Jeff Buckley: The Days Of Angels

"His death was so hard to believe because he was so godlike in his talents. You couldn't believe his life could be snuffed out. That he was mortal. His talent was so immortal.

And to get those two in the same body and soul was a dichotomy. He was so vulnerable with a lot of baggage and problems to work out and at the same time he had this ascendance, talent beyond even him." _^[1]

When you are in the presence of an angel you know it. You feel it. You recognize it's voice and see through the form it has taken on. And being the angels they are, they are known to abruptly leave. The echoes of their time among us rippling like waves. But they will always leave a part of themselves with us, so that we may remember why they were here. So that we will realize the impact of their brief but extraordinary lives.

People are on loan to us. We believe we will have them forever. We can take that for granted. We see music careers span decades, with massive catalogs, music played over generations. We have seen the brightest burning stars abruptly drop from the sky. It always seems, they leave so little of their beauty to hold on to.

May 29, 1997 Jeffrey Scott Buckley 30 years old, missing in the Wolf River Memphis, Tennessee. Presumed drowned. The news shocking, bewildering. It is written by those that knew Jeff, that their collective reactions were "no way", "absolutely not."

Jeff was just being Jeff. More than likely, as usual, off again on some haphazard Jeff jaunt. He would turn up and they would chastise him for the horror of the death scare he put on them. He would get back in the studio, back on the stage. Back to loving and being loved.

But Jeff never got back. On June 4, 1997, six days after he first went missing, a passenger on a riverboat floating down the Mississippi spotted what they thought to be a body in the water. It appeared to be caught in a cluster of branches.

The fire department called to the scene, proceeded to retrieve from the mouth of the river at Beale Street, the drowned body of Jeff Buckley. His watch still keeping time. However, the angel had already flown.

There was this sound, this emanation from Jeff Buckley that was neither heard before him nor since. At once angelic, beast like, ascendant, descendant. It was haunting, hypnotic. It put a spell on you no matter how much you resisted it.

But you never resisted. You were put under the moment he opened his mouth. You wanted more, and more wasn't enough.

He hit you like a freight train. He soothed your anger, your angst, your doubts. His was the voice we imagine angels must sound like. Hearing him in studio was powerful. To hear him live leaves you speechless. I have heard grown men describe the shivers they got listening to him live.

" I'll probably play live till the day I die. It's cool to have a CD, with a condensed moment that's been worked over for weeks, but to do something that will just fly away is kind of special. Every time somebody tells you they love you, that 'I love you' flies away, and you wait until the next one. " _^[2]

There is always a raw power and depth to a live performance. You reach heights, variations, lengths you could not dream of putting down in a studio recording. Hearing Buckley reaching those heights and lengths is something you always dream to witness during a live performance. He never disappointed hungry ears.

That voice and it's lover; his guitar. A force indescribable. And we try, we do try to describe it. Yet it somehow lacks all definitions. Bono said this:

"He was a pure drop in an ocean of noise. Jeff Buckley's voice reminds me of the old Salvation Army 'hymn' Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound." ^_[3]

That does well enough perhaps. It must do.

Jeff Buckley had an astonishing vocal range. He was a tenor who reached falsetto pitch. Jeff's actual range was 4 and 3/4 octaves. Some swear it was a 5 octave. His lowest note live is said to have been the second A below middle C and his highest note said to have been an Eb above the soprano high C.

And to remember that in his early days of collaboration with the many artists he played with; and even further back to his days at the Musician's Institute, no one had heard him sing. They assumed he could not. He played an equally amazing guitar. Separating him from his guitar was just not something you consciously could do.

And he was a Buckley. Descended from a line of strong Irish tenors.The legacy of the Irish tenor father whom Jeff never truly knew was his greatest struggle of all.

He struggled to make his own music, not shadowed by the music of his father Tim Buckley. He cringed when ceaselessly hounded to "Play something from your father." Cringed when having his father mentioned in nearly each interview he would give or being introduced as the son of.

