... in Words: Interviews
"The Sweet Hereafter," by Nui Te Koha
An interview with Mary Guibert
This interview was originally published in Rolling Stone Australia, June 1998
Special thanks to Jane Vinten for transcribing this article
Jeff Buckley's second album, Sketches (For My Sweetheart, The Drunk) was never meant to be released. Buckley considered it a failure, in his mind and more importantly, in his heart.
Extraordinarily, in the week Buckley had sought to repair the damage, he drowned in the placid and deceptive waters of the Wolf River channel of the Mississippi River, near Memphis. That was a year ago.
It was left to Buckley's mother, Mary Guibert, to sort through the musical remnants left by her son. Fortunately, Buckley left the kind of magic his fans would have expected.
Consequently, Buckley's requiem is the two-disc Sketches (For My Sweetheart, The Drunk) taking in the Tom Verlaine-produced sessions he rejected and demos recorded during his last weeks in Memphis.
Guibert says it was her duty -- to both her son, and his fans -- to release these works in progress.
RS: The first disc of Sketches (For My Sweetheart, The Drunk) comprises the sessions recorded with Tom Verlaine, sessions he was consequently unhappy with, and had dumped. Should this album have been released?
MG: It's a given that nothing we have, in its state, would ever have
got out if Jeff had lived. Would any of these songs have been included on an album if Jeff was still alive? Why was he disappointed or dissatisfied with the Verlaine sessions? I don't have the answers to those questions. I think the primary issue for Jeff is that he had not really been able to develop the songs, the album, in the shape of the concept going on in his own mind. It's a given that this album would not have been released, but, in the absence of the official new Jeff Buckley album, his fans would have demanded it.
RS: Disc Two comprises assorted demo sessions Jeff recorded with both Verlaine and a friend, Michael Clouse. Are these songs closer to the vibe he originally sought?
MG: Yeah, especially on "Haven't You Heard." That was one session where all the guys in the band agreed: that was the session they all loved the most. They felt in the groove, and it was happening, and you can tell from Jeff's vocal, in the way he goes "ha!" at the end of the song. That's not part of the song, that's him saying "Ha! we got it! That's a take!". He felt on fire.
RS: The latter recording sessions saw Jeff move out of New York and demo some tracks in Memphis. What appealed to Jeff about that part of the country?
MG: He had made friends with the guys from The Grifters, who were based in Memphis. And he liked the sound of the city: it was clean and honest and pure and without distraction. He wanted to get away from the synthetic sound of the studio and just capture the moment, that essence that he couldn't quite explain to Tom Verlaine. Jeff really isolated himself in Memphis. He didn't want his girlfriend there, nobody. He just drew the blinds and started wood-shedding, and out of that came 100-or-so tapes, tapes that he would dub one at a time and send out to his band.
RS: The initial reaction to Disc One of Sketches is that it has more rigid pop structures than anything Jeff had recorded before, especially if you consider the Grace album. Jeff was apparently rapt in the new songwriting disciplines he'd acquired.
MG: Do you think so? I think when an artist comes into their own, they don't intentionally have to be different anymore, or stretch it so far [laughs]. You know what? I remember he wrote on the Internet: "You're not going to see me for a while, I'm going away, but I love you all. I'm going to go write a bunch of new songs about love and chicks, and you'll love them. You're going to scream them out loud in your car." He loved writing songs that people felt close to. He wanted them to be in their hearts.
RS: Was Jeff's vocal talent evident when he was young?
MG: From the time he was a little toddler, he was singing little ditties and nursery rhymes, almost as soon as he could speak. As a baby, he was vocalising. I have little snapshots of him on the raised hearth of the fireplace: that was his little stage, where he would sing songs, entertaining his grandma and me. He'd recite poems. He was so talented. An incredible little guy.
RS: Jeff said he met his father once, but he never knew him. What can you tell me about the time they met?
