Speaker 1: Welcome to five hundred Greatest Songs of podcast based on
Speaker 1: Rolling Stones. Hugely popular, influential, and sometimes controversialist I'm Britney Spanos.
Speaker 2: And I'm Rob Sheffield were here to shed light on
Speaker 2: the greatest songs ever made and discover what makes them
Speaker 2: so great. And this week we are talking about Jeff
Speaker 2: Buckley Grace.
Speaker 1: Grace ranks at three ninety four on the New List
Speaker 1: and his cover of Leonard cohen tally Lullia was actually
Speaker 1: on the original list at two fifty nine. I'm a
Speaker 1: big Jeff Buckley fan. I'm very excited to talk about this.
Speaker 1: But do you remember the first time that you heard
Speaker 1: the album Grace or encountered who Jeff Buckley was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it took a long time with me though. It
Speaker 2: was an album that really and a musician who really
Speaker 2: had to create his own audience because he just didn't
Speaker 2: fit into anything. He didn't you know, he didn't fit
Speaker 2: into any radio format. He didn't fit into any genre. Really,
Speaker 2: genres are just funny words like as fiance would say,
Speaker 2: and that for Jeff Buckley, there wasn't really an audience
Speaker 2: that was ready to hear what he was doing. So Grace,
Speaker 2: the song and Grace the album both took years for me. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Where's for You? It was very different.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like by the time that I was
Speaker 1: a teenager, there was so much lore around Jeff Buckley,
Speaker 1: so much of this mystery. I mean, he died very
Speaker 1: tragically when he was thirty. He drowned in a river
Speaker 1: while he was in Memphis about to record a second album,
Speaker 1: and you know there's all that kind of just like
Speaker 1: this tumblerrification of like his life because he was also
Speaker 1: just like super hot, and like all the songs were
Speaker 1: about like yearning and longing and love and like, you know,
Speaker 1: for teen girls, that's like ultimate musical bait. Here's this
Speaker 1: guy who died tragically young and also sings just about
Speaker 1: like being so in love. So I feel like by
Speaker 1: the time that I was a teenager like that, like
Speaker 1: there was already this like legacy built around Jeff Buckley
Speaker 1: that was very much on the level on par with
Speaker 1: like Elliot Smith, Kurt Kobaning, Like that was you know,
Speaker 1: kind of being just like amplified by teenage fans. So well,
Speaker 1: I'd heard Hollylujo when I was in middle school, and
Speaker 1: then Grace I got into later, and again it was
Speaker 1: a big part of just like being on Tumblr and
Speaker 1: live journal and all of those kind of sad teen
Speaker 1: spaces that were sort of sharing his music. So I
Speaker 1: was really obsessed with with Grace.
Speaker 2: Then you mentioned live journal and Tumblr. He didn't really
Speaker 2: become a star until until later when stuff like that
Speaker 2: was invented. But he was one of the last pre
Speaker 2: internet rock stars when you know, when he wasn't even
Speaker 2: really a star, because I think having those communities online
Speaker 2: for people to engage, I think he was one of
Speaker 2: the first examples of an artists whose reputation just started
Speaker 2: to really soar once people like that could find each other,
Speaker 2: because it was just really different when he was like
Speaker 2: getting no airplay was when he was around.
Speaker 1: Itself is just I think, so brilliant, so well done.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's such an incredible singer. Like his there's
Speaker 1: a few covers on there, but the original songs as
Speaker 1: well are just like absolutely just gorgeous and so poetic
Speaker 1: and intense. He's just very intense guy again part of
Speaker 1: the appeal. But yeah, like I think, you know, it's
Speaker 1: just one of those things where there was so little
Speaker 1: of him to listen to, so it's kind of like
Speaker 1: piecing together what could have been and who he was
Speaker 1: and all of that. You know, it's a similar story
Speaker 1: with his father as well. His father is the Folks
Speaker 1: singer Tim Buckley, who passed away when he was twenty
Speaker 1: eight and so passed away when Jeff was pretty young,
Speaker 1: and Jeff was raised by his mother and his stepfather
Speaker 1: in California. There are sort of those parallels of like
Speaker 1: the father and son kind of tragic young death and
Speaker 1: sort of limited kind of output type of happening there.
