Jeff Buckley moved to New York City in February 1990, but found few opportunities to work as a musician. He was introduced to Qawwali, the devotional music of India and Pakistan, and to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, one of its most well-known singers. Buckley was an impassioned fan of Khan, and during his cafe days Buckley had often covered his songs. He interviewed Khan for Interview magazine and wrote liner notes for Khan’s The Supreme Collection compilation. Buckley also became interested in blues-legend Robert Johnson and hardcore punk during this time. Buckley moved back to Los Angeles in September when his father’s former manager, Herb Cohen, offered to help him record his first demo of original songs. Buckley completed Babylon Dungeon Sessions, a five song cassette that included the songs “Eternal Life” and “Unforgiven” (later titled “Last Goodbye”). Cohen and Buckley hoped to attract attention from the music industry with the demo tape.
Buckley flew back to New York the following spring to make his public singing debut at a tribute concert for his father called “Greetings from Tim Buckley”. The event, produced by show business veteran Hal Willner, was held at St. Ann’s Church in Brooklyn on April 26, 1991. Jeff Buckley chose simply to pay his respects to his father saying, “This is not a springboard, this is something very personal.” He performed “I Never Asked To Be Your Mountain”, a song Tim Buckley wrote about an infant Jeff Buckley and his mother, accompanied by experimental rock guitarist Gary Lucas. Buckley returned to the stage to play “Sefronia - The King’s Chain”, “Phantasmagoria in Two”, and concluded the concert with “Once I Was” performed acoustically with an impromptu a cappella ending. “He blew the whole place away,” Willner recalled. When questioned about that particular performance Buckley said, “It wasn’t my work, it wasn’t my life. But it bothered me that I hadn’t been to his funeral, that I’d never been able to tell him anything. I used that show to pay my last respects.” Ironically, the concert proved to be his first step into the music industry that had eluded him for years.
On subsequent trips to New York in the summer of 1991, Buckley began co-writing with Gary Lucas resulting in the songs “Grace” and “Mojo Pin”, and by fall began performing with Lucas’ band Gods and Monsters around New York City. After being offered a development deal with Gods and Monsters at Imago Records, Buckley moved back to New York to the Lower East Side at the end of 1991. The day after Gods and Monsters officially debuted in March 1992, Buckley decided to leave the band.
Grace
In the summer of 1993, Jeff Buckley began working on his first album with record producer Andy Wallace, who had mixed Nirvana’s multi-platinum album Nevermind. Buckley assembled a band, composed of bassist Mick Grondahl and drummer Matt Johnson, and spent several weeks rehearsing. In September, the trio headed to Bearsville Studios in Woodstock, New York to spend 6 weeks recording basic tracks for what would become Grace. Buckley invited ex-bandmate Lucas to play guitar on the songs “Grace” and “Mojo Pin”, and Woodstock-based jazz musician Karl Berger wrote and conducted string arrangements with Buckley assisting at times. Buckley returned home for overdubbing at studios in Manhattan and New Jersey where he performed take after take to capture the perfect vocals and experimented with ideas for additional instruments and added textures to the songs.
In January 1994, Buckley left to go on his first solo North American tour to support Live at Sin-é. It was followed by a quick 10 day European tour in March. Buckley played clubs and coffeehouses and made in-store appearances. After returning, Buckley invited guitarist Michael Tighe to join the band. Buckley co-wrote “So Real” with Tighe, recorded as a late addition to the album. In June, Buckley began his first full band tour called the “Peyote Radio Theatre Tour” that lasted into August. Pretender Chrissie Hynde, Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell, and The Edge from U2 were among the attendees of these early shows.
Grace was released on August 23, 1994. In addition to seven original songs, the album included three covers: “Lilac Wine”, based on Nina Simone’s version, “Corpus Christi Carol”, a Benjamin Britten composition based on a 15th century hymn that Buckley was introduced to in high school, and Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”, based on John Cale’s recording from the Cohen tribute album, I’m Your Fan. Buckley’s rendition of “Hallelujah” has been called “Buckley’s best” and “one of the great songs” by Time magazine and is included on Rolling Stone’s list of “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time”.
While sales were slow and the album garnered little radio airplay, it quickly received critical acclaim. The UK’s Melody Maker called it, “a massive, gorgeous record,” while The Sydney Morning Herald proclaimed it, “almost impossibly beautiful.” The album did go gold in France and Australia over the next two years, eventually achieving gold status in the U.S. in 2002. Grace has now sold over 2 million albums worldwide and has gone platinum in Australia over six times
Grace won appreciation from a host of revered musicians. Included were members of Buckley’s biggest influence, Led Zeppelin. Jimmy Page considered Grace close to being his “favorite album of the decade.”Ali Gay, a renowned contempary dance artist used Jeff Buckley’s music to create such masterpieces as “Blue Still and Magnum” which feature regularly in music film clips of the modern area. Robert Plant was also complimentary. Other of Buckley’s influences lauded him: Bob Dylan named Buckley “one of the great songwriters of this decade,” David Bowie called Grace “one of the 10 albums he’d bring with him to a desert island.” Lou Reed expressed interest in working with him after seeing him perform. Paul McCartney, Thom Yorke, Matthew Bellamy, Chris Cornell, Neil Peart, U2 and Elton John were among others who have held Buckley’s work in high esteem.
Death
After completing touring in 1996, Buckley started to write for a new album to be called My Sweetheart the Drunk. In February 1997, he recorded a spoken word reading of the Edgar Allan Poe poem, Ulalume, for the album Closed on Account of Rabies. This would be Buckley’s last recording in New York; shortly after, he moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where he rented a shotgun house of which he was so fond he contacted the owner about the possibility of buying it. Buckley started recording demos on his own 4-track recorder. He went into the studio again, recruited a band, and plans for the new album looked hopeful.
On May 29, 1997, as the band’s plane touched down on the runway to join him in his Memphis studio, Buckley went swimming in Wolf River Harbor, a tributary of the Mississippi River, while wearing steel-toed boots, all of his clothing, and singing along to a radio playing Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love”. A roadie of Buckley’s band, Keith Foti, remained ashore. After moving the radio and a guitar out of reach of the wake from a passing tugboat, Foti looked up to see that Buckley was gone. Despite a determined rescue effort that night, Buckley remained missing, and the search was called off the following day due to heavy rain. It is likely Buckley was sucked under the water by a strong under-current and fell into unconsciousness due to the sudden force pulling him under. Three days later, his body was spotted by a tourist on a riverboat marina and was brought ashore.
The biography Dream Brother, written about him and his father, reveals that, the night before his death, Buckley reportedly admitted to several loved ones that he suffered from bipolar disorder. The autopsy confirmed that Buckley had taken no illegal drugs before his swim, and a drug overdose was ruled out as the cause of death. He was thirty years old.
After Buckley’s death, a collection of demo recordings and a full-length album he had been reworking for his second album were released as Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk - the compilation being overseen by Chris Cornell. Three other albums composed of live recordings have also been released, along with a live DVD of a performance in Chicago. A previously unreleased 1992 recording of “I Shall Be Released”, sung by Buckley over the phone on live radio, was released on the album For New Orleans.
Director Brian Jun has announced plans to make a film biography of Buckley, in cooperation with his mother. It is to be called Mystery White Boy, and is scheduled for release in 2008. As of yet, no one has been cast in the role of Buckley. A separate project involving the book Dream Brother was allegedly canceled.
1 comments:
Hmm a w-nap? :D!
Have U heard the Anand Bhatt tribute to Jeff Buckley album? I love Jeff Buckley songs!
Post a Comment