His relationship with his father (or more correctly said, his lack of relationship) with his father was a major source of both pain and beauty for him his entire life.

When one knows the history between father and son, it is easy to think aloud... they are together now father and son, at last. The relationship with his iconic sixties folk and jazz artist father and how it shaped Jeff's life, can be read in detail in Dream Brother: The lives and music of Jeff & Tim Buckley by David Browne.

Certainly his music is painted with the large brush of this relationship. Regardless of how outwardly he appeared to regard his father with disdain (perhaps just the memory and anguish of not having had him) he was still a son missing his father.

Pain and beauty, the artist's muse and madness. Jeff's singing voice was ethereal but his speaking voice childlike and playful. He was a man boy. At once connected to his masculine and feminine. From all accounts he had a quick wit and biting sarcasm that stemmed more from mistrust and assorted childhood baggage than it did any malice. He was human and otherworldly.

Those who knew him remember the vulnerable 'little boy lost' inherent in him. They recall his inner fragile child. He was a musical genius. Still, just a man working through his life like any other. But what he accomplished in those few years, remains unmatched in it's beauty. You could not pin Jeff down. He did not belong to any style, any genre. He was all over in his music. He was everywhere. He was just Jeff.

We say to ourselves that there should have been more. That so much was left undone. The possibility of what he could have done had he lived frustrates and saddens those who knew Jeff Buckley's music. People may tend to feel cheated perhaps. Oh, how we can complain and weep for our lack. I am guilty myself.

But I wonder: What if that was all he was supposed to give? What if his one life's purpose, was to give us exactly what he gave us and no more than that? We believe it was not enough. But it was so great. So unmatched.

It was, and is, the eternal sunshine of a spotless mind.

MY THOUGHTS TODAY...

I miss his presence in the world. I miss that we do not have his creative power today. I echo thousands of others. His friends, whom were lucky enough to have this beautiful human being personally in their lives, how they must miss even more. But, we can never think that his music was "all we got." What we got was everything.

Who and what he was. All of him, it is right there in the music. We had Jeff too. He gave himself equally to friends and to strangers. The tiny bit of Jeff Buckley that was left behind is not tiny at all. It is colossal. A colossal gift. It is still available to us. Locked forever onto vinyl. On film. In the heart.

I am going to pause now, go over to my collection of Jeffrey Scott Buckley. I am going to play Live in Chicago for the millionth time. And I am going to play it loud. I never give up a chance to consort with angels.

Jeff Buckley only made one studio album in his lifetime: Grace.

Posthumously, various singles and many live recordings, as well as videos and a few tracks from the album he was working on at the time of his death: Sketches For my Sweetheart The Drunk, were subsequently released.

Albums:

♦ Live at Sin-é (EP) November 23, 1993
♦ Grace August 23, 1994
♦ Live from the Bataclan (EP) October 1995
♦ Eternal Life (EP) 1995
♦ Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk May 26, 1998
♦ Mystery White Boy May 9, 2000
♦ Live À L'Olympia July 3, 2001
♦ Songs to No One 1991-1992 October 15, 2002
♦ The Grace EPs November 26, 2002
♦ Live at Sin-é (Legacy Edition) September 2, 2003
♦ Grace (Legacy Edition) August 24, 2004
♦ So Real: Songs from Jeff Buckley May 22, 2007

Singles:

♦ Grace 1995
♦ Last Goodbye 1995 (Japan and Australia)
♦ So Real 1996
♦ Everybody Here Wants You 1998
♦ Forget Her 2004
♦ Hallelujah 2008 (#9 in Ireland - #2 in UK)

Videos:

♦ Live In Chicago May 9 2000 ( An Absolute Must See - Amazingly Stunning Performance! )
♦ Amazing Grace: Jeff Buckley June 2 2009

^{[1] George Stein: A Wished For Song by Merri Cyr [interview]
[2] Jeff Buckley, Columbia Press Release for Live at Sin-é
[3] Bono, Propaganda, 1999 {A Wished For Song by Merri Cyr}}