Speaker 1: That's also kind of adds so many more layers to
Speaker 1: that story as well. And of course the song Grace
Speaker 1: that ended up making the list. That song is a
Speaker 1: song that was written with Gary Lucas the guitarist, and
Speaker 1: it was based off of an instrumental that Gary Lucas
Speaker 1: had written. And the song again is like such a
Speaker 1: perfect example of like Jeff Buckley's writing style, which is
Speaker 1: it's a very simple premise that is like so over
Speaker 1: the top and so intense and so like just like
Speaker 1: peak yearning. It's just about him saying goodbye to his
Speaker 1: girlfriend at the airport on a rainy day. And I mean,
Speaker 1: if you just kind of like listen to the first
Speaker 1: the song the first time, You're like, is that it's
Speaker 1: just so much deeper and so much more intense. And
Speaker 1: you know, it's also, like he said, it's about not
Speaker 1: feeling so bad about your own mortality when you have
Speaker 1: true love, which like sure man like, but like love
Speaker 1: that eat it up, like I'm an intense way of
Speaker 1: talking about like a very mundane sort of activity.
Speaker 2: Who doesn't chat about that at the airport. It's like,
Speaker 2: let me stop at the cinnabuns and let's talk about
Speaker 2: mortality love. You mentioned Hallelujah, which is of course his
Speaker 2: most famous cover and a cover that blew up before
Speaker 2: the original was anywhere near as famous. It really made
Speaker 2: the original. But his version of that that leads into
Speaker 2: the Smiths I Know It's over. That was a real
Speaker 2: turning point for me in terms of learning to hear
Speaker 2: what he was doing, because the first time I heard it,
Speaker 2: I said, you got to be kidding. You're taking the
Speaker 2: song that was already one of the most melodramatic songs
Speaker 2: ever recorded for other human beings to listen to, and
Speaker 2: nobody ever accused that song of not being histrionic enough,
Speaker 2: and he took it to such mind blowingly hyperbolic melodramatic
Speaker 2: heights that it really did seem like, Okay, he's overdoing
Speaker 2: it so much that he makes it sound like, no,
Speaker 2: this is what the song is meant to be when
Speaker 2: it goes into that falsetto and completely leaves the song behind,
Speaker 2: and it was really kind of a revelation of what
Speaker 2: he was doing.
Speaker 1: I will say he has one of my favorite falsettos
Speaker 1: in music because there's also really great sort of deep
Speaker 1: cut from him that I don't remember what exactly. I
Speaker 1: think it's from some just like compilation of like unreleased
Speaker 1: music that had been put out posthumously called Everybody Here
Speaker 1: Wants You. Great song. His falsetto on that is absolutely stunning.
Speaker 1: It's like kind of like a it's like so unlike
Speaker 1: most of Grace where it's just like this like sort
Speaker 1: of like groovy, sexy R and B song, like a
Speaker 1: little bit more restrained musically than some of like the
Speaker 1: kind of like bigger rock moments on Grace. But his
Speaker 1: false seto on that is so perfect, Like I love
Speaker 1: and I just like love his voice and it's very
Speaker 1: clear like how much how many male singers have really
Speaker 1: tried to evoke and like channel the Jeff Buckley musical
Speaker 1: spirit in the decade since seems very very obvious how
Speaker 1: how much of that influence has existed.
Speaker 2: God, you are so right about that. It's so funny that.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's striking for me because personally, I don't
Speaker 2: remember singers going for that kind of falsetto before. He did,
Speaker 2: certainly not like in that you know, rock kind of context. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Every time I hear, especially like a young male singer
Speaker 2: with an acoustic guitar do that kind of falsetto, I
Speaker 2: just think this is something really Jeff Bucket kind of invented.