MG: After the break up of my second marriage, I began to think it's really sad that there's this boy who has not had any contact with his father. We got child support cheques every month, but there was no contact, no birthday cards, no Christmas cards. I opened the newspaper one day and there was this ad that read "one night only, Tim Buckley" playing at the golden bear, a club that used to be down by the beach. I took Jeff to see the performance. We sat in on the first set and Scotty (Guibert's nickname for Jeff) just came alive, and his eyes were on fire, he was dancing in his chair. I literally watched my son fall in love with his father. We went backstage and he ran into his father's arms. They embraced for a good 10 to 15 minutes. Tim's wife asked if they could have him stay with them for the Easter holidays, so Scotty went to be with his dad for three or four days. Two months later, Tim died (of an overdose related to heroin and alcohol abuse). It was cruel. Scotty was ripped away from the possibility of every having known him.
RS: What did you think of Jeff's debut album Grace?
MG: I was blown away. I had been hearing incarnations of those songs for years, and of course, I had been in New York to see him perform at Sin-é. He was keeping alive the songs he loved.
RS: Did the Grace album tell you anything you didn't know about your son?
MG: No, not the Grace album, but this one did. Grace was a culmination of years of broken songwriting. "Lover, You Should've Come Over" was originally called "The Unforgiven"; "Mojo Pin" was "Strawberry Street". Sketches was a bunch of brand new songs, all out of his new, self-formed person he had become. He was becoming a man. He was a seasoned performer, he'd traveled around the world several times, he'd written -- in addition to a phenomenal first album -- 35 incredible songs, and he was ready to take charge.
RS: What did Jeff want these new songs to be about?
MG: Aside from wanting these songs to be about love, really enjoyable songs that people would hum and sing to themselves, they would also be about damnation and salvation, loss and recovery, and the aftermath of pain, which is the healing, and the learning, and the growing. Even on a darker piece like "Sky Is A Landfill" where he is really admonishing the system, there is still a call to that inner-search within yourself that says "we all have a higher purpose in life." There is something that elevates us all.
RS: So, through these songs, and in his life, Jeff was seeking some sort of balance?
MG: Very much so. I was contemplating being thrust into this project, and, in a way, it's given me this little window on an industry that is very complex. It is an industry filled with really incredible artists, but it also has a very dark side. However, I was at a club the other night watching this young act, and they were followed by three or four tenuous acts, and I did the math. I figured that on any given night, in at least a million clubs all over the world, there are young people throwing their hearts out there, just to be a part of this music business. Taking that artistry into a commercial world can challenge even the strongest character: there is a fame and notoriety dumped on you that is outside of any real, human realm. Jeff had problems with that. He once said in an interview "I shouldn't be famous. The person who finds the cure for cancer should be famous. I'm just a songwriter".
RS: Were there any popular misconceptions about your son?
MG: I don't know. If there were, he wouldn't have minded. He was a very resilient guy. There was too much forgiveness in him to be brittle and fragile and easily broken. He was easily touched, a very sensitive guy, but deep down, he always moved towards the light.
RS: I remember asking Jeff how he thought people perceived him. Deep? Out there? He said "Nah, wanker, probably."
MG:[laughs] Jeff sometimes made things up. He would send newspaper clippings home, and I would see the "poor white trailer trash" reference in interviews. I'd be "Oh my God, Scotty, we never lived in a trailer! Where is this coming from? What picture are you painting?" He was a fun loving guy, with the best sense of humour of anybody I have ever met.
RS: This whole promotion trail for you must be weird, and heartbreaking.
MG: With each step, there's new pain. There's always an initial flood of emotion, but the beauty of his music is healing. The thought that this work will be heard, the thought that the vibration of his vocal chords will be heard all over the world, possibly long after I live, is more than enough to perk me up, and allow me to move forward. This is the most important thing I could ever do with my life, if God intended for me to be the mother of Jeff Buckley, and be the steward of his legacy, then I accept that mantle gladly.
©1998 by Rolling Stone Australia. All rights reserved
Copyright ©1998, 1999 Russ Fuller <kfak@attbi.com>. All rights reserved.
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