Jeff Buckley, In Memory
By Sheila O'Malley, May 29, 2007 via sheilaomalley.com
On a rainy night in Chicago many years ago, my friend Ted (now the BLOGGER Ted! ha!!) and I went to go see some singer I had never heard of at The Green Mill. His name was Jeff Buckley. He had a couple of tiny albums out–recordings of live shows he had done at Cafe Sin-e in New York–but he was about to have a large album released–the album that would be called Grace…and so he was on the cusp of stardom. Ted had heard something about Buckley on NPR, I think–so we got tickets and met up to go see him.
It is, to date, the most amazing live show I have ever seen.
Jeff Buckley’s voice is rightly famous–it has a kind of eerie Brideshead revisited choirboy-with-an-evil-streak sound–his “Corpus Christi Carol” on Grace has to be heard to be believed. What? That’s a grown man?
But what I want to talk about is the VIBE of the show Ted and I saw. We still talk about it today. We still reference it.
A lot of people were pissed off at Jeff Buckley that night. But Ted and I were enraptured. Buckley was there, at the bar, mingling, hanging out. In looking back on it–I think he knew that stardom was about to hit. The tourbus parked outside was indicative of what was about to happen. But he seemed so…small, almost–dwarfed by the bus, by the circumstances appraoching. He was freaked out. Freaked OUT. He had just given an interview to Rolling Stone and had apparently said wildly inappropriate things to the reporter. Success was coming, man…and don’t we all want success? Well, sure…but what success actually means, in the reality of the day to day life, is not always welcome...it’s intimidating, it’s scary, and artists oftentimes are people who have trouble with reality. That’s why they’re artists. Stardom comes with responsiblity, with lots of have-tos, with obligations, with loss of anonymity (Goldie Hawn talks about how she used to go to a little grubby bar in Malibu–before she was famous–have a glass of wine by herself, sit staring out at the waves, and write in her journal, working out any problems she might have at that moment…it was one of her meditative healing things to do. To her, stardom was always a great great blessing…but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t mourn that anonymous self...the person who could go have a glass of wine alone, write in her diary, and not have someone take a picture of it, sell it to a tabloid and have it appear on the newsstand the next day: GOLDIE HAWN DRINKS ALONE–or whatever. Hawn is not an ungrateful person–but she does grieve that loss of solitude.)–Harrison Ford talks about this quite eloquently, and with no self-pity. “It took me years to be able to cope with the loss of privacy.” It’s a sacrifice. Not for some–some glory in the reality-TV aspect of stardom…but for others it is a soul-crushing experience that separates them from their fellow man. Jeff Buckley was in that latter category.
So there he was, doing shots at the bar–talking with people, but…you could sense things shifting. He wasn’t “normal” anymore…he couldn’t blend in…he was not anonymous. He had been playing shows at Cafe Sin-e…a teeny joint in New York…where the musicians who are gonna play sit out in the audience, guitars propped up against the wall…and just walk up to the “stage” when it’s their turn…The blending of audience and performer is complete.
This world was already receding for Jeff Buckley on the rainy night at the Green Mill.
And like I said–success of course is desirable. Exciting. But it’s more complex than that (for some).
I’m talking about this like I sat down and had a conversation with Jeff Buckley about his thoguhts and feelings. I did not. This is what I gleaned from his behavior that night–his brilliance of performing–his obviously self-destructive tendencies-but also his beautiful human need to connect. It was all going on at the same time. And ALL of it went into his performance. ALL of it. I have never seen anything like it. NOTHING was excluded. He didn’t judge any of his own emotions–fear, anger, sadness, excitement–as inappropriate for his show. It was like watching a master-diva at work–a Judy Garland or someone like that. No matter what came up in Judy Garland–she used it. EVERYTHING was to be used. Other, more careful, artists…craft performances in a more intellectual way. And many of these artists are brilliant, too, in their own way. But to see a raw nerve–at work–and to see him struggle–OPENLY–with all of this…in front of us…
Like I said, a lot of people ended up being pissed off at him because they wanted a conventional show. They didn’t want him to talk in between sets about how freaked out he was, they didn’t want him to suddenly stop a song he was singing, announce, “God, that sucks–let’s start it over again…” and then start the song over again…They wanted a straight show. But Jeff Buckley couldn’t have given a straight show if you paid him a million dollars. He was honest. He was true.
There were a couple of moments where I got goosebumps–because I was watching a man truly grappling with himself. In front of us.
And–I must mention this: he sang the HELL out of all of his songs. That voice.
As an actor– watching him up there–and watching how private he was, even in public (that’s the definition of good performance art as far as I’m concerned–the ability to be private while people are watching you…) was something I have never encountered before or since. He had no polish. NONE. The record company who had obviously funded this tour–and funded the tour bus–was probably trying to iron Jeff Buckley into some kind of appropriate behavior–Buckley seemed to feel the enormous institution behind him…and there were obligations there, and responsiblities–he was no longer a free insane agent…He had to show up, he had to get back on his mega-bus, he had to do the songs the record company wanted him to do…
The show was chaotic. He got heckled at times. “SHUT UP–JUST SING THE SONG!” shouted from the back. Buckley didn’t fight back–he didn’t engage the heckler–not in a “hey, fuck you, man, I’m up here doing my thing” way… He apologized–profusely–kept saying things like, “I suck…Im so sorry…I just suck…”
But then–he’d sing “Lilac Wine” and you’d find yourself standing there, stunned at what you were witnessing and hearing.