Speaker 2: It isn't just something that he demonstrated to the world,
Speaker 2: but that kind of singing, he took it so far
Speaker 2: over the top compared to anybody who did that kind
Speaker 2: of thing before.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like I hear a lot of him
Speaker 1: in Hosier right now. I feel like that. I got
Speaker 1: really into Hosier last year and I was like, I
Speaker 1: was like, why do I like Hoser so much? And
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, yeah, because he reminded me so
Speaker 1: much of Jeff Buckley, and I feel like I hear
Speaker 1: a lot of that. I guess maybe that's also kind
Speaker 1: of where I'm seeing like a lot of the crossover too,
Speaker 1: and like the Jeff Buckley sort of continuing popularity in
Speaker 1: his music is like a lot of these sort of
Speaker 1: male singer songwriters like Hoser, like a Lewis Capaldi or
Speaker 1: even thinking of like Nile Horn's like I guess with
Speaker 1: more So I was like first album and sort of
Speaker 1: totally you know, those kind of more guitar driven. I
Speaker 1: think a lot of those A lot of times people
Speaker 1: want to put them more closely to like John Mayer,
Speaker 1: who is also very Jeff Buckley influenced, but it is
Speaker 1: very clearly seems to go back to like Jeff more
Speaker 1: so than even that, Like it seems like to go
Speaker 1: back to that sort of like genre bending, soulful kind
Speaker 1: of like pop rock sound of his.
Speaker 2: Yeah to me, no as well like another like you know,
Speaker 2: hitting those high notes and doing that in a totally
Speaker 2: unconventional sort of style.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And I feel like we're like constantly in waves
Speaker 1: of like irony and earnestness and like pop culture of
Speaker 1: like it's like either a really like ironic era or
Speaker 1: like a very earnest era. And I feel like we're
Speaker 1: in that sort of like earnest moment again. And we
Speaker 1: could hear that in like the music that's really popular
Speaker 1: right now, we can hear that, and like you know,
Speaker 1: the artists are blowing up, and I feel like the
Speaker 1: music that's also we're nostalgic for. And I think Jeff
Speaker 1: Buckley being sort of like this kind of perfect emblem
Speaker 1: of earnestness kind of is always sort of a moment
Speaker 1: for him to kind of come back or for people
Speaker 1: to discover him or rediscover him in some way. So
Speaker 1: I feel like he's kind of that's maybe why there's
Speaker 1: kind of a new wave of fans coming in.
Speaker 2: That's so fascinating. So an age of earnestness is an
Speaker 2: age that's open to Jeff Buckley.
Speaker 1: They're more ready than ever for Jeff.
Speaker 2: Buy if I'm hearing you correctly, Jeff Buckley is bigger
Speaker 2: now than he's ever been, which I think it's fair
Speaker 2: to say. I mean, yeah, just gets more and more.
Speaker 2: He hits deeper with people every time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think especially because it's so it's less so
Speaker 1: about Hallelujah right now, Like obviously that's sure the like
Speaker 1: Hallelujah sort of I guess it would it could be
Speaker 1: called revival in the two thousands or like the Hallelujah
Speaker 1: like popularity that was happening in the two thousands was
Speaker 1: I mean, such a massive, massive moment. But I think
Speaker 1: right now it does seem like, you know, I've been
Speaker 1: hearing a lot of Jeff Buckley and like television and
Speaker 1: movies and like high fidelity of the show. Also like
Speaker 1: had Jeff Buckley featured prey pop, Yeah, and a Jeff
Speaker 1: Buckley inspired character on there, yes, which like was great.
Speaker 1: I love that show. And yeah, I mean just like
Speaker 1: I feel like it's like happening a little bit. Maybe
Speaker 1: maybe I'm also just like I'm paying closer attention to
Speaker 1: the Jeff Buckley vibes that are being thrown my way
Speaker 1: than most people. But there's a lot, So there's there's
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of Jeff Buckley, you know.
Speaker 2: There's a lot out there, and that he just gets more.
Speaker 2: They reach a point where it seems like, well, this
Speaker 2: music from this era is more popular now than anybody
Speaker 2: could have imagined, and yet just keeps getting more and
Speaker 2: more popular every year.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Next, we'll be joined by Rolling Stone senior writer
Speaker 1: David Brown. We are joined now by Rolling Stone senior
Speaker 1: writer David Brown, who also is the author of the
Speaker 1: book Dream Brother, The Lives and Music of Jeff and
Speaker 1: Tim Buckley. Thank you so much, David for being here today.
Speaker 3: I'm thrilled with you guys.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks David, And I'm curious what prompted your exploration
Speaker 1: into Jeff and Tim Buckley's lives originally.
