Jeff Buckley Totally Explained

Everything about Jeff Buckley totally explained

Jeffrey Scott Buckley (November 17, 1966 – May 29, 1997), raised as Scotty Moorhead, was an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. He was the son of the late Tim Buckley, also a musician. Buckley gained popularity in the early 1990s by playing cover versions at venues in Manhattan's East Village, such as Sin-é, and he gradually focused more on his own material. After much interest from record labels he signed with Columbia and, after recruiting a band, recorded his debut studio album, Grace (1994).
Over the following two years the band toured widely to promote the album, including concerts in the U.S., Europe, Japan and Australia. In 1997 he stopped touring and moved to Memphis, Tennessee, to experiment with new material for a second album. During his time there he recorded many four-track demos and completed his third recording session for his new album with his band, with Tom Verlaine as producer. While awaiting the arrival of his band from New York, he drowned during an evening swim in the Wolf River. His body was found on June 4, 1997.
Since his passing there have been many posthumous releases of his material, including a collection of four-track demos and studio recordings for his unfinished second album My Sweetheart the Drunk and expansions of debut album Grace and his Live at Sin-é EP. His death hasn't hindered his popularity as he and his work continue to feature in 'greatest' lists in the music press.

Biography

Early life

Born in Anaheim, California, while his father was the descendant of Irish immigrants from Cork. Buckley was raised by his mother and stepfather, Ron Moorhead, in Southern California, and had a half-brother, Corey Moorhead. Buckley moved many times in and around Orange County while growing up with a single mother, an upbringing Buckley called "rootless trailer trash". As a child, Buckley was known as Scott "Scotty" Moorhead based on his middle name and his stepfather's surname. Tim Buckley died of a drug overdose in 1975. After his father died, he chose to go by Buckley and his real first name which he found on his birth certificate. To members of his family he remained "Scotty".
Buckley was brought up around music. His mother was a classically trained pianist and cellist. His stepfather introduced him to Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, The Who, and Pink Floyd at an early age. Buckley grew up singing around the house and singing in harmony with his mother. "Everybody in my family sang," Buckley said. He found an acoustic guitar in his grandmother's closet that he started playing with at the age of 6. the hard rock band Kiss was also an early favorite. At the age of 12, he decided to become a musician, He attended Loara High School, and developed an affinity for progressive rock bands such as Rush, Genesis, and Yes, as well as jazz fusion guitarist Al Di Meola. Buckley played in the Loara school jazz band.
In 1984, he graduated from high school and moved north to Hollywood to attend the Musicians Institute. He graduated from the one-year course at the age of 18. "It was the biggest waste of time," "He had some of the most interesting chords and chord progressions of my generation," musician Ben Harper said about Buckley years later.