Buckley was grappling with some demons there. He was drunk. He announced to us, at one point:
“You guys, I’m so sorry, but I am drunk. D–U–R–N-K. DRUNK!”
He started to sing Leonard Cohen’s “Halleluia”. But…but…he just wasn’t being true…it didn’t feel true to him…or something…so he stopped the song. “Stop stop stop stop…” It was like he was almost in pain–so far away was he from his own ideals. I am thinking of Odets in Hollywood, writing trash. Spiritual death. So what Ted and I saw (and we went out and talked about it all night afterwards, in a diner down the street–as the rain splashed against the windows)–was a man trying to imagine himself, work himself, closer to his own ideal in his head. And if that meant starting a song over–even though there was a whole crowd there–so be it. What we were seeing was not a finished product. He would not BE a ‘product’. He was in process.
Buckley said at one point, “I want to give everybody their money back…i am so sorry about the show tonight…I suck so bad…”
This could not have been farther from the truth. It was self-indulgent, yes–but any artists process MUST be self-indulgent. How else will you know what works, what failure feels like? You have to GO there. It was unconventional–that he would GO there during a show, and not during a rehearsal or whatever…but to expect Jeff Buckley to be conventional in any way, shape, or form, is ludicrous. I watched him up there, alone by the mike–with that stunning James Dean-esque face–the innocence of it, but also the wildness–and how he would throw himself up towards those high notes, launching his voice up fearlessly into the octaves above–eyes closed, body slack and open–letting it happen, letting it come…and I remember wondering: God, what is going to happen to this boy. This special wild boy. This is not just retrospect talking. The whole night was like that. Buckley told us about the interview with Rolling Stone, he seemed to be having a nervous breakdown almost–about the impending fame…It was like we were getting to see him in a small club for the last time. He was going. He was going somewhere else now. Buckley felt the loss of that.
He handled the heckling with grace–but he also didn’t change his approach. He didn’t “get it together”. One song he started to sing–and for whatever reason–he felt like he needed to sit down–so he crossed his legs, and sat down–with his back to the audience, and sang the whole song in that position. Beautifully, by the way.
It was his way, it seemed, of getting back into his private world.
His band was amazing. They just went wherever he went. If he stopped a song–they stopped, started over, whatever.
The best thing of it was this: They started to play one of his songs–I think it was “So Real”. Like I said, I didn’t know Buckley’s music at that point. But I loved the song immediately–and his voice just pierced right through me. That voice. Holy God. Ted and I stood there, lost in it (many of us were lost in it–the hecklers in the crowd were few and far between, although they were loud)–and maybe after a verse and a chorus, Buckley said, in a “oh, fuckitalltohell” tone, “God, stop stop stop…” He wasn’t an indignant arrogant maestro. He seemed like a little boy, hurt, because his mom interrupted his make-believe game of knights and dragons with the prosaic request that he set the table. He was BUMMED that…he wasn’t being transported. He had a requirement of his own art. So anyway–he stopped the song. Which had sounded FINE to me. He was in pain. “God, that sucked…we SUCK…” (heckling) “I know, I know, you guys…I’m so sorry…Let’s start it again…”
They started the song again. And the hairs on the back of my neck rose up. It was as though Jeff Buckley had realized that going into the song he was a bit cloudy, in terms of motivation, or…sound…and he needed to clear the deck. He needed to FOCUS…so that he could “go there” in the song. And that’s what happened after the interruption. The band almost blew the roof of that tiny club. Jeff Buckley stood up there–a shaman, a madman, a choirboy with a direct line to heaven and hell–wailing to the skies, catapulting his voice up, down–his gestures free, fearless, uninhibited–and yet totally specific and germane to the song. When he “got it together”–by taking that pause–when he cleared the deck of everything extraneous and unnecessary to his performance–the genius that came, the power of that voice, gives me goosebumps to this day.
I was so sad when he died. So so sad. I imagined him…swimming in the current, drunk, stars wheeling by overhead…I can’t say I was surprised–because there had been a wildness in him, and a potential for unhinged grief–you could sense it.
But I miss him. I miss the albums he didn’t make.
To me, Jeff Buckley was always that wild pale-faced boy, doing shots at the bar, on a rainy night in Chicago, many years ago. A tour bus looming outside. Change coming, change coming so fast…and yet…in the moment, there was just him…on stage…trying to transport himself into the world that he imagined.
📷 Paul Natkin
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I just find it extremely pathetic that people will use the #justiceforRiverPhoenix tag and than try to blame Johnny Depp for his death he didn't have ANYTHING to do with him
River died of a DRUG OVERDOSE, I even saw someone lying that hey his pictures, when in reality the entire event happened before paparazzi.
No one in River's family blames Johnny, because JOHNNY WAS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR IT
Rain phoenix, sister of River, who was there at the time of his death, follows Johnny on insta and even wished him a happy birthday.
If you really wanna do something, raise awareness about drug awareness, and PLEASE STOP disrespecting a dead person
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