Speaker 3: Well, I was really fortunate to catch Jeff Buckley live
Speaker 3: very early in his career, when he was playing at
Speaker 3: this complete kind of hole in the wall coffee house
Speaker 3: called Shane on the Lower East Side, when there was
Speaker 3: just a lot of buzz about him in the early nineties.
Speaker 3: It was funny. I kept hearing like from people I
Speaker 3: worked with at another outlet, like have you had Tim
Speaker 3: Buckley's son is playing in this bar and you should
Speaker 3: change He's amazing, you should check him out. And I
Speaker 3: thought Tim Buckley had a son. I had no idea
Speaker 3: and anyway, so I was lucky to see him a
Speaker 3: couple of times there and interview him early on for
Speaker 3: another rival outlet at the time. It was probably one
Speaker 3: of his first interviews, and he was just a fascinating
Speaker 3: combination of someone who was both kind of intense and
Speaker 3: almost mythopoetic in his way and also just totally like
Speaker 3: goofy and funny. The year later, Grace came out and
Speaker 3: I you know, kind of lived up to those expectations
Speaker 3: of what we thought he could bring. And so yeah,
Speaker 3: that's basically what brought me all into it.
Speaker 1: And what was I mean, I know, there was so
Speaker 1: much of that buzz happening with those shows and everything
Speaker 1: that even leading up to there was record execs trying
Speaker 1: to sign him and just you know, what was it
Speaker 1: like to watch him live? What was that experience of
Speaker 1: what his live shows were lated at that time?
Speaker 3: It was kind of amazing because Shane was probably about
Speaker 3: the size of this room. It was an incredibly small space,
Speaker 3: didn't even have a sign out front, you know. He
Speaker 3: would just sit there against this brick wall with his
Speaker 3: white electric guitar, didn't have a band or anything. And
Speaker 3: what was kind of amazing was he didn't really have
Speaker 3: a whole lot of original songs at that point. He
Speaker 3: was never a super prolific songwriter, but he only had
Speaker 3: a few songs. So he dipped into his own knowledge
Speaker 3: of music, whether it was the stuff he grew up with,
Speaker 3: the records he grew up with in his house and
Speaker 3: his mother's or stepfather's record collections, and it was kind
Speaker 3: of his way of trying to find out who he was.
Speaker 3: So you might hear one of his own songs. Then
Speaker 3: you'd hear like an Edith paf song or some obscure
Speaker 3: Elton John song or a Bad Brains song or Led
Speaker 3: Zepplin's Night Flight, or they'd be like, where's this coming from?
Speaker 3: You know. We had this incredible sense of history about him.
Speaker 3: And what was fascinating too was again in the context
Speaker 3: of the early nineties alternative rock scene, which he wasn't
Speaker 3: really part of, but that's what it was. There was
Speaker 3: nothing cheeky or ironic about his covers. It wasn't like
Speaker 3: someone doing a cover of who was it that did?
Speaker 3: I'm Easy with that faith no More? You know, or
Speaker 3: they would do a cover yeah line of Witchi's and
Speaker 3: you think, well, is this done with a little wink like?
Speaker 3: You know, that wasn't the case. No matter what Jeff
Speaker 3: was doing. He was intensely invested in that song, Hank
Speaker 3: Williams song, Billie Holiday song, you know, whatever it was.
Speaker 3: He just was fully invested in it. And it actually
Speaker 3: turned some people off back things because they people would
Speaker 3: say it seems kind of corny. He was like, he
Speaker 3: was so like earnest and sincere, and that wasn't cool
Speaker 3: back then, but that's that's kind of what made him
Speaker 3: great and made him stand out.
Speaker 2: At the time, it was wild to see that sort
Speaker 2: of mystique that he built. At the time you wrote
Speaker 2: your book, that hadn't really come together yet because that
Speaker 2: was so soon after this story. I think the book
Speaker 2: was like a big part of building that posthumous mystique.
Speaker 2: But really, like while he was alive, it was very
Speaker 2: different in terms of, like you said, people had very
Speaker 2: strongly mixed feelings about him. Also because what he did
Speaker 2: was so musically unique and so emotionally intense that, like
Speaker 2: you said, it was a real almost visceral turnoff for
Speaker 2: a lot of people.
