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Roxy Theatre: Los Angeles, CA, November 23, 1994 (📷 Kelly Zimmermann)

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In LA near The Roxy, November 23, 1994 📷: Stephen Stickler

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The Roxy Theatre: Los Angeles, California, November 23, 1994.

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9 pm at Roxy, Sunset Boulevard.

The debonair audience, come there to have a round and listen to good music, can't believe their ears. On stage, the white energy is palpable. Jeff Buckley and his men cross another border. Once again, songs are invented in the moment, long melodies unwound ad libitum before the sound, all massive and airial, devastates the audience. Between songs, Jeff Buckley defuses the emotional charge by imitating an average redneck: "Hey, little slut, bitch, you suck?" A disarming smile. Some girls keel a little. Then it's Kangaroo and its noisy radicality. Then Hallelujah, hanging by a thread, the voice on the verge of silence, flirting with the stratosphere of the high-pitched."-Les Inrockuptibles, February, 1995

📷: Stephen Stickler/Renaud Monfourny/me

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The Night I Saw Jeff Buckley Perform

Loren Kantor

It was November 1994 and I was feeling under the weather. I ventured to Luna Park, an intimate music venue in West Hollywood, to see an old college friend play a set of music. I didn’t want to be there. My throat was sore and my head was pounding. I sat through my friend’s gig, paid my respects and prepared to return home to bed. My friend’s words changed my life. “You might want to stay and see this next performer. He’s pretty interesting.”

So I stayed. I watched as a skinny guy with a passing resemblance to James Dean stepped on stage. He had dirty brown hair and wore a full-length feather overcoat like something you’d find at an old lady’s garage sale. He plugged his electric guitar into an amp with a “Kiss” sticker across the back. The surrounding crowd was oblivious… loud, rude, immersed in their cocktails and movie-industry blathering.

The performer began tuning his guitar and testing the microphone with high-pitched squeals and sighs. Then something amazing happened. The singer’s atonal sounds morphed into a soft falsetto backed by the slow build of a dreamy guitar riff. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the crowd quieted and turned toward stage. They had no choice. They were magnetized, lifted, pulled toward this compelling force.

Then came the opening lyrics sung with the voice of an angel: “I’m lying in my bed, the blanket is warm, this body will never be safe from harm.” The next hour passed like a blur. The music blended Jimmy Paige-inspired electric guitar with soft soulful ballads reminiscent of Marvin Gaye. Between songs, the performer cracked jokes about his days of starvation living in Hollywood and how there was a period in the music industry when “Paul Williams was God.”

By the time the set ended with the performer’s majestic cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” I felt transformed. I sat in silence, my skin covered with goose bumps. Women crowded the stage to get closer to the performer. Men simply stared, trying to process what they just experienced.

Jeff Buckley was a musical virtuoso. He wielded his Fender Stratocaster guitar like a gunfighter brandishing a pistol. His music was an amalgam of his favorite performers: Elizabeth Fraser of the Cocteau Twins, Pakistani legend Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn, Freddie Mercury, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. He covered performers as varied as Edith Piaf, Jimi Hendrix and Nina Simone.

Buckley was born into music. His father, whom he met only once, was Tim Buckley, the revered 1960s folk musician who died of a drug overdose at age 28. His mother, Mary Guibert, was a classically trained pianist and cellist. He was born in Southern California and began playing guitar at age five. He played in his high school jazz band and developed an early affinity for the progressive rock music of Genesis, Yes and Rush. He studied music at the Musicians Institute in Hollywood then moved to New York City in 1990. He toured with several struggling bands and experimented on his own with jazz, blues, punk rock, funk and R&B.

In April, 1991, Buckley made his public singing debut at a tribute concert for his father called “Greetings From Tim Buckley.” He performed four songs including “I Never Asked To Be Your Mountain,” a song Tim Buckley had written about infant Jeff and his mother. The performance made a strong impression and became a springboard for his career.

Buckley began building a following at small clubs throughout Lower Manhattan. He gained a regular Monday spot at an Irish café in the East Village called Sin-e. Slowly, his reputation spread. Crowds became larger and record company executives took notice. In 1992, Buckley signed a deal with Columbia Records. Two years later, he released his first album Grace. By 1996, the album went gold.

Buckley’s supporting tour attracted fans such as Chrissie Hynde, Chris Cornell, Lou Reed and the Edge from U2. Bob Dylan called Buckley “one of the great songwriters of the decade.” David Bowie said Grace was an album he would take with him to a desert island. Rolling Stone magazine called Buckley’s rendition of “Hallelujah” one of “the 500 greatest songs of all time.”

