Artist Review
Jeff Buckley :
A lifetime of heartache for what could have been.
Jeff was my very first FB cover artist back in April 2012 but at the time I hadn’t started writing about them. It was simply posting my favourite artists and their albums and as time progressed, I began writing about each one. At about 28 or 29 posts into my 100 favourites, on December 21, 2012 [Remember the end of the Mayan calendar which we all kind of freaked out about a little?], I reposted a new version with these words your now reading…give or take.
So I thought it only appropriate that on what is supposed to be the Mayan’s D-Day, that I have a cover artist that influenced me more than any other artist…ever. And this is not even a close race. I’m serious, this horse won by 5 lengths. Not because he uses his voice like Hendrix uses a guitar, or because he has more raw emotion dripping from his music than a hot bath on a rainy day. I think it is because at the time that he was alive, he connected with a part of me that had been begging to come out and play.
Musically, I think my heart simply said “Thankyou. I’m done now”. Only after 3 to 4 years of playing live gig’s across the cultural hub of NY’s Greenwich Village and arriving on most our radars in 1994, the unconquerable Jeff Buckley showed us all how to fuse ballads and rock with his one and only studio album ‘Grace’.
Picking up speed as it went, it took a while for songs such as ‘Last Goodbye’ and ‘Lover You Should Have Come Over’ to reach us. But when they did, they did so with acclaim. An not the bullshit acclaim that comes with selling a fuck tonne of albums so it ‘must be good’. The kind of acclaim that 15 years on has legendary artists still mourning his voice like it was a national treasure.
These days, you can find articles about pretty much every aspect of his life on the interweb. And they’re all great. And I’d be an idiot to think that these words were any different. But for those who connect with Jeff Buckley’s music, I don’t think I’m out of line by saying he somehow embodied the beauty in pain. He has become a beacon for some *raises hand* in which his music represents a state of intended melancholy. My beautiful wife always asks me whats up if I’ve played more than 3 Jeff songs in a row…I’ve long since learned not to ask her what she means.
I’m not entirely sure how many of you actually have a no.1 song of all time, most people say “Oh, but there are so many…”. Sure. I can’t argue with that. Considering that without ever really being able to count exactly due to the murky waters of the meaning ‘recorded’, there is estimated to be about 45million songs world wide to choose from [thank you your Googleness], there is bound to be at least one that gets your juices flowing.
For me, hands down…without question. Jeff Buckley’s ‘Grace’.
I’m not sure what it moves in me but I know that it is big. Big enough to make me want to close my eyes and drop into an emotional vacuum that transports me to a place that up until now, no other piece of music has been able to do.
Don’t get me wrong, there is so much music in this world that stirs me in different ways, but after years of contemplating what it is about this track that spikes my hearts seismograph like a motherfucker, I realised that any track that we can even contemplate calling our No.1 song of all time is destined to have some sort of memory or emotion attached to it that we store away like a worn out jumper that still smells of the perfume…..yeah.
For me, it was 1996. As much as the people around me at the time played a massive impact on how I feel when I recall that time, the reason I’m so attached to this song is actually pretty simple. It was when I learned to love. For those of you who know me, I am not saying I hadn’t been in love before, but more specifically its when I learned to love in my own way.
Up until this time I think I was very much behaving the way the world wanted me to. Nothing groundbreaking I know. But around the time that I was introduced to Jeff Buckley, I found myself overwhelmed [again, not unusual if you know me] at the idea of loving someone in a way that was foreign, confusing and most of all….real.
If you listen to the song ‘Grace’, and I mean really listen to it, there is this gorgeous mixture of desperation, struggle and surrender that to this day finds my heart beating double time as he finishes his last ‘Wait in the Fire…’. Its kinda like an audio version of the Mona Lisa. I can never tell whether he’s pleading with me to understand his struggle or if he’s simply announcing his pain like a wounded wolf. Do I just sit back and watch the train wreck or does he want me to help? It can change from day to day. Needless to say, it not only struck a chord with a young man finding himself, but it’s a friggen kick arse song….that helps…a lot.
I was lucky enough to meet Jeff after that 1996 concert at the Palais. For anyone who was there, you’ll recall it was pissing down like a mofo that night and after adversely getting the destination of Jeff from some band members in a Toyota Hiace [quality], I dashed with my beautiful friend to the Corner Hotel where I was privileged enough to sit with him while he signed something for a diehard friend of ours who couldn’t make his gig.
To this day*, his death is the only one [family members included] where I can recall where I was when I heard the news. Music is more than something that gets added between bullshit radio hosts talking shit and trying to keep people entertained with call back banter that amounts to less than the kindergarten drivel my kids would shower me with after a big day throwing wet toilet paper at each other with plastic forks.
Music is sacred. In all its forms. *yes, even Kanye* But if music can move people like the way Jeff’s music moves me, there is always hope for us as a race.
As you can tell, I needed to write about Jeff.. I have now. I’m happy….in a sad kinda way.
M /
*Note: I have since updated this ability to recall my whereabouts to include Chris Cornell.
~ Article updated August 2018