Speaker 3: It kind of was. But you know, even then, I
Speaker 3: remember interviewing someone, a photographer and good friend of his
Speaker 3: name Mary Sear, who took the cover of the Grace album,
Speaker 3: and she said, even when, you know, when she knew him,
Speaker 3: there were there were always two Jeffs with her. There
Speaker 3: was regular Jeff, who was this kind of cut up
Speaker 3: class clown. He was a brilliant mimic. He could in
Speaker 3: between songs at Shane or even at his own concerts
Speaker 3: later he might suddenly do like a version of Kashmir
Speaker 3: sped up to forty five, you know, you know, and
Speaker 3: just not the whole thing. Just so he had that
Speaker 3: jokey side of him. And then there was what she
Speaker 3: called the mythological Jeff, and that was the guy who
Speaker 3: was obsessed with feelings of mortality and legacy and family
Speaker 3: burden and the record company, you know, record industry pressure,
Speaker 3: and you know, this kind of like darkness and not
Speaker 3: darkness but more of a heaviness. And he kind of
Speaker 3: went back and forth between him, so that mythic side
Speaker 3: was there already, you know, and I think he cultivated
Speaker 3: it in a way, you know. And romantis and that's
Speaker 3: a great word, it's the perfect word, because he really,
Speaker 3: he really had that in his He had this this view,
Speaker 3: this kind of very spiritual, intense view of music as
Speaker 3: this holy ritual. And now that sounds so corny just
Speaker 3: to say that, but he really did. He saw it
Speaker 3: as this calling, and not just because his father was
Speaker 3: Tim Buckley. He kind of saw it as his souvation
Speaker 3: or something and all that. How did you hear his music?
Speaker 1: It was the Hollylijah cover. That was a song that
Speaker 1: was played on radio a lot. It was played on
Speaker 1: alternative radio a lot. Was that song, wow, the first
Speaker 1: song that ever made me like actively start sobbing, Like
Speaker 1: it was just like his performance was so emotional. I'd
Speaker 1: heard Halleluiah before because of Shrek, obviously famously going back
Speaker 1: to the roots, but I just never heard a song
Speaker 1: performed like that before, and it was that was the
Speaker 1: first song, And I probably heard it in middle school,
Speaker 1: and I think then later got more into grace and
Speaker 1: sort of that. I think just listening to a lot
Speaker 1: of like I was very into twenty seven club or
Speaker 1: and like that is, you know, very high school thing
Speaker 1: to become very infatuated with.
Speaker 3: And it's one of the only, if you guys agree
Speaker 3: with me, one of the only covers of a Leonard
Speaker 3: Cohen song that's better than Leonard Cohen's cover.
Speaker 2: It's definitely any unique one in terms of the history
Speaker 2: of that song. Like it's really weird to even contemplate
Speaker 2: how obscure that song was before Jeff Buckley saying it
Speaker 2: that this song was just sitting there and nobody had
Speaker 2: any idea that it was a classic. Allen Light's book
Speaker 2: about that whole history of that song is so fascinating.
Speaker 3: And he only heard it through the Lender Cone tribute album.
Speaker 3: It was John Cale right, the John Kyle version. That's
Speaker 3: how Jeff heard it. He didn't even I'm not sure
Speaker 3: he even knew a Lender Cohen version right away.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I knew when he died it was so striking.
Speaker 2: It was May ninety seven, and it seemed like his
Speaker 2: story was just beginning. So it seemed really because like
Speaker 2: Grace was an album that I don't know if you
Speaker 2: remember it this way, but for a lot of people,
Speaker 2: they thought of it as very promising album that it
Speaker 2: like that it wasn't his masterpiece. It was, you know,
Speaker 2: a statement from somebody who was about to develop and
Speaker 2: go different places.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: It didn't seem like one of those tortured artists eyes
Speaker 2: young kind of stories. It seemed like very wrong for
Speaker 2: his history and his potential.
