... in Words: Tributes

"Gracelands: The Strange Life and High Times of Jeff Buckley"

This interview was originally published in Juice Magazine, Issue 54, August 1997, pp. 54-7.

        New York singer Jeff Buckley was weeks away from being one of the musical greats of the decade. The frail looking guitarist with a voice that belied his small frame and fresh good looks was also a gifted and original songwriter. Although he'd never made a big splash on the hit parade, Buckley was considered by critics, fans and the music industry as a star waiting to explode.

        At 8:30pm on Thursday, May 29, Buckley left a Mississippi restaurant with his friend of three years, 23-year-old Keith Foti, and headed towards his set-up at a downtown rehearsal studio in the traditional blues town of Memphis, Tennessee. There he planned to meet his bandmates, guitarist Michael Tighe, bass player Mick Grondahl and drummer Parker kindred, who were flying in that night to begin rehearsals for the album which was set to solidify Buckley's place in the pantheon. He'd moved into a rented house in the Memphis in March and was enjoying his time in the town that was new, but so crucial to the immediate future of his first love: his art.

        With friends, Buckley was taking in live music a couple of times a week in the fertile local scene, attending services at Al Green's church and slumming in low-key local blues joints. Buckley enjoyed the anonymity Memphis offered him, the location becoming the realisation of the past year's efforts to distance himself from the trappings shows in obscure venues, attempting to rekindle the feelings music offered before he felt the weight of expectation and fame. His earliest shows had been intimate affairs in hipper-than-thou New York bars and cafes - Bang On, Fez, First Street Cafe and the venue he chose to be the scene for his first Columbia release, an Irish joint on St Marks Place called the Sin-é. Buckley kept up the tradition with a Monday night residency at the local nightclub Barristers, playing his last show there on May 26.

        In high spirits, that evening Foti and Buckley redirected their car towards a marina that skirts Mud Island Harbour, a swimming hole Buckley had frequented since his arrival despite the fact that, as Lt. Maples of Memphis Police has since emphasised, several people had drowned in the dangerous waters over the past year.

        Singing and playing guitar, Jeff waded fully clothed into the water, laughing as he paddled on his back while Foti remained on shore, close enough to maintain visual and vocal contact. After 15 minutes Foti turned to move a radio they were listening to because it was in danger of being splashed by the wash from a passing boat. When Foti turned back, the singer had disappeared. Investigators speculate that he was dragged under and away from the dock by currents generated by that same boat. Foti called after him for ten minutes before going to the police for help.

        By 10:00 P.M. a search using boats, horse and foot patrols, helicopters and scuba divers was under way. It was almost a week before Jeff's body was spotted floating in Memphis Harbour by a passenger on a passing tourist riverboat, the American Queen, at around 4:30 P.M. on Wednesday, June 4. American Queen crew members rode a rubber dinghy to the location of the body and brought it ashore at the foot of busy Beale Street. Initially identified by a navel piercing and clothes which matched Buckley's description, the body was positively identified later that night by Gene Bowen, Buckley's close friend and tour manager of three years.

        "The news here portrayed him as a fatalist. They've been playing 'The Last Goodbye' and saying he threw himself into the river," said a friend (who wishes to remain anonymous), who last saw Buckley at 7:30 P.M. the night of his death. "And people have been saying this stupid Jim Morrison mystical shit, like he's faking his death. But he never would have done this to his family and friends. It's just that people who aren't from here don't understand about that water."

        Survived by one album filled with romantic references departures and spiritualism (from its first single, "The Last Goodbye," to the re-worked and re-released "Eternal Life"), Buckley makes a prime candidate for canonisation. His talk, often alluding to the poetic angst of the artist, also suggested Buckley was not a man who spent the majority of his time in great spirits. Then couple that with the hint of a family curse. His father, Tim Buckley, a folk-rock-R&B legend, accidentally overdosed on heroin mistaken for cocaine when he was 28 years old. Thus you have a myth in the making, illustrated by the emotional impact his drowning has had on fans who pinned extravagant tributes to websites following his death, taking solace in the idea that "God wanted an angel for his choir."

        "Most artists have a real deep-rooted self loathing," Buckley said in a Japanese interview in 1995. "I have a destructive nature. Sometimes I have this impulse to destroy things, usually having to do with myself."

