had to listen to it three or four more times. And as the first shock of hearing his voice again settled in, I was struck by the absolute preciousness of this song. If it was the only song there was, I might have found some way to releasing it.
Jeff was getting the band back together in Memphis because he was unsatisfied with what he had. What was his plan for the existing recordings?
They were going to re-record some of them. I heard a rumour that Jeff was going to burn these songs, so I said, "Oh my God, what am I doing? I'm releasing songs he was going to burn." Michael said, "Oh no, he never said he was going to burn the tapes." As a matter of fact they joked in the final conversation just moments before Jeff went on that fatal swim that they had so many songs now they didn't know how they were going to narrow it down to ten for a single album.
How would Jeff feel about unfinished work going out? Was he self-conscious about that? Was he a perfectionist?
In the extreme. Because it would have been a permanent record of a song. Speaking to Andy Wallace about Grace there were times when they'd have to say, "Jeff, that was beautiful, that was perfect, it was fine, let's go onto the next song." He was like a painter who could never put his brush down, and truly in performance and if you'd heard him you know, he never sang a song the same way twice anyway, even if it was recorded for all time in a particular way.
There's a lot of that freedom on the four track recordings, and I suppose we wouldn't have had an opportunity to hear those songs otherwise.
We never would have heard those songs in their current state, they would have morphed tremendously in the studio with the other members. In the creative process that Jeff ran things through, it would have been expanded and then compressed and come out the other end something entirely different. That's why I emphasised so much that the title should not be "My Sweetheart the Drunk." We didn't want to abandon the concept that this was the album that Jeff had been working on. So the words "Sketches (For...)" were put in. These are just rough sketches, and that's all they were ever intended to be, because they certainly aren't definitive performances, by any stretch of the imagination. We have more virtuosity in some of his live performances than we hear in these recordings, by Jeff Buckley standards.
I personally like the fact that they're possibly more pared back than they would have ended up.
In some ways it's fresher, it's just itself. And there's a value in that. Others in the future will want to adapt his music to their styles, in the same way he adapted other people's music to his style. I would like to see that there is an accurate and honest record for them to study when it comes time for someone else to discover his music, which there will be.
In the same way that the Beatles anthology recordings were really fascinating for fans, it's good to hear these original recordings.
What we are hearing is the architecture of a Jeff Buckley album and a Jeff Buckley song, something really precious that if Jeff had lived to 100 we would never have heard or been exposed to.
One of the issues he had to deal with was his developing fame. He went underground and did solo shows.
Yes, that's a perfect example. What were some of the names he had? Oh my God, A Puppet Show Named Julio, some of the strangest names he traveled under, bless his heart. There's a line in "Vancouver" where he says, "You have to get away to heal this bleeding stone." It was like an explanation of why he had to hide out from everyone. He just had to have some time to be Jeff Buckley in a place where he was just Jeff Buckley. He lived in a little house and was just this weird guy who wrote songs and went to the zoo for a while.
Did he ever get frustrated that he was being led around by his talent? You do lose control in situations where everybody is clamouring for you.
That's right, and friends who have been very good to you are now going into the studio and want you to sit in on their session. There's a whole gaggle of sessions while he was still in New York for friends. He was working with Patti Smith, popping in and out of sessions. There was no time to write music. He had to literally get out of New York to be able to sit down and write. He had to not forward phone calls from anybody, not even his girlfriend. He had to stay in Memphis and write songs. Thank God he recorded them. My God, Simon, just think where we would be! But I would be the first one to not have this album be reality. Honest to God.
It must be a hard thing to work with and be surrounded by all the time. How has the process been for you?
It's been very therapeutic. It's ironic, there's the bitter and the sweet. From the viewpoint of how wonderful people have been to me and how much people have extended themselves. That's bought me a lot of consolation, and so without too much of a chuckle in the back of my throat I have said this has been the most wonderful, heinous experience of my whole life. And if I have to live my life without my son, if his brother and I have to go through the rest of our existence on this planet without him being with us, then it's okay that everyone has been so wonderful, and that this album has turned out to be what I wanted it to be. This is the best I could do.
Everybody would be surprised that there was any thought of rejecting these recordings.