Early career

Buckley spent the next 6 years working in a hotel and playing guitar in various struggling bands, spanning a diverse range of styles from jazz, reggae, and roots rock to heavy metal. He toured with the dancehall reggae artist Shinehead and he also played the occasional funk and R&B studio session, collaborating with fledgling producer, Michael J. Clouse to form X-Factor Productions. Throughout this period, Buckley limited his singing to backing vocals.
   Buckley moved to New York City in February 1990, but found few opportunities to work as a musician. He was introduced to qawwali, the devotional music of Pakistan, and to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, one of its best-known singers. Buckley was an impassioned fan of Khan, and during his cafe days Buckley had often covered his songs. He interviewed Khan for Interview magazine in January 1996 and wrote liner notes for Khan's The Supreme Collection compilation. Buckley also became interested in blues-legend Robert Johnson and hardcore punk during this time. Cohen and Buckley hoped to attract attention from the music industry with the demo tape.
   Buckley flew back to New York early the following year to make his public singing debut at a tribute concert for his father called "Greetings from Tim Buckley". The event, produced by show business veteran Hal Willner, was held at St. Ann's Church in Brooklyn on April 26, 1991. He performed "I Never Asked To Be Your Mountain", a song Tim Buckley wrote about an infant Jeff Buckley and his mother, accompanied by experimental rock guitarist Gary Lucas. Buckley returned to the stage to play "Sefronia - The King's Chain", "Phantasmagoria in Two", and concluded the concert with "Once I Was" performed acoustically with an impromptu a cappella ending, due to a snapped guitar string. When questioned about that particular performance Buckley said, "It wasn't my work, it wasn't my life. But it bothered me that I hadn't been to his funeral, that I'd never been able to tell him anything. I used that show to pay my last respects."
   On subsequent trips to New York in mid-1991, Buckley began co-writing with Gary Lucas resulting in the songs "Grace" and "Mojo Pin", and by late 1991 he began performing with Lucas' band Gods and Monsters around New York City. After being offered a development deal as a member of Gods and Monsters at Imago Records, Buckley moved back to New York to the Lower East Side at the end of 1991. The day after Gods and Monsters officially debuted in March 1992, Buckley decided to leave the band.
Buckley began performing at several clubs and cafés around Lower Manhattan, but Sin-é in the East Village became his main venue. and quickly earned a regular Monday night slot there. His repertoire consisted of a diverse range of folk, rock, R&B, blues and jazz cover songs, much of it music he'd newly learned. Through their music, singers such as Nina Simone, Billie Holiday, Van Morrison, and Judy Garland became his teachers. Buckley performed favorites from Led Zeppelin, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Bob Dylan, Elton John, The Smiths, The Creatures, Bad Brains, Leonard Cohen, Édith Piaf, Robert Johnson, and Sly Stone as well. Industry maven Clive Davis even dropped by to see him. for a three-album, essentially million-dollar deal in October 1992. Recording dates were set for July and August 1993 for what would become Buckley's recording debut, an EP of four songs which included a cover of Van Morrison's "The Way Young Lovers Do". Live at Sin-é was released on November 23, 1993, documenting this period of Buckley's life.

Grace

In mid 1993, Buckley began working on his first album with record producer Andy Wallace, who had mixed Nirvana's multi-platinum album Nevermind. Buckley assembled a band, composed of bassist Mick Grondahl and drummer Matt Johnson, and spent several weeks rehearsing. In September, the trio headed to Bearsville Studios in Woodstock, New York to spend 6 weeks recording basic tracks for what would become Grace. Buckley invited ex-bandmate Lucas to play guitar on the songs "Grace" and "Mojo Pin", and Woodstock-based jazz musician Karl Berger wrote and conducted string arrangements with Buckley assisting at times. Buckley returned home for overdubbing at studios in Manhattan and New Jersey where he performed take after take to capture the perfect vocals and experimented with ideas for additional instruments and added textures to the songs.
In January 1994, Buckley left to go on his first solo North American tour to support Live at Sin-é. Buckley played clubs and coffeehouses and made in-store appearances. In June, Buckley began his first full band tour called the "Peyote Radio Theatre Tour" that lasted into August. Pretender Chrissie Hynde, Soundgarden's Chris Cornell, and The Edge from U2 were among the attendees of these early shows.
Grace was released on August 23, 1994. In addition to seven original songs, the album included three covers: "Lilac Wine", based on the version by Nina Simone, and "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen, based on John Cale's recording from the Cohen tribute album, I'm Your Fan. by Time magazine, and is included on Rolling Stone's list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time".
While sales were slow and the album garnered little radio airplay, it quickly received critical acclaim. The UK's Melody Maker called it, "a massive, gorgeous record," while The Sydney Morning Herald proclaimed it, "almost impossibly beautiful." The album did go gold in France and Australia over the next two years, Jimmy Page considered Grace close to being his "favorite album of the decade." Robert Plant was also complimentary. Others who had influenced Buckley's music lauded him: Bob Dylan named Buckley "one of the great songwriters of this decade,"

