JEFF BUCKLEY
“KISS ME, PLEASE KISS ME BUT KISS ME OUT OF DESIRE, BABE, NOT CONSOLATION OH, YOU KNOW IT MAKES ME SO ANGRY ’COS I KNOW THAT IN TIME, I’LL ONLY MAKE YOU CRY THIS IS OUR LAST GOODBYE”
Twenty years since his death, the poet-rocker’s friends and colleagues on a talent curtailed as he planned an album “that would scare people”.
ON MAY 29, IT WILL BE 20 YEARS SINCE JEFF BUCKLEY WADED INTO THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER AND MUSIC LOST A SHOOTING STAR OF EXTRAORDINARY VISION AND EMOTIONAL INTENSITY. VIA POIGNANT NEW INTERVIEWS WITH THE SINGER’S FRIENDS AND BANDMATES, CHARLIE MOSS DISCOVERS HOW BUCKLEY’S RELOCATION TO MEMPHIS PROMISED RENEWAL, BUT ENDED IN DISASTER.
Jeff Buckley knew he was going to die young. it was just a matter of how and when. his autopsy report shows no sign of drugs in his system and he had had the equivalent of one beer the night before his drowning in Memphis’ wolf River harbor on May 29, 1997. his death was ruled an accident. the day he died, was, in fact, one of the happiest days of his life. Before moving to Memphis, Buckley and his band had been touring for two years promoting his debut album Grace. at the beginning of the tour, most casual observers knew of him only in connection with his famous father – enraptured folk-rock singer tim Buckley – who had died of a heroin overdose at the age of 28 in 1975. the younger Buckley had only met his father once, spending a week with him when he was eight. By the time his tour was finished, Buckley was a full-on star and his label, columbia, wanted another album that sounded like Grace. But Buckley was already on a different path. “he definitely wanted to make a much grittier album than Grace,” says guitarist Michael tighe, who joined Buckley’s band after the bulk of Grace had been recorded. “he often would say that he wanted to make music that would scare people. and he was into the idea of dividing his audience. he knew that a lot of his audience wouldn’t like this album and he was energised and excited by that.” Buckley and his band – with Parker kindred replacing Grace drummer Matt Johnson – had been writing and recording new material in new york city with tom Verlaine. But Buckley felt under the microscope in new york. Meanwhile, aspects of the group’s lifestyle, which had come to the fore on the grace tour, were dissipating their focus. Buckley needed to escape, and the destination he chose was Memphis, home of his friend dave shouse, lead singer of alt-rock band the grifters. “everything came from his relationship with the grifters,” says gene Bowen, Buckley’s former tour manager, “and the grifters were attached to easley Mccain studios, and doug easley. so that was the attraction… there’s a real deep musical friendship with them.”
uckley had fiRst Met shouse while performing a show at gabe’s oasis in iowa city in 1994. the grifters were on tour with another band, the dambuilders, which featured violinist Joan wasser, who would eventually become Buckley’s girlfriend. shouse remembers being told that neither band would be headlining that show, and that they would both be supporting Buckley. “we were like, ‘who?’,” laughs shouse. “and, of course that night, we saw him play and we were just like, ‘oh my god, this guy is different.’” once Buckley got to Memphis, he and his band resumed recording with Verlaine at easley Mccain. Memphis, for Buckley, was meant to be a temporar y refuge – two weeks while he found the direction for the new album. But the singer felt so at home he called Bowen and told him he was staying longer. he rented a small house on 91 n. Rembert st. unknown locally, he would ride his bicycle to record stores, like nearby shangri-la Records or audiomania, chatting with employees about Bob dylan and other favourite musicians. he ordered takeout from saigon le – a nearby Vietnamese restaurant – so often that he was mistaken for a delivery boy. “things were somewhat deconstructed,” recalls shouse. “there wasn’t a label. there weren’t people running his life. he could be in his house. he could move into the attic if he wanted.” wasser, who had been dating