That's why weeks ago when the gossip started flying about how the band members hated the stuff and Jeff would have burned it, I thought, "You know, I talk to Michael Tighe everyday, I talked to Mike Grondahl four days ago. Those are the band members I've been talking to so where is this coming from?" I decided, "All right, they just haven't listened to the music yet, wait 'til they listen to the music. I can't wait for these guys to get it in their hands and all of those nabobs will just shut up and listen and maybe begin to understand where I've been for the last nine months." I think that will quiet them. And if it doesn't, they really have no life. [Laughs]
Gossip is an integral part of rock & roll, it seems. But it would be good if we could dispense with it at some point.
It's ironic, though, Simon, because I tried so hard those years and years ago to just stay away, out of the picture, in the background. Now I'm being thrust out into centre stage to speak for this, which I don't mind doing, but it still adds to the irony of an already ironic life.
What would have been your motive for staying out of it?
Well, I don't know, it was always just a place where I feel I didn'tfit in. I don't know why. There's a destructive side to the rock world. It's almost a self-fulfilling prophecy. I was sitting in a club the other night and looking at the young people getting up on stage and just flinging their hearts out at the microphones, and realising not only was I in that club at Los Angeles on a Friday night, but that there were a few hundred other clubs in that one town, multiplied by all those towns in the world, and I thought, "These poor guys. If something really bad happens to them, they get signed." Then their troubles really start. Then they make too much money for their own good, then they're traveling, and there's this whole thing where people get out of hand. My son's death was accidental, but there are plenty of deaths that are not, that are drug-related in this industry. Whatever it is that is going on on this industry that makes it happen this often, that's a scary place for you to think that your kid is going.
There would have been points where Jeff was throwing himself into it so much that he would have looked like hell.
Oh yes. When I first heard "Mojo Pin" I called him up and said, "Son, I know you don't want to hear this, but 'Mojo Pin,' that could be a needle couldn't it?" He said, "Mom, it's a dream, OK?" I said, "OK, but you can't expect me to let these things go by unasked." As if a young man would say, "Yeah, sure Mom, I'm taking it in the arm." It was a totally absurd conversation, but how do you know? Does your mother know what you do? Would you tell your mother? [Laughs]
Look there's a few things my mum doesn't know...
Yes, and he always wanted me to know he was OK. Struggling with fame, notoriety, all the tabloidesque bullshit, that's a really bad psychic place to be. I just wanted my son to be in a healthy place, so when he was saying his philosophy was to be a good songwriter and develop a nice, slow-moving career, I was totally supportive. But I also knew whenever I heard anything that he was working on, that it was so powerful and so very huge... it was only a matter of time. There's so much that the world can want to take from you, you know. It sucks the soul out of a person to be that wanted all over the world all the time, and that would have been his challenge -- to keep his life grounded and keep his equilibrium about things. If anybody could have done it, he could have.
He didn't seem like he was that attached to the ground.
That's been a lifelong worry. [Laughs] You've just described the difference between my two sons. The younger one was always mischievous, but I always knew where to pin him down. Jeffrey Scott was more up in the clouds, very different in his approach to life. His spiritual bent, his poetic bent was always to the metaphysical. For that to work in a person's life you have to stay grounded, you have to keep putting it back into perspective, touch base with reality. But he was the kind of guy who surrounded himself with people who were pretty much reality based. He had a few kooky friends, but for the most part they kept him tethered to something real.
Do you think any of this talent is inherited? Do you see any of yourself or his Dad in him?
I would tend to err on the side of individuality. You have to look at yourself and ask how much of what I do is forced on me because my father is who he is and my mother is who she is. If you have the talent, it's yours. You didn't get it from anybody else.
But we, as two people in each other's family, loved music together, and we shared that music, and we talked about it right to the end. And once he started developing his own music from the age of 19 on, it was I who understudied him and was informed by him. We switched roles.
But heredity, geez, I don't know. There was a lot of music coming from my side of the family as well. I just know that that little boy, whoever he was born to, that soul was music. That that particular soul found it's way to me at that particular moment in my life, out of a union with another talented musician, I think it's kind of obvious for God to do something like that. But he definitely didn't steal anything from his father, or from his mother for that matter.
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Copyright ©1998, 1999 Russ Fuller <kfak@attbi.com>. All rights reserved.
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