Jeff Apter - A Pure Drop: The Life of Jeff Buckley

For Christian

Jeff Buckley was a pure drop in an ocean of noise. Bono

I ve written books where the subject has been willing to have their life turned inside out, and other books where the subject has been more elusive than Spiderman. Theres a vast difference between someone not wanting to speak in their own defence, and someone not being able to do so, as is the case with Jeff Buckley. The writer Susan Orlean once compared this type of quest to being a little like studying animal tracks and concluding everything from the impression that it has left behind. Thats exactly how I felt as this book came together: what remains of Jeff Buckley is a handful of songs, some finished, some merely sketches, and the vivid memories he left behind. Thats not a whole lot to go on, really.

Jeff Scott Buckley lived any number of lives: suburban loner, music school misfit, west coast headbanger, New York troubadour, rock and roll gypsy, Memphis dreamer, lover, poet, boozer, schemer, band leader, dog stalker. And he also got close to hundreds of people, although its questionable whether many of them were allowed to get too close in return. Theres no doubting that he was damaged goods anyone whose father jumps the family ship even before youre born is bound to carry some heavy emotional baggage. So there was some dark meat on this bird, but he was also a goof, a professional doofus, in the words of one friend, a guy who could seamlessly segue from a heart-breaking ballad to an impression of Robert Plant at 78rpm, no less all in the time it would take to reach the bar, buy a drink and return to your seat. The commonly held perception of Buckley as some darkly romantic brooder is about as accurate as saying John Lennon was all about bed-ins for peace: its really only one chapter of a long and wayward story, and it doesnt do the guy justice. There were so many sides to Buckley he was almost round.

So how do you accurately capture the life of a guy that, as one insider told me, only revealed itself with any clarity after his tragic death? There was a woman in England, someone in France, a woman in Canada, things I only found out after he died, a friend of his told me, but at the time he made you feel like you were one of the most important people in his life.

My solution was to let his friends, peers, enemies, lovers, collaborators and others tell their tales and let the story grow from there. Everyone I spoke with had a Jeff Buckley story, be it the tour manager who had to explain to the desk clerk how both beds in his Sydney hotel room came to be wrecked a crime of passion, as it turned out or a friend of Jeffs father who, after meeting the son for the first time, exclaimed: Tim died and sent us an angel. Then there was a Buckley buddy from the early days, when he was a struggling guitarist in LA, who told me how socially inept he could be. [Jeff would] always [be] picking up weird shit and running up to you like a five year old and sticking it in your face, he recalled. Another insider described Jeff as having an emotional feral-ness about him. Others just loved his voice. Some simply loved him.

As incomplete as his life was he took his fateful dip in the Mississippi literally hours before starting rehearsals on his latest attempt to record a follow-up to 1994s remarkable Grace Buckley lived an incredibly full 30 years. Some even felt that he had a sense of his future. I think he was trying to shove a lot of stuff into his short life, to get as much experience as he could, I was told. Yet another friend told me that any suggestion he had a death wish was way off the mark. The next asshole who walks up to me and says that shit it brings out that really South Central side of me that wants to knock someone the fuck out. Ive drawn no radical new conclusions about his death; it was a misadventure, a poorly timed and badly executed swim that was typical of the freewheeling, often reckless side of his nature. The fact that he was wailing Whole Lotta Love at the time, one of his favourite songs from one of his favourite bands, only makes his demise more poignant and somehow pointless at the same time.

As I write this, more than 10 years have slipped away since Buckley did likewise. But hes impossible to avoid: his take on Hallelujah a cover of a cover, as it turns out appears to be the go-to song whenever a TV show or film needs some emotional set dressing. Nowadays almost every other band with a widescreen flair and a worthy singer, not least such critical and commercial giants as Radiohead and Coldplay, readily confess to Buckleys influence on their craft. Its no small achievement for a guy who has had way more music released since he died than while he walked amongst us, and who freely admitted that he didnt exactly have a reservoir of songs to draw from. Tunes came to him infrequently, but when they did, they hit him hard and fast.

In the end, though, it all boils down to a singular tragedy that brought about the demise of a still-developing talent, the poignancy of his life and death only heightened by the echoes of his own fathers life and equally premature end. Like father like son indeed, as much as Jeff Buckley would have been uncomfortable with the connection.

St Anns Church, Brooklyn Heights, New York,
April 26, 1991

Greetings from Tim Buckley Tribute Concert

T he kid sure did look familiar. Even such veterans as Hal Willner, the events producer, and Herb Cohen, the guy who suggested inviting him in the first place, were shaking their heads in disbelief. And these were seasoned campaigners who in their various roles as dilettante, manager, insider and confidant hadnt just seen everything, but met everyone, too. Lou Reed and Frank Zappa, to name just two, ranked among their associates. Yet the kid, who had asked to be billed for tonights tribute as Jeff Scott Buckley, with his tousled mane of hair and what he disdainfully referred to as his unibrow an unfortunate union of his two eyebrows, somewhere over the bridge of his nose simply had to be the son of the late Tim Buckley, the evenings star-in-absentia. He just looked too much like his long-gone father to be mistaken for anyone else. And then, when the kid finally took the stage, alongside New York guitarist and one-time Captain Beefheart consort Gary Lucas, and opened his mouth to begin singing his fathers I Never Asked To Be Your Mountain, a cop out of a song actually written about Jeff and his mother Mary Guibert, and their strange, brief role in Tims life, there was clearly no mistake: this was a Buckley. His voice packed the same sense of grandeur, the type of other-worldliness that made his fathers recordings from the 1960s and 70s so unique. This bird could sing.

Greetings From Tim Buckley was part of the annual Arts at St Anns series of shows, put on by Willner, a fabulously well-connected New York tastemaker, and Janine Nichols, the St Anns program director. Together theyd presented such previous nights as Songs for Drella, Lou Reed and John Cales nod to their Factory mentor Andy Warhol. This years event opened on a lighthearted note, with a Public Service Announcement voiced by Tim, talking up the US Army Reserve, crackling over the PA. (Jeff had unearthed the tape amongst his collection of his fathers things, back at home on the west coast.) But then the night got serious, as jazz guys, keyboard player Anthony Coleman and guitarist Elliott Sharp, re-interpreted Strange Feelin for the downtown set. Shelley Hirsch, later to join Buckley on stage, then delivered Caf, followed by Come Here Woman. Buckley buddy Eric Andersen gave a downbeat interpretation of Song for Janie, before Syd Straw came on stage and worked herself into a Tim Buckley-worthy lather during The Earth Is Broken and, later on, Pleasant Street. Punk vet Richard Hell growled his way through Moulin Rouge, before throwing the curve-ball that was Chinese Rocks, definitely not a Tim Buckley song, belted out in honour of hard-living New York Dolls guitarist Johnny Thunders, whod ODd and died a few days before in New Orleans. (Given that Tim Buckley had also ODd, back in 1975, this was an act of questionable tact, but Hell, ever the maverick, carried on regardless.)