Buckley toured around the world for several years, preferring intimate clubs to large venues. He disliked self-promotion and bristled when people referred to him as “Tim Buckley’s son.” In 1996, he began writing songs for his second studio album My Sweetheart The Drunk.

Buckley chose to record the album in Memphis, Tennessee. On the night of May 29, 1997, Buckley’s band flew to Memphis to join him. That same night, Buckley jumped in to Wolf River Harbor, a water channel of the Mississippi River. He was fully clothed, including his boots, and he was singing Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” at the top of his lungs. A river tugboat passed creating a wake that spread to the harbor. Buckley was pulled beneath the water. A roadie in the band, Keith Foti, was standing on shore. He noticed Buckley had vanished. A search and rescue effort was launched. Buckley remained missing for several days until his body was found down the river on June 4. An autopsy showed no signs of drugs or alcohol in his system. His death was ruled an “accidental drowning.”

Fans around the world united in grief. Numerous musicians wrote tribute songs. These included “Teardrop” by Elizabeth Fraser, “Memphis” by PJ Harvey, “Grey Ghost” by Mike Doughty and “Memphis Skyline” by Rufus Wainwright. Columbia released the demo recordings for My Sweetheart The Drunk as Buckley’s second album. They followed this up by releasing several live recordings.  Buckley had been poised for super stardom. His legacy continued to grow after his passing.

I was blessed to see Buckley perform twice in Los Angeles. My wife and I fell in love listening to his music. On the day we learned he was missing, we walked around in a stupor as if we had lost a family member. Seventeen years later, it’s still hard to believe he’s gone. 

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“The future of rock makes an excellent driver, and a most zealous tour guide.”-Les Inrockuptibles Magazine, February, 1995.

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Los Angeles, CA, November 23, 1994 📷 Renaud Monfourny

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Los Angeles CA, November 23, 1994 📷 Renaud Monfourny

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Modern Rock Live, Los Angeles, CA: November 22, 1994 📷: Renaud Monfourny

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Modern Rock Live and Luna Park: Los Angeles, California, November 22, 1994.

Modern Rockline, Ventura Boulevard, Sherman Oaks.

It is 8 pm when the band starts playing "So Real", repeated a good dozen times before. But, as if everyone sensed that something special could happen, the studio filled up. Something special happens. Like a gap between these guys so young, messing around, but terribly attentive to each other, and the music of a monsterous beauty that escapes from the control monitors. In the moment that follows, the joke takes over. We put the listeners' questions on the air. Lea plays the smart one by giggling like a little girl: "Oh Jeff, you're so fantastic, amazing...Uh, are you married?" Felice plays the intellectual role: "What inspires you, what is your writing process?" Jeff responds very kindly "It depends. Sometimes I'm alive, sometimes I'm dead. Everything you are, even what you are ashamed of, must appear in writing, including things that are ridiculous or unimportant. And always write from your daily environment, never use ready-made formulas." There are many always and never in his sentences.

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Luna Park, 665 Robertson Boulevard.

The following concert is a special experience. There is something definitively terrifying in the way Jeff Buckley is acting through the music, as if it goes through him. Not a look at the instruments, the eyes look at a very distant point beyond the club's walls. Mick Grondahl and Michael Tighe don't move,  letting the sound storm pass through. Extreme tension allows extreme freedom: twice, the improvised introductions will extend beyond several minutes. New sounds are born, flexible and sumptuous layers that make you forget all the great orchestras of the world. Scott Walker has been right to hide in his bunker for three years.-Les Inrockuptibles, February, 1995

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That fall, Sapriel had one more gift for Jeff. In November, she threw him a 24th birthday party at her house, and unaware of the frictions that still existed between the Buckley and Guibert households, invited a wide, contentious cast of characters. The event became a gathering of Jeff's world: members of the Guibert family (Anna, Mary, and Mary's sister Peggy); Tim's mother Elaine and his sister Kathleen; Mary's second husband, Ron Moorhead; Tim's widow Judy and her son Taylor; and a smattering of Jeff's LA friends. Although Mary recalls the event as "a total party, nothing but positive vibes," complete with cake, champagne, and gifts, another participant calls it a "David Lynch, Warhol, and Fellini movie all in one." Elaine Buckley and Anna Guibert exchanged cordial hellos but didn't speak with each other for the rest of the day; feeling ostracized, Judy Buckley sat alone in the backyard. When she did speak with Jeff, one topic of discussion was Tim's royalties; she and Llewellyn felt they had not received their fair share and were considering a lawsuit against Herb Cohen. Taylor Buckley showed up with a tape of another newly unearthed live recording by Tim, this time from the John Peel radio show in London in 1968, and played it.

