Jeff Buckley's music
indicative of talent
of rare depth and breadth
Cori MacNaughton
Some time ago, eighteen months or perhaps a bit more, Marek's best friend Michael sent him a copy of some of Jeff Buckley's music. Marek asked me about him one evening, to which I replied, "He's a phenomenal guitarist," which he noted, and we went on to other subjects.
A couple of days later, he mentioned that Buckley had a really good singing voice, to which I responded, "Really? I didn't even know he sang."
I was, in the end, not thinking of Jeff Buckley at all; but of Jeff Beck, who is indeed a phenomenal guitarist.
I was largely unfamiliar with Buckley's work at the time, at least by name, which is, quite simply, a crime.
The next time Marek was home, we transferred Buckley's work to my memory stick, and I began going through his music. And, in the process, I came across several songs that I knew and recognized, and had loved when they came out, but had not known at the time who the artist was.
The songs with which I was most familiar were "Last Goodbye" and "Grace," from his sole studio album, 1994's "Grace;" and "Everybody Here Wants You," from the later compilation "Sketches from My Sweetheart the Drunk," posthumously released in 1998, after his untimely death the previous year by drowning.
I strongly associated both songs with sailing and boating, since they came out during the period when we were actively racing our Morgan sailboat, and doing a lot of SCUBA diving up and down the West Coast of Florida and elsewhere.
As the only studio album completed and released during Buckley's life, "Grace" stands out as a testament, not only to his musical prowess as a first class singer, songwriter, and performer, but also to the breadth and depth of his musical influences, and the sheer audacity and courage of some of the musical choices he made for the album.
That his record label allowed him full creative control on a debut album still amazes me, knowing something of how the music business typically works, but as Steve Berkowitz of Sony Music put it, "I thought that Jeff would make twenty-five records, and I think that Columbia and Sony thought that it went Dylan, Springsteen, Buckley."
What surprised me more was the depth to which I was personally moved by his music, by the sometimes deceptively simple yet introspective and insightful lyrics, and by the intensely personal manner in which he bared his soul, repeatedly, to serve his muse. Few musicians have affected me as deeply or as profoundly as Jeff Buckley.
That I have come to know his music so recently, and was unfamiliar with him for so long, still seems astounding.
Not surprisingly, one of his most genuinely affecting songs is "Dream Brother," above, a song he wrote for a close friend of his, to convince him not to abandon his pregnant girlfriend and their child.
Buckley's own biological father, the popular folk and jazz/funk singer/songwriter Tim Buckley, had abandoned his mother and him. It affected him deeply, and he met the elder Buckley only once, at age eight, when Buckley's second wife invited him to stay with them for several days, so that they might get to know one another.
Tim Buckley was recording an album at the time, and as Jeff related years later, never even invited his son to watch him record, leaving Jeff with the impression that his father was simply uninterested in him. A few months later, his father was dead of an overdose, at age twenty-eight, of a combination of heroin, morphine and alcohol.
The irony is that Tim had recently been clean, and no longer using drugs; thus the dose that had previously not been dangerous for him, once his body was no longer used to the drugs, proved lethal. Jeff was not invited to his father's funeral.
To be continued.
And I would love to hear your take in the comments.
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For the Alliance - Day 120 - Daily Haiku - My Application to join The Alliance
Speaking Words of Love - Day 119 - Daily Haiku
Speaking My Own Truth - Day 118 - Daily Haiku - and some Questions for Empaths and Lightworkers
Some of the sources I used in researching this:
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/rivers-edge-19970807
https://headlinermagazine.net/headliners/saying-grace-jeff-buckley-20-years-on.html
https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/11/12/455647161/new-album-of-previously-unheard-jeff-buckley-recordings-to-be-released
The following two are interesting as well, but get a lot of the facts incorrect:
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/jeff-buckley-a-singer-with-the-real-x-factor-1204998.html
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-jeff-buckley-1254388.html
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All words are my own.
The additional images and videos are the intellectual property of Jeff Buckley's estate, his producers and record companies, and all rights remain with them.
I claim no rights, but offer these videos, as I offer all the music videos I post, in the hopes of promoting my favorite music artists, so that more people become familiar with their music, and that they grow their fan base in the process, as they so richly deserve. Buckley, absolutely, should be far better known than he is today.
The photo of our dog, Lolo, and our late cat, Miod, I took as they were cooperatively begging at the dinner table, despite our longstanding rule of not feeding them from the table.
You can see how much that deterred them both.
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