Concert tours

Buckley spent much of the next year and a half touring internationally to promote Grace. From the album's release, he played in numerous countries, from Australia, to the UK (Glastonbury Festival and the Meltdown Festival at the invitation of Elvis Costello). On February 11, 1995 Following Buckley's Peyote Radio Theater tour, the band began a European tour on August 23, 1994, starting with performances in the UK and Ireland. The tour continued in Scandinavia and throughout September numerous concerts in Germany were played. The tour ended on September 22 with a concert in Paris. A gig on September 24 in New York dovetailed on to the end of the European tour and Buckley and band spent the next month relaxing and rehearsing.
   A tour of Canada and the US began on October 19, 1994 at renowned, and now defunct, venue CBGB's. The tour was far reaching with concerts held on both east and west coasts of the US and a number of performances in central and southern states. The tour ended two months later on December 18 at Maxwell's in New Jersey. The short tour largely consisted of promotional work in London, UK and Paris, France.
   In late January the band did their first tour of Japan, playing concerts and appearing for promotion of the album and newly released Japanese single "Last Goodbye". The band returned to Europe on February 6 and toured various western European countries before returning to the US on March 6. Amongst the gigs performed during this period Buckley and his band performed at a 19th century built French venue, the Bataclan, and material from the concert was recorded and later released in October of that year as a four track EP, Live from the Bataclan. Also, songs from a performance on February 25, at the venue Nighttown in Rotterdam, were subsequently released as a promotional-only CD, So Real.
Touring recommenced in late April with dates across the US and Canada. During this period Buckley and the band notably played Metro in Chicago, which was recorded on video and later released as Live in Chicago on VHS and later on DVD. In addition, on June 4 they played at Sony Music Studios for the Sony Music radio hour. Following this was a month long European tour between June 20 and July 18 in which they played many summer music festivals. During the tour, on April 6 and 7 Buckley played two concerts at the Paris Olympia, a venue made famous by the French vocalist Édith Piaf, that he considered the finest performances of his career. Shortly after this Buckley attended the Festival de la Musique Sacrée (Festival of Sacred Music), also held in France, and performed "What Will You Say" as a duet with Alim Qasimov, an Azerbaijani mugham singer. Sony BMG has since released a live album, 2001's Live at L'Olympia, which has a selection of songs from both Olympia performances and the collaboration with Qasimov.
   Buckley's Mystery White Boy tour, playing concerts in both Sydney and Melbourne, Australia, lasted between August 28 and September 6 and recordings of these performances were compiled and released on the live album Mystery White Boy. Buckley was so well received during these concerts that his album Grace went gold in Australia, selling over 35,000 copies, and taking this into account he decided a longer tour was needed and returned for a tour of New Zealand and Australia in February the following year.
   From the beginning of September until February, 1996 Buckley and the band finally finished touring after over a year and a half. The band was inactive during this period but Buckley played at his old haunt, Sin-é, various times and also performed a New Year's Eve concert at Mercury Lounge in New York. Following the pressure from extensive touring Buckley spent the majority of the rest of the year away from the stage. However, from May 2 to May 5 he played a short stint as bass guitarist with Mind Science of the Mind, with friend Nathan Larson, then guitarist of Shudder to Think. Buckley returned to playing live concerts when he went on his "phantom solo tour" of cafés in the Northeast in December 1996, appearing under a series of aliases: The Crackrobats, Possessed by Elves, Father Demo, Smackrobiotic, The Halfspeeds, Crit-Club, Topless America, Martha & the Nicotines, and A Puppet Show Named Julio.}}