To his friend Kathryn Grimm, who also attended the bash, Jeff "seemed comfortable," and the underlying tensions between the family members appeared to have been put aside. Jeff himself never talked much about the party, and one can only imagine what went through his mind as he navigated his way through this jungle of players and emotions. Some were simply happy to reconnect with Tim's son, while others looked to him as the answer to their prayers-a new Tim to whom they could transfer any lingering, unresolved feelings. The entire group would never again assemble under the same roof.-from Dream Brother

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Happiest of birthdays Jeffy! 🎂🎁🎈🎉✨ Here's the link to my "Influences" playlist I made especially for this day for those that want to listen:

The contractions began in the early hours of Thursday, November, 17, 1966...Anna drove Mary to Martin Luther Hospital in Anaheim, where her daughter began an agonizing 21 hours of labor...finally, at 10: 49 pm, out popped a blond, pudgy, baby boy, a literal golden child. The issue of identity loomed even before the child left the hospital. Mary named her son Jeffrey Scott-"Jeffrey" after her last high school boyfriend before Tim and "Scott" in honor of John Scott Jr., a neighbor and close friend of the Guiberts who died in an accident at the age of seventeen. Yet because Mary preferred Scott, and because "Scott Jeffrey" didn't flow as smoothly off the tongue as "Jeffrey Scott," the child was instantly called Scotty by his family.

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From the beginning, everyone was in awe of him. He was a child born of pain and turmoil, yet he was so bubbly with laughter that the cloud under which he was conceived appeared to drift away. He would sit in his high chair and bang on the tray with a spoon as if he were keeping a beat with any music he heard. Even when he was baptized at St. Michael's, the same church where his parents had been wed a little over a year before, he made his mother smile by looking up and loudly passing gas during the ceremony.-from Dream Brother

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“I just want to have a completely adventurous, passionate, weird life.” Happy birthday Jeffrey Scott Buckley!🎂🎁🎉

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It's my 9 year anniversary on Tumblr 🥳

Say what?!

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He has been nursing a recent injury to his hand. It has made playing his electric guitar difficult, but not enough to stop the tour, which brings him to the Salt Lake Zephyr Club, 301 S. West Temple, Sunday night. "We were coming out of Ann Arbor (Mich.) when the bus was about to go over some railroad tracks," Buckley said. "We were going too fast and the bus would have bottomed out, so the driver jammed the brakes." Buckley smashed into a seat, smacking his hand. One could imagine Columbia Record executives holding their collective breath had they known.-Salt Lake Tribune, November 10, 1994 (for the record: the Ann Arbor show was Oct. 31, 94)

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Buckley is dead serious, reflective, and careful when discussing his music, but he's trying to keep a thousand things straight in a cluttered mind he hasn't had time to empty. So he's given to wandering off in mid-conversation, telling one very long story about how Sony's Japanese executives gave him shiatsu massage to cure a hand he jammed when his tour bus came to a sudden stop. "They all converged on me like all these dogs cleaning this one dog," he says. "And they fuckin' healed my right hand."-Dallas Observer, November 24, 1994

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Japanese photographer Hideo Oida was flown to Salt Lake City on July 15, 1994 to meet Jeff's tour and shoot exclusive photos for the artwork (for the Japanese "Last Goodbye" EP). In the front cover photo, you can see that Jeff's right hand is bandaged. The previous night, as the tour bus was departing from the venue in Denver, Colorado, Jeff was standing up in the main parlor section, dancing, goofing around with the others. As the huge vehicle moved along surface streets heading for the open highway, the driver suddenly came upon a dip followed by a railroad track. The driver put on the the brakes and Jeff became airborne. The only thing that prevented him from being jettisoned through the windshield was the fact that he reached out and slammed the palm of his hand into a partition. Jeff's hand and wrist became painfully swollen. Though X-rays showed no broken bones, Jeff was barely able to hold a guitar pick that night. The pressure bandage stayed on for a few more weeks.-from The Grace EPs (it wasn't the July 15 show, but the one on November 13...📷 Hideo Oida)

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Toulouse, France: February 8, 1995 (📷 Kevin Cummins, thanks to Steven Bodrug)

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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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Green Mill: Chicago, IL, November 8/9, 1994 📷: Paul Natkin