... in Words: Tributes "Dream Brother," by Sam Guthrie This interview was originally published in The Australian, 7 June 1997.
A cold Monday morning found me singing my soul away in the tunnel, at Sydney’s central station. I was more than a busker, I was a mourner, saying my "Last Goodbye." Whilst meanwhile, all around the world, men and women were crying to themselves, turning to their computers and weeping the words out into cyber space. "Jeff Buckley is dead." On Thursday last Buckley went missing whilst swimming in the Mud Island Harbour area adjoining the Mississippi river. A singer with influences as diverse as Led Zeppelin, Captain Beefheart, Ella Fitzgerald and Edith Piaf, the report of his disappearance hit with waves of fear and grief. The cry went out through the night for a man who had touched so many lives. "I came into music completely when I was born and fell in love with it, and it became my mother, my father and my playmate when I was really young, when I had nothing." This is the way we met Jeff in 1993 with his first EP Live at Sin-é. Immediately we fell into a voice that was truly remarkable. Doing covers of Van Morrison, Edith Piaf, and two stunning originals this was our first introduction to a man that would take us forever. His follow up album, Grace, was not disappointing. Buckley’s full length album was a breath of fresh air in a music industry so stale it is simply boring. He challenged popular music, placing art before profit. Style, before trend. Grace came to be the soundtrack for our lives. We cried to it, screamed, laughed and, made love by it. From his stunning original "Mojo Pin," to the intermit cover of Leonard Cohen’s "Hallelujah," he managed to evoke something to an audience other wise unheard. A feeling, an intensity, a passion. Whatever it was, we needed most. On the days after his disappearance, the Jeff Buckley mailing list on the Internet, usually filled with gossip and respect for the man was swamped with grief and tears. In one afternoon at least two hundred letters were posted as people attempted to console one another from such a tragic loss. And yet the questions were the same, "Why does this always happen. Why does it go on." The one who soundtracks your life, that first love, that pain whatever, and suddenly he’s gone. Lennon, Morrison, Cobain, Jeff’s own father. Genius swiped away when we needed it most. To wake up one morning and realise, "yes, he is still gone". On Saturday a wake for Jeff is planned by the members of his mailing list. Similarly others have been held in New York, and France. It is simply an opportunity for his many fans to come and cry together for a friend that we have all sadly lost. And it was all these things I thought that morning, sitting in a freezing station strumming a guitar. Jeff Buckley is dead. Jeff Buckley. And yet, as someone very truthfully pointed out to me last night, if he is dead, "then I can just see Jeff singing Handel’s "Hallelujah" in heaven and then improvising some Ella Fitzgerald scat lines there in the middle of it." I liked that. Good bye, Jeff, you will be truly missed. ©1997 by The Australian. All rights reserved
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