Buckley for three years by then, would make bi-weekly trips to Memphis to see him. “i know he had been asking the universe for help with all of this,” she says. “we spent time in the attic, which felt like a kind of place of worship or meditation. he found a dead bird there and had strong feelings about seeing anything that had expired. everything took on a lot of meaning at this time, when he was going through so much mental turmoil.” Buckley had conflicting feelings about his father, and his mother Mary guibert – described as controlling by many of his old friends. Plus, the longer he stayed in Memphis, the more word spread that he was the guy who made Grace. “it was a point where he was a little bit unsteady, and a lot more vulnerable,” says shouse. “so we tried to help him. we took him breakfast, or, were like, stay over… sleep on the couch. i think that’s what he wanted… he felt like he could disappear.” “i felt very maternal,” says shouse’s wife tammy. “Jeff definitely looked up to david. he would say, ‘i don’t know why that guy even
talks to me.’ Of course, David would say the same thing,” she adds with a laugh. “I think that was part of what he struggled with, he still felt like a boy. In some ways, he was ver y mature and developed, and in other ways, he was nothing near.” Embryonic superstardom didn’t help. “I saw him deal with fans at shows; girls were beside themselves, the kind of thing I would have died for,” says The Grifters’ Tripp Lamkins. “I saw him talk a girl down before. He was like, ‘You’re going to have to realise I’m just a guy…’ and the girl said, ‘Oh, you’re Jeff Buckley.’ And he said, ‘I’m not what you think I am. I’m just a person.’” Meanwhile, his father’s legacy loomed large. “Jeff was either furious or he really loved what he did, and who he was,” says Wasser. “He would often buy Tim’s whole catalogue of CDs and listen to them for a while, and then throw them in the garbage.”
BUCKLEY SPENT A LOT OF TIME IN THE ATTIC, working on songs, and he began to sense the album finally coming together. He had already fired Verlaine. now he began talking to Bowen about staying in Memphis permanently, about buying the n. Rembert st house, getting his licence and buying a car. He wanted to become a Memphian. Tammy remembers taking Buckley to the Memphis Zoo, one of his favourite places – this time to get a job. “He felt that the guy working the butterfly house was mistreating the butterflies… not doing a good job,” she says. “so he wanted to apply for a job working at the butterfly house. Jeff took a shower and got all spruced up. He put on his clothes with those little patches on the shoulders and the vintage suit thing and he was all shiny and went in to put in his application. “He wanted a normal guy life,” she continues. “I know we had a couple conversations about him feeling difficulty in how to be a man, feeling he’s got somebody controlling his funds, he’s got somebody controlling what he does, and where he goes, and what he does… and he did not know how to take control.” Buckley had a regular gig Monday nights at a local bar, Barrister’s, where he tried out new material, giving him a new perspective on the songs. At home, at Wasser’s urging, he put headphones aside and
“NOT TOO LONG AFTER WE MET, HE SAID, ‘YOU KNOW, I’M GOING TO DIE YOUNG’.” JOAN WASSER
MOVED TO New York from Texas when I was 18 to go to music school. I was 22 when I heard about Jeff. A guy called John Moran, who wrote The Manson Family Opera and was connected with Philip Glass, was a friend of Rebecca Moore, Jeff’s girlfriend at the time, and I met them on the street. I knew John because I was interning at Philip Glass’s studio on Broadway. He introduced me as a drummer and Rebecca said, “My buddy Jeff is looking for a drummer.” I scrawled my number on a napkin and within a day Jeff’s raspy voice was on my answering machine. “I have a record deal. I need to move fast and I’m holding auditions.” We set something up within a couple of days and he seemed committed straight away. He came off as intense. I didn’t know what to make of him, he was a different kind of musical animal. He was reticent