        Suspicions were aroused by the fact that Buckley went into the water fully clothed. Speculators wondered if this was the act of a sober man, but local police have been emphatic in stating they believe neither drugs nor alcohol played a part in the accident. Lory is just as emphatic about the possibility of this being a case of self-destructive behaviour, let alone suicide. "Jeff Buckley was never in a better state of mind," he said, speaking from a hotel in London at 1am on Thursday, June 5. He'd just returned from his first night out with friends, spurred by the news that Buckley's body had been found after a week's agonising uncertainty. "He was personally happy, he'd had a girlfriend for over a year. He was professionally happy, he was very excited about recording this album."

        It wasn't always so. Buckley's life was tumultuous. "Everybody's upbringing somehow plants a devil inside them," he said back in 1995, referring to his nomadic childhood and his consequent rootlessness. Born in late 1966, Buckley sprang from a brief teenage marriage between his mother, Mary Guibert, and his father, the then-unknown Tim, who left before he had a chance to get to know his son, becoming a successful musician, a star by the time he was 21. In 1975, two months before he died, Tim finally introduced himself to his eight-year-old son. The week the pair spent together was the only chance Jeff had to get to know the man whose name would haunt him both personally and professionally.

        "Probably the only criticism I have of him is that he had a death wish, or he told himself he was going to die before he hit 30," explained Buckley in one interview. "There's no need to do that. You end up having to shoulder the world when you're like 21, 22."

        Jeff grew up in southern California, playing little league baseball, singing along to the radio and the Led Zeppelin albums he was fed by his step-dad, growing into a face which strongly resembled his handsome father's. His life was transient, as the family (Jeff has a younger brother) were forced to move constantly to stay afloat as a single parent family in the conservative mid-'60s. Buckley later recalled "white trashville towns overrun by Burger Kings, malls, Bloods and Crips and high taxes, marijuana and rock & roll." His sense of displacement made him a loner.

        "I grew up in places like Anaheim and Riverside," Buckley explained in a previous interview. "Really middle of the road, conservative, white neighbourhoods, very segregated. I was just in a dreamland about ... everything. I just didn't appreciate it. It didn't include me, and it really chastised me... There's a huge world outside. If you don't know that then it's too late for you already."

        Not surprisingly, Buckley left home at 17 and moved to Los Angeles at 18, becoming involved in the cooler edges of the local hard rock scene while studying at the Guitar Institute of Technology (predominantly a widdle factory) and auditioning for everything from reggae bands to the then nascent Fishbone. During these years there were periodic phone calls from his father's former manager, who'd ask if Jeff was showing any musical tendencies. Eventually these overtures, along with an offer to pay for a recording session, drew Buckley into the studio. Not wanting to grow as an artist in his father's shadow - finding that people either loved him for his marketability or his place in their personal nostalgia trip for his troubadour dad - Buckley had reservations when he was invited to play at a tribute to his father held at a hip Brooklyn church-cum-venue, St Ann's.

        Amidst the indulgences of the musicians from nearby downtown and Knitting Factory scenes, Buckley's plaintive solo guitar performance of "Once I Was" proved a highlight. The voice turned heads, and while he'd been performing in cafes for some time, this show generated serious interest. Despite living on the edge of poverty, Buckley held out for the right record deal, eventually signing to Columbia.

        After a short stint with underground supergroup Gods and Monsters, which he shared with Captain Beefheart legend Gary Lucas, he moved on to cafes solo shows in the summer of 1992 and took to covering the greats, including Van Morrison, Edith Piaf and Bob Dylan. The results of this apprenticeship were documented in the Live at Sin-é EP. That Buckley insisted his first release be made in this lo-fi, unconventional format introduced his passion for live solo performance.

        His full album Grace, was recorded in the autumn of 1993 with drums, bass and string arrangements, a solid, more realised work which still captured his love of live magic with its breathy reading of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" -- a one-taker that illustrates his impeccable sense of nuance. The album gradually became a critics' fave, breaking biggest in smaller territories like France and Australia.

        His first tour of Australia in September 1995 was initially intended as a showcase. But the gigs sold out in minutes, so a full tour -- which also sold out in hours -- was scheduled for early the following year. In Australia Buckley went Top 10 with Grace and received a gold album.