Speaker 3: I mean, it was shocking as it should be.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think what you're getting at in a way was
Speaker 3: that what was so fascinating about Jeff was his incredible
Speaker 3: range of influences. And you hear it on Grace where
Speaker 3: he does these sort of kind of mystical almost Indian
Speaker 3: music things. Then he'll do a Nina Simone song, and
Speaker 3: he'll do Eternal Life, which was the closest thing to
Speaker 3: alternative rock on that album, and all those influences that
Speaker 3: we talked about earlier. He seemed like, right from the beginning,
Speaker 3: one of those legacy artists, and that's what I think
Speaker 3: intrigued him at Columbia Records to sign him. But he
Speaker 3: seemed like one of these rare people who would come
Speaker 3: along and would have a career, like a Bob Dylan
Speaker 3: or a Van Morrison or some of these other people
Speaker 3: he worshiped too, or Elvis Costello. These are all heroes
Speaker 3: of his who had these long careers that had hills
Speaker 3: and valleys commercially, but they would just kind of follow
Speaker 3: their muse and like, I'll make a record like this,
Speaker 3: maybe a record like that. And this record he was making,
Speaker 3: the second record that never finished. You know, it was
Speaker 3: part of that process. They weren't quite sure what it
Speaker 3: was they recorded with Tom Verlaine that didn't quite work out,
Speaker 3: and he was gonna do more of an indie ish
Speaker 3: kind of record, and it was part of that whole
Speaker 3: exploration we and it was exciting. You were like, where's
Speaker 3: this guy going to go? It didn't seem like he
Speaker 3: wasn't a one note artist, and so that was really
Speaker 3: added to the tragedy, like, oh man, this is someone
Speaker 3: we could we could have been listening to for decades
Speaker 3: like some of those other people, and they haven't cut
Speaker 3: short like that.
Speaker 1: And of course Grace the album made five hundred Greatest
Speaker 1: Album's list and Grace's song makes the five hundre Gras
Speaker 1: Songs list. It actually replaced Hallylia, which was on the
Speaker 1: original list. I'm curious what your reaction was to seeing
Speaker 1: that song from the album make the list.
Speaker 3: I was a little surprised that Grace would have been
Speaker 3: the one, but then again, I mean there are first
Speaker 3: of there are so many great ones. I would have
Speaker 3: almost thought last Goodbye because it was kind of the
Speaker 3: hit closest he had to a hit. I'm glad though,
Speaker 3: that it's Grace because it's one of his own original
Speaker 3: it's an original song. It's not just a cover, not
Speaker 3: just a cover. But it's great to see a song
Speaker 3: he co wrote with Gary Lucas the great guitar player
Speaker 3: on the list. And I think there's something about Grace
Speaker 3: the more. I thought about it on my way to
Speaker 3: this podcast that it's a great perfect song for him
Speaker 3: to be on this because it does it has that
Speaker 3: all in quality to it in the vocal, the way
Speaker 3: his voice soars up and down. It's quote unquote rock,
Speaker 3: but it's not really kind of traditional rock in a way.
Speaker 3: It's a great showcase for his voice. And of course
Speaker 3: it has like these references to drowning and all these
Speaker 3: things that came up that you will think back on
Speaker 3: now and are kind of wild. He has several songs
Speaker 3: that mentioned Nightmares by the Sea, and we're not intentional,
Speaker 3: but I think there's something about this about Grace that
Speaker 3: the song that actually does kind of encapsulate a lot
Speaker 3: of what he does. I think one of the things
Speaker 3: about the Grace record, and I'd like, curious hear you
Speaker 3: talk about this Rob too, it just even though it
Speaker 3: came out in ninety four, it doesn't feel like a
Speaker 3: nineties album. He's like one of those people, like like
Speaker 3: a Nick Drake or something where it's sort of timeless,
Speaker 3: and I think maybe that's part of the reason people
Speaker 3: still come back to it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, as you pointed out earlier, it was very
Speaker 2: out of step with its times in terms of the
Speaker 2: attitude toward music. It really was a kind of album
Speaker 2: that people, I think people especially in the rock world, felt,
Speaker 2: haven't we just escaped this era? Where like it was
Speaker 2: all focused on the artist's you know, sincerity and really
Speaker 2: meaning it as a you know, smokescreen for really inadequate skills, right,
Speaker 2: which is, you know, rightly wrong with the cliche people
Speaker 2: had about about a lot of eras that had preceded
Speaker 2: that end. Like you said, there was something corny about
Speaker 2: what he did. So it's really weird that his image
Speaker 2: and his audience in his lifetime was so different from
Speaker 2: what it became in the two thousands. He hated to
Speaker 2: use a cliche like ahead of his time, but there
Speaker 2: was no audience that existed. He had to really conjure
Speaker 2: an audience into existence with his music just because there
Speaker 2: wasn't really an audience for what he did. That there
Speaker 2: was no radio format you could play any of those songs.
