Jeff Buckley and the stirring Beyond
“He was the best singer that had appeared, probably, I’m not being too liberal about this if I say, in two decades”.
Jeff Buckley is part of the Spirit World of music. Along with a small, esoteric group of misfits and oracles that include Robert Johnson, Nick Drake, Billie Holiday and Jimi Hendrix, he seemed to have been born with one foot already rooted in the Beyond. Already navigating worlds shimmering beyond physics. Buckley possessed a chameleonic voice able to harness such singular and potent energies as Nina Simone, Edith Piaf and Nusrat Fateh Ali Kan, so disarmingly that audiences could not but be swept up in invocation. This wasn’t mimicking – this was channeling. An otherworldly charge seemed present, lifting and harmonising his voice – kindling Fire from the hinterscapes of memory and experience.
Many will tell you this ‘otherworldly charge’ was in fact located in his vocal chords.
Dream Brother
Born on 17 November 1966, Buckley was raised Scotty Moorhead, only meeting his biological father, acclaimed folk artist Tim Buckley, once, at the age of eight. By his own account his childhood was one of “rootless trailer trash”, but steeped in music. His mother was a classically trained cellist, and step-father Ron introduced him to the key 70′s Rock and folk groups. He later recalled that everyone in his family sang, and that he’d stumbled onto his first guitar in his Gran’s closet. A voracious, near promiscuous thirst for music led him to adore such wide-ranging, seemingly irreconcilable groups as kitsch rockers Kiss; hardcore Punk outfit Bad Brains; Bob Dylan; Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan; and Nina Simone. Earning his chops through playing guitar in a variety of Punk, Rock and Funk bands, Buckley found his calling through solo performances, where he was free to pounce between genres and sentiments.
His public singing debut and first major break came through a guest performance at a tribute concert for Tim Buckley, who had passed away at the age of 28, leaving behind an uneven but esteemed collection of Folk, Rock and more avant-garde musics. By the time of Buckley’s residency at Manhattan’s Sin-e’, word was not so much getting round as spreading like wildfire. The likes of Robert Plant, Chrissie Hynde and Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell attended his shows, and began championing the phenomenon U2′s The Edge described as “A pure drop in an ocean of noise”.
Says Cornell: “People talked about his concerts the way they used to talk about Hendrix. They’d sit there, wide-eyed, telling you stories about him. He definitely had an aura.”
A Swan to Sing
The grapevine electricity led to his debut studio album – the near unanimously acclaimed Grace [1994] – David Bowie naming it one of his ten desert-island albums. Buckley assembled a touring band and hit the road for two years – a tour that had Led Zep’s Jimmy Page gush, “he was the best singer that had appeared, probably, I’m not being too liberal about this if I say, in two decades”.
Following the tour the band began laying down recordings for 2nd album Mystery White Boy. The album would never be released. On 29 May 1997, his band was en route to Tennessee for re-recordings. By the time their flight had landed, Jeff Buckley was gone – drowned during an impromptu night swim in the Mississippi river; caught in the wake of a passing boat. He was thirty.
The Busker Transformative
To experience a song by Buckley is to be seduced. Whether live or studio-cut, an original song or an interpretation, a Buckley performance inevitably moves one – draws or wrenches one into an often intense, always touching journey. Buckley’s live appearances at Manhattan club Sin-e’ have become the stuff of legend. Armed with a lone electric guitar, Buckley would casually announce a song, perhaps preambling with an anecdote, without raising his voice above the general chit-chat sound tracking the venue. Then he would strum into wonderment.
Anyone who has experienced his renditions of Simone’s Strange Fruit or Cohen’s Hallelujah will experience shivers as they read these words. Nearly two decades later, in a quantumly different world, he still inspires awe. John Legend: “I think I can sing with just about anybody; but he’s one of the few singers who truly intimidate me.”
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