My Sweetheart the Drunk

After completing touring in 1996, Buckley started to write for a new album to be called My Sweetheart the Drunk. Buckley worked with Patti Smith on her 1996 album Gone Again and met fellow collaborater Tom Verlaine, an ex-Television member. Buckley asked Verlaine to be producer on the new album and he agreed. In the middle of 1996, Buckley and his band began recording sessions in Manhattan with Verlaine. Eric Eidel played the drums through these sessions as a stop-gap between the dates drummer Matt Johnson left and before Parker Kindred joined as full time drummer. Around this time Buckley worked on, a Jack Kerouac tribute album, with Nymphs member Inger Lorre. The band played their first gig with Parker Kindred, their new drummer, at Arlene's Grocery in New York on February 9. This set featured much of Buckley's new material that would appear on Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk and a recording has become one of Buckley's most widely distributed bootlegs. Later that month, Buckley recorded a spoken word reading of the Edgar Allan Poe poem, "Ulalume", for the album Closed on Account of Rabies. This would be his last recording in New York; shortly after, he moved to Memphis, Tennessee.
   Buckley became interested in recording at Easley McCain Recording in Memphis, at the suggestion of friend Dave Shouse from the Grifters. He rented a shotgun house there, of which he was so fond he contacted the owner about the possibility of buying it. Throughout this period, February 12 to May 26, 1997, Buckley played at Barrister's, a bar located in downtown Memphis underneath a parking garage in an alley off of Jefferson Avenue. He played numerous times in order to work through the new material in a live atmosphere, at first with band and then solo as part of a Monday night residency. In early February, Buckley and the band did a third recording session with Verlaine, in Memphis, but Buckley expressed his dissatisfaction with the sessions and later called Grace producer, Andy Wallace, to step in as Verlaine's replacement. a tributary of the Mississippi River, while wearing boots, all of his clothing, and singing the chorus of the song "Whole Lotta Love" by Led Zeppelin. A roadie of Buckley's band, Keith Foti, remained ashore. After moving the radio and a guitar out of reach of the wake from a passing tugboat, Foti looked up to see that Buckley was gone. Despite a determined rescue effort that night, Buckley remained missing. On June 4, his body was spotted by a tourist on a riverboat and was brought ashore.}}
After Buckley's death, a collection of demo recordings and a full-length album he'd been reworking for his second album were released as Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk - the compilation being overseen by his mother, Mary Guibert, band members and old friend Michael Clouse, as well as Chris Cornell. Three other albums composed of live recordings have also been released, along with a live DVD of a performance in Chicago. A previously unreleased 1992 recording of "I Shall Be Released", sung by Buckley over the phone on live radio, was released on the album For New Orleans.
   Director Brian Jun has announced plans to make a film biography of Buckley, in cooperation with his mother. It is to be called Mystery White Boy, but as of 2008 the project hasn't progressed beyond the scripting stage. Buckley's mother and Michelle Sy are producing the film but as of yet, no one has been cast in the role of Buckley. A separate project involving the book Dream Brother was allegedly cancelled.
   On March 7, 2008, Buckley’s version of the Leonard Cohen song, “Hallelujah”, went to No. 1 on the iTunes chart, selling 178,000 downloads for the week, after being performed by Jason Castro on the seventh season of the television series American Idol. The song debuted at #1 that week on Billboard's Hot Digital Songs chart, giving Buckley his first #1 on any Billboard chart. The song also topped the New Zealand iTunes chart and subsequently charted the following week at No. 22 on the official New Zealand Music Chart. Preceding this the song was also used in the movie The Feast of Love, starring Morgan Freeman, which was released on September 28, 2007.
   An hour long documentary about Buckley called has been shown at various film festivals to critical acclaim, however due to distribution and copyright issues the film has yet to be released commercially on DVD.

Tribute concerts

2007 marked the 10th anniversary of Jeff Buckley's death. His life and music was celebrated globally in May and June 2007. There were tributes in Australia, Belgium, Canada, United Kingdom, Iceland, Ireland, Macedonia, France and the USA.
Many of Buckley's family members attended and also in part helped to organize the various tribute concerts across the globe. The 'Fall in Light' Jeff Buckley tribute concert was held on June 2, 2007 at the Forum Theatre Melbourne, Australia. His cousin Adam Buckley opened the show with a short memorial speech on Jeff's life.

Documentaries

Fall in Light (1999), French TV
Goodbye and Hello (2000), Netherlands TV
Everybody Here Wants You (2002), BBC
(2004)

Awards and nominations

Grammy Award nomination for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance for "Everybody Here Wants You", 1998.