        The quality of the album, and more importantly the near spiritual impact of his shows, driven by his powerful, crystalline voice, set him up as a man revered, while his good looks and sensitive, impassioned romanticism made him an unwilling and ever so credible heart-throb.

        He found the response unrealistic and realised he was generating expectations impossible to fulfill. Fans noticed a deterioration in his onstage emotional state and put it down to his battles with the business side of being a rock musician. Stories about relationship dramas (including Courtney Love) and drug abuse abounded. After his second tour of Australia in February '96, Buckley took a break from performing live. Instead he went home to New York, painted his apartment, and pottered around waking up at 11am to have scrambled eggs and coffee - simply "being Jeff the guy," says Lory.

        The peace didn't last. The departure of drummer Matt Johnson (again amidst rumours of drug use), meant interviewing replacements. By the end of '96 the band was coming together. Buckley then went to ground and prepared for his new album, much to the consternation of his fans, who misunderstood his methods. He'd returned to grass roots, playing unannounced and solo to the uninitiated, or in small 300 seat venues to ease in the new drummer. The pressure off, he found release from the hyped expectations and rekindled his love for performing, helping him begin rehearsals on the new album early this year.

        "Hi, Buckley again," he wrote to his fans in a letter reproduced in his own handwriting on the official Columbia Records website, by way of explanation. "The question is: 'Why did he tour and not tell us where he was playing? Why, why, why?' And the answer is: There was a time in my life not too long ago when I could show up in a cafe and simply do what I do, make music, learn from performing my music, explore what it means to me, i.e. have fun while I irritate and/or entertain an audience who don't know me or what I am about. In this situation I have that precious and irreplaceable luxury of failure, of risk, of surrender. I worked very hard to get this kind of thing together, this work forum. I loved it and then I missed it when it disappeared. All I am doing is reclaiming it."

        There remains the issue of Buckley's unfinished music. On October 25, 1996, he posted a letter on his website explaining his plans, the free-form rant suggesting where his music was headed and offering some indicator of the enthusiasm with which he was embracing the creative process:

        "Every song will have a quiet part, then a loud part at the shout chorus," he wrote, "and the lyrics will totally open up new pathways in the human mind, allowing both sexes to fling themselves into the path of modern boredom and sloth like and oncoming train. It's not just a woman's job anymore. Both must explode as one. The will be no pain or shock at the time of impact. There will only be Coca-Cola and Disney. And hooks, lots and lots of hooks for the kids at summer break. For the employees of the year who suddenly crack under pressure and ascend the clock towers with their candy bars and automatic rifles, or anyone who has finally come to the answers of life. And there's lot of songs about chicks... I almost forgot... life. Chicks. Hooks. Life. Candy Bars. Bang! Bang! Bang! Snipers are the sex symbols of the future. Every newspaper will send one to the after-show parties. So hot, so sexy. They'll bang us all. I have to be in the meat district in ten minutes so I'll sign off. I love you. Take care."

        There is also likely to be a substantial amount of his live work on tape. That Live at Sin-é is comprised of four short tunes from a set which lasted three hours suggests there's a wealth of live material Sony could have in its vaults. In that show alone Wallace put to tape Buckley's Howlin' Wolf versus heckler vocal duet; an extended monologue and performance based around the work of Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn (his response to a smartarse request for songs by the Pakistani spiritualist); and a jab at his record company in the form of the Doors' "The End" (the original monologue replaced by: "Jeff?" "Yes Sony." "We want to fuck you!"). The obvious question is, would Buckley have wanted these songs released?

        "Let me put it this way," answers Lory, "Jeff was taking what he did with Grace to a new level. There is a lot of music on tape right now. When Jeff was alive I was very protective of his art. I'm going to be that way in his death. There will be music coming out, but it will be right music. Unfortunately, I have the burden, and my colleagues have the burden, of determining what that music is without Jeff here... It's not that we lost a client, we lost a friend with Jeff."

        Any attempt at eulogy pales in comparison to the poetry Buckley penned himself. But we can take some solace in the fact that Buckley died risking danger for quality of life, his death a reflection of his bravery. "I learned long ago not to attach [death] to either myths or truths or mystic truths or special books written by people a long time ago," he said in one Australian interview. "I have no preconceptions whatsoever about the void and about the end, except that I feel there is none, really no end."

©1997 by Juice Magazine. All rights reserved

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