in the beginning about getting on the microphone. Rehearsals started with free-associating, like he was coaching Mick [Grondahl, bass] and me as a rhythm section. It was some weeks before I heard him sing the songs and that was a surprise! To this day, I don’t know of any singers who use so much of the potential of the human voice as Jeff did, from serrated screaming to ribbon-like, serene passages of melody, to almost talking, he just used so much of the voice to communicate, to elicit an emotional catharsis from himself and the people who were present. Recording Grace at Bearsville in Woodstock had to do with the lack of distractions, being out of the city, a feeling of splendid isolation in this bucolic little town: the light, the trees just coming into fall, it was an extraordinarily beautiful place. We’d do our session each day and at night we’d hang out watching Beavis And Butt-head, playing pool, listening to music in the little bedroom shacks. We did one set of basic tracks per day. The songs played themselves, everybody was confident. Jeff was a pattern interrupt, somebody who broke the mould. If he had a mission it seemed to do with having an emotional experience in a musical situation. He understood what music can catalyse. He was intoxicated with that. Michael Tighe [guitar] came on after most of Grace had been done. He gave Jeff more freedom as a guitar player and they wrote So Real together. When Jeff heard the record with So Real on it, he saw an album that not only had a family of songs that captured a moment but also expressed where he was going. He thought that song saved the record. Jeff tried to step back from some of the more feminine qualities in evidence on Grace, it felt like there was pressure on him to toughen up. The music culture at that time definitely affected us. We came along just after Kurt Cobain’s death. I don’t recall Jeff talking about that, or about his father’s death, but I think he was keenly aware of the statistics for life expectancy of somebody in his position, that he occupied a dangerous role. There was a moth-to-a-flame aspect to him. He had a self-destructive strain. Smoking, for example. He knew how bad it was for him and what it did to him psychologically. He’d had some sober insights into drugs after a bad period when he was younger, but he embraced them again when we started touring. That was a very bad sign. He had a tendency towards depression and deep introspection; somewhere in there was real trauma. Growing up without a father, who then became a tragic figure, that’s a tough spot to be in, might predispose someone to self-destructive or careless behaviours. When he died he went swimming fully dressed, that’s just stupid. There was also an element of pretentiousness about it; he was always a performer. That doesn’t mean an insufferable douchebag who wanted to be the centre of attention all the time, that wasn’t Jeff, but he needed to not be normal and be memorable, perhaps because something inside him felt malnourished by the way he was raised. I found him difficult to talk to. He intimidated me. I felt he was way more talented and knowledgeable than I was. He was like an older brother, a mentor. Mickey and Michael had a better rapport with him verbally. But one of the things Jeff and I shared was a high degree of empathy for other people. He was a very empathetic person who had a lot of insecurities. After a while, things got weird on the road. I’d never been around people on hard drugs on tour. It was like lead poisoning, like someone was poisoning the psychic environment with evil. People become internalised, dissociated. Drugs make people all about getting off and escaping, becoming removed. Jeff was gullible, impressed by it, he let it happen and joined in. I remember a flight to Australia. We’d just got on the plane, for this long flight, and I smelt vomit. Jeff had thrown up all over the back of the seat, and that was a deciding moment for me. It’s not even about professionalism; it’s about common human decency. He was
“TO THIS DAY, I DON’T KNOW OF ANY SINGERS WHO USE SO MUCH OF THE POTENTIAL OF THE HUMAN VOICE.”