Speaker 1: On, no live journal yet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was no live journal yet. Yes, And the
Speaker 2: genre of the slightly overwrought type of Jeff Buckley fan
Speaker 2: like did not exist yet. He had to conjure that
Speaker 2: there's nobody you could put him on a double bill
Speaker 2: with Right. There's no festival where you could put him
Speaker 2: on between two other people. What he did for better
Speaker 2: for worse was very much unique and it didn't fit
Speaker 2: into any format. He didn't have a strong music critic
Speaker 2: following if I remember correctly. He had music critics obviously,
Speaker 2: you who were strongly in his camp, but there was
Speaker 2: an awful lot of you know, people heard pomposity and
Speaker 2: corniness in his music, which had a lot to do
Speaker 2: with the times.
Speaker 3: Right if he freaked out when his first EP came
Speaker 3: out live at Shane and it was reviewed in a
Speaker 3: newspaper I think it was New News Day, along with
Speaker 3: a Michael Bolton record, and like he was I think
Speaker 3: at work at the Grace album at the time. They
Speaker 3: had to actually stop working for the day because it
Speaker 3: was so upsetting to him that and they were lumped
Speaker 3: in with you know, basically like pretend white soul singers,
Speaker 3: and he was just like, oh my god. But there
Speaker 3: were people, you're right, I mean, there are people thought
Speaker 3: that he was he was too over the top vocally,
Speaker 3: which he could be, you know, in his way, because
Speaker 3: he had that skill like Freddie Mercury. Comparisons or whatever.
Speaker 3: But you know, you're right, I mean there really wasn't.
Speaker 3: I mean, Grace only sold when by the time he
Speaker 3: passed away, it only sold about one hundred and eighty
Speaker 3: thousand copies, which in the CD era, now that's a lot.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: He sold one hundred and eight thousand in nineteen ninety
Speaker 3: seven issue. That wasn't a lot. It was it was
Speaker 3: a middling commercial success. But those one hundred and eighty
Speaker 3: thousand people or the bulk of them, just like loved
Speaker 3: that record, you know. I mean, I've been so many
Speaker 3: people like that was a life changing record. It kind
Speaker 3: of spoke to him and even the way it was
Speaker 3: made and recorded, I mean his voice was so well
Speaker 3: recorded and just like so clear and you could hear everything,
Speaker 3: and it just spoke to people a lot, and and
Speaker 3: you know, yeah, as you say, Rob, there really wasn't.
Speaker 3: There really wasn't a format for it at the time.
Speaker 3: You know, it's funny to see him if you can
Speaker 3: go on YouTube and you see like video interviews he
Speaker 3: did at the time with these like alternative local alternative
Speaker 3: stations and he's it's kind of funny.
Speaker 2: I remember seeing about one hundred and twenty minutes and
Speaker 2: I was like, why is this guy even on one
Speaker 2: hundred and three minutes. He didn't fit with anything they
Speaker 2: were talking about. He didn't have any of that sort
Speaker 2: of sense of humor or sensibility. It was just awkward
Speaker 2: and wrong, and it really felt like, you know, the
Speaker 2: record company really wanted him somewhere on MTV and there
Speaker 2: was literally no place to put him. VH one wasn't
Speaker 2: taking him, and you know they had to. They're like, sure,
Speaker 2: we'll put you on one hundred and twenty minutes. It
Speaker 2: was that kind of misfit sort of thing that he's
Speaker 2: now so universal in a very real sense, but he
Speaker 2: had to create that audience that would be his because
Speaker 2: that audience didn't. I think of that as a record
Speaker 2: where musicians being so much more into it than anybody else.