MTV Video Music Award nomination for Best New Artist in a Video for "Last Goodbye", 1995.

Triple J Hottest 100 awarded No. 14 best song for that year in the worlds largest voting competition for "Last Goodbye", 1995.

"Hallelujah" was ranked #259 of the 500 Greatest Songs by Rolling Stone magazine in 2004.

On April 13 1995, it was announced that Jeff Buckley's Grace had earned him France's prestigious "Grand Prix International Du Disque -- Académie Charles Cros -- 1995"; an award given by a jury of producers, journalists, the president of France Culture, and music industry professionals, it had previously been given to Édith Piaf, Jacques Brel, Yves Montand, Georges Brassens, Bruce Springsteen, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell among other musical luminaries. Other names of unreleased songs from the demos have circulated amongst fans including: "The Morning After", "Open Up and Bleed", "Dendrils of Death", "Don't Listen to Anyone But Me", and "Pleasure Seeker". A version of "Dendrils of Death" has been recorded by Buckley's old bassist, Mick Grondahl, and his band Tongue.
Certain live performances by Buckley have specifically been held in high regard. "Dido's Lament", an aria from Dido and Æneas by Henry Purcell, was performed live at the Meltdown festival in 1995, directed by Elvis Costello. The falsetto operatic piece is unusual in Buckley's catalogue, having similarities only with Buckley's version of "Corpus Christi Carol" featured on Grace. Although unreleased, an excerpt of this version of "Dido's Lament" has appeared on the soundtrack of BBC documentary Everybody Here Wants You. "Edna Frau" was written with Mick Grondahl, Buckley's bassist and was performed live on at least one occasion on The Hard Luck Tour. Grondahl also sings on this song and it was the only occasion he did so during the time he was a member of Buckley's band. Other popular recordings are a performance of "We All Fall in Love Sometimes" by Elton John and Bernie Taupin recorded on October 11, 1992 for WFMU's "The Music Faucet" and "Three is The Magic Number", by Schoolhouse Rock, from Buckley's Mercury Lounge 1996 New Year's Eve concert.
Michael Tighe also mentioned Buckley's collaboration with Elizabeth Fraser of The Cocteau Twins, describing "All Flowers in Time Bend Towards the Sun" as a beautiful piece worthy of release. This song is available to download on the internet with permission from the Estate of Jeff Buckley but hasn't had an official release.

Tribute songs

Due to the fact that Buckley died prematurely, many artists he knew and later influenced, have written and recorded songs in tribute to the late singer. PJ Harvey knew him personally and in the song "Memphis" she takes lines from a song on his unfinished album, "Morning Theft", and in her own words reflects on Buckley's death: "In Memphis...die suddenly, at a wonderful age, we're ready to go". Rufus Wainwright, whose fledgling career had barely started when he met Buckley, wrote "Memphis Skyline" in tribute to him, singing "then came hallelujah sounding like Ophelia, for me in my room living, turn back and you'll stay, under the Memphis Skyline". Wainwright has also recorded his own version of "Hallelujah", which appeared on the soundtrack for the movie . Other songs dedicated to Buckley and songs that reference him include:

"A Body Goes Down" - Duncan Sheik - with Buckley's drummer Matt Johnson

"Bandstand in the Sky" - Pete Yorn

"Boys on the Radio" - Hole

"Halfway to Memphis" - Sammy Hagar (Buckley referenced)

"In a Flash" - Ron Sexsmith

"If Jeff Buckley Had Lived" - The Indelicates (Buckley referenced)

"New Blood"- Beth Wood

"On the Road to Calvary: For Jeff Buckley" - Willie Nile

"Rilkean Heart" - Cocteau Twins

"Sidestep the Bullet" - Brenda Kahn

"Wave Goodbye" - Chris Cornell

"Where All Roses Go" - Anuna

"You Were Right" - Badly Drawn Boy (Buckley referenced)