doing as much as he could of whatever he felt too scared to take over international borders. However much he felt he could take that wouldn’t kill him, he just took it. If I were in that band now, I’d look each one of them in the eye and say, ‘I love you, but you’re an idiot,’ tell them straight what I think and carry on playing. Back then I was too young and too insecure. What was I afraid of? Afraid of losing that gig. How did I head into the fear? I quit. Boom, the most primal thing I could do. The best way I could deal with my fear of failure and the fact that I couldn’t deal with what these people were doing with their success. I didn’t want to be around them any more. Jeff was surprised but he didn’t try to stop me. Being with Jeff made me. The experience was like basic training and then activity in a theatre of war. I had to confront my deficiencies on a daily basis and that was extremely painful, but Jeff showed me how to get better, he showed me what is worth getting better for. The way that Jeff employed music, the emotional payout was so high. My respect for him is of the highest order. I love him and I carry him and my memories of him with me at all times; he’s family, part of my psyche. bought a pair of second-hand speakers. The sound of his 4-track demos filled the house. “It was one of the most beautiful moments I’ve experienced,” she says. “The music he was making was astounding. It was so beautiful, so raw, pure emotion. Then to experience him hear it in the room the first time… I saw in his eyes, ‘My God, this is something. This is real, it’s not just this dream sound in my headphones.’” In April, Buckley and his managers told Bowen to start preparing for rehearsals. Recording would start in late May. Then, on May 28, Buckley invited Bowen to his house to hear 4-track recordings of a handful of songs that would later comprise side two of Sketches For My Sweetheart The Drunk. “He was like, ‘The music is black and white and the band will bring the colours.’ That’s all. I got it. I understood.” Around the same time, Buckley called Michael Tighe. “He actually left me a message two days before we went down there and he said he was really excited about the material he was working on: ‘It’s feeling like it did when we first got together and played music as a band.’” On May 29, Tighe and the rest of the band were due to arrive. Bowen – who had arrived in a Ryder truck filled with the band’s gear a few days earlier – had gone to pick them up at the airport. The plan was for Buckley and Bowen’s friend, Keith Foti, to meet the band back at N. Rembert St around 10 pm. Until then, Buckley and Foti were going to the rehearsal space on Young Street. On the way there (some say that Buckley had somehow forgotten the way) they took a detour. And that’s when Buckley took his fatal swim. “Jeff couldn’t swim,” Wasser remembers. “I know, because I tried to teach him many times; I grew up in the water. I helped him get to a place where he could do backstroke pretty well, and that’s apparently what he was doing that day in the water. Also people have said, ‘Oh, his boots dragged him down. He always wore steel-toed boots.’ But actually, he had, with me, bought cheap black boots from K-mart that weighed almost nothing; and that’s what he was wearing.” Foti recalled the pair of them listening to The Beatles and Jane’s Addiction on Foti’s boombox before they drew up at the Harbor shore. Buckley even set the boombox down on the riverbank before wading in. Buckley sang Led Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love as Foti yelled at him to avoid two boats that bore down on his bobbing head. He turned to move the boombox to avoid the backwash. When he turned back, Buckley was gone.
JOAN WASSER REMEMBERS THAT BUCKLEY always talked about dying. “Not too long after we met, he said, ‘You know, I’m going to die young. I have to let you know. You may not want to be with me because of this.’” She told him that she would be with him no matter what and that she didn’t see him dying young but, rather, she could see him as an older man. Buckley told Wasser he hoped she was right. For Buckley’s Memphis circle, there are feelings of guilt as well as sadness. “I feel like Memphis walked him down the aisle,” says Tammy Shouse. “Because, he was dreaming about his death and he knew that something was up, and he felt it… I felt a lot of responsibility because Joan said to me, ‘Take care of him. Keep his feet on the ground.’” “It was a strange time for us all,” says Dave Shouse. “Jeff dying was… there was so much left untapped, unsaid, unspoken… not just what he was doing musically, but the relationships with all these people in Memphis. Memphis provided what Memphis provides for a lot of people, which was the ability to slow ever ything in your life down… He was ready when the band showed up. He was ready to begin the next step.” “The joyful freedom I saw him feeling when he was in Memphis was profound,” says Wasser. “It seemed to me that this freedom allowed him to dive into parts of his life he’d been wanting to but hadn’t been able to while in New York city. I feel that ultimately, he did what he needed to do for himself to set himself free from the shackles he had been feeling about the past… and if he could, indeed, feel that his time was coming to an end, he did a great job of it. It’s been 20 years and I am still dumbfounded by the beauty of his soul.” On a particularly sunny day during one of her visits to Memphis, Buckley took Wasser to see an abandoned, antique, baby blue car, surrounded by overgrown plants. Full of r ust and falling apart, they sat on the hood and Buckley asked her to marry him. Shocked, she took a minute to catch her breath and then told him yes. They planned on marrying as soon as Buckley and the band were done recording.