Speaker 2: And you know that there wasn't an airplay support for
Speaker 2: that album, There wasn't a press support, there wasn't really
Speaker 2: an industry support. But actual musicians could hear what he
Speaker 2: was doing and they're really the only ones.
Speaker 3: And you see that in the impact that the people
Speaker 3: have come since him who evoke him on more or another,
Speaker 3: whether it's Coldplay or Muse or you can make a
Speaker 3: whole list of like Jeff Buckley ish kind of singers.
Speaker 3: That kind of speaks to his legacy as well, that
Speaker 3: he was so highly regarded. I remember interviewing Chris Martin
Speaker 3: from Coldplay right after, not long after he died, and
Speaker 3: Chris actually like, like the second album Sketches, that's just
Speaker 3: from My Sweetheart the Drunk better than Grace. He was like,
Speaker 3: which I thought it was interesting. He was really into him,
Speaker 3: but he thought that record was better. But I think
Speaker 3: you see his Jeff's legacy in that way. It's it's
Speaker 3: not not necessarily measured commercially, but in the way he's
Speaker 3: endured as kind of an influence and his sort of
Speaker 3: mythical romantic figure. Was he the last mythical romantic rock act?
Speaker 3: To throw that out there, maybe, yeah, I don't know
Speaker 3: Jack White, I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 2: Who there's a Roman, but it's but it's very different
Speaker 2: part of it. I mean something about Jeff Bucke, he
Speaker 2: was not like, he did not aspire to ordinary dudeness,
Speaker 2: like in a way that male rock stars, especially if
Speaker 2: that era, were supposed to be very like, but that
Speaker 2: he had that cultivated that kind of mystical or you know,
Speaker 2: to detract her pseudomistical sort of or like.
Speaker 3: A male cabaret star, yeah, cabaret singer in a way.
Speaker 2: He was remote and mysterious emotionally in a way that
Speaker 2: was very dramatic.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, I mean obvious. Like the song Grace itself,
Speaker 1: it's just so it's just about leaving a girl in
Speaker 1: an air like, you know, like an airport.
Speaker 3: You would not It's like and the pain I leave
Speaker 3: behind and I'm drowning, and it's just like, you know,
Speaker 3: that was the mythical jest kicking in completely. It's like,
Speaker 3: you know, the kind of the torture, teen, angsty side
Speaker 3: of him that I think, you know, people also relate to.
Speaker 2: It blows my mind that that was the first song
Speaker 2: that made you cry on the radio. Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, I literally was sobby in my mom's car. I
Speaker 1: was just like, this is so much. My mom was
Speaker 1: looking over at me like I was like eleven or twelve,
Speaker 1: and I was just like, this is intense.
Speaker 3: And also, Hallelujah had a whole life after nine to eleven?
Speaker 3: Was this was this? It might have been.
Speaker 1: It was definitely post nine eleven.
Speaker 3: Okay, because there were there were people were making home
Speaker 3: who were making videos of that site, and well, YouTube
Speaker 3: didn't exist yet. I don't know where I saw them,
Speaker 3: but people would make videos of rescue workers and put
Speaker 3: that music to it and put it up somewhere. And
Speaker 3: that was really the beginning of the Jeff hal Lujah
Speaker 3: version really kicking in. Because it wasn't a big hit
Speaker 3: or anything when he was alive. It wasn't a single
Speaker 3: or anything, but it was a slow build thing. And
Speaker 3: I remember, I remember that post nine to eleven, and
Speaker 3: it was it was chillingly perfect, you know, for that
Speaker 3: for that footage.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining us today, David.
Speaker 3: Great to be here, guys, Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: A real pleasure to talk this music with you.
Speaker 3: It was a blast with both of you.
Speaker 2: Get we really wrote the book. Thanks.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for listening to Rolling Stone's five hundred
Speaker 1: Greatest Songs. This podcast is brought to you by Rolling
Speaker 1: Stone and iHeartMedia. Written hosted by Me.
Speaker 2: Britney spanos In, Me Rob Sheffield.
Speaker 1: Executive produced by Gus Winner, Jason Fine, Alex Dale, and
Speaker 1: Christian Horne, and produced by Jesse Cannon, with music supervision
Speaker 1: by Eric Seiler. Thanks for watching, Thanks for listening.