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Speaker 1: Too Much Information is a production of iHeartRadio. Hello everyone,

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Speaker 1: and welcome to another episode of Too Much Information, the

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Speaker 1: show that brings you the little known details and secret

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Speaker 1: stories behind your favorite movies, music, TV shows and more.

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Speaker 1: We are your post grunge troubadours of Tedium, your minor

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Speaker 1: falls of facts, your major lifts of learning, your cold

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Speaker 1: and broken hallelujahs of hilarity.

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Speaker 2: But we'll let you.

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Speaker 1: Choose which one is which.

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Speaker 2: My name is Jordan run Tug and I'm Alex Heigel.

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Speaker 1: And today we're looking at when I think it's one

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Speaker 1: of the most unique albums of the nineties, I'm talking

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Speaker 1: about Jeff Buckley's Grace, which turns thirty in a few weeks.

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Speaker 1: The record is a tantalizing glimpse at one of the

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Speaker 1: great unfulfilled musical promises of the decade. Jeff Buckley was

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Speaker 1: a one of a kind talent who was at the

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Speaker 1: start of what seemed like a long and fascinating career

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Speaker 1: when he drowned in Memphis at the age of thirty.

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Speaker 1: Now is entire musical legacy rests on this, the only

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Speaker 1: album he completed in his lifetime. On its ten tracks,

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Speaker 1: you catch glimpses of all the directions he could have traveled.

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Speaker 1: With a soaring multi octave range and technical virtuosity. The

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Speaker 1: poses are all there, from jazzy chantous Chantu Shantur, what's

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Speaker 1: the masculine of shantou Chantu Chantu? Thank you to hard

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Speaker 1: rocking guitar hero, East Village Poet and Lower east Side

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Speaker 1: Punk and heck, there's even Pakistani quality vocalists in there.

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Speaker 1: It's an album that embraces so much but defies definition.

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Speaker 1: He would describe himself as quote the warped love child

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Speaker 1: of Nina Simone and all four members of led Zeppelin,

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Speaker 1: with the fertilized egg transplanted into the womb of Edith Poff,

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Speaker 1: out of which is born and left on the street

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Speaker 1: to be tortured by the bad brains.

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Speaker 2: He had quite a way with words. Yeah, I mean,

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Speaker 2: he would have been amazing on Twitter and podcasts, Yeah,

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Speaker 2: and podcasts. His diary entries are just like bat yeah,

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Speaker 2: like I mean, but just yeah, what a talented kid.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, this was an album. I don't know

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Speaker 1: about you, but I came to this through covers, which

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Speaker 1: is ironic because its biggest track is one of the

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Speaker 1: most famous covers in music. Hallelujah was big during our

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Speaker 1: upbringing thanks to Rufus Wainwright's version on the Shrek soundtrack yep.

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Speaker 1: And that's kind of what led me to Jeff's version,

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Speaker 1: and so did a piano version of the slightly lesser

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Speaker 1: known Grace track Lover You Should Have Come Over, And

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Speaker 1: that was done by the British light jazz vocalist Jamie Cullum,

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Speaker 1: who is a staple of our independent radio stations outside

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Speaker 1: of Boston in the early two thousands. Heigel, I imagine

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Speaker 1: your journey to grace and Jeff Buckley has had a

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Speaker 1: lot more grit and integrity than mine.

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Speaker 2: It didn't It had the exact same one. Oh good,

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Speaker 2: I feel better, Okay, Yeah. I had the Shrek soundtrack

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Speaker 2: and then like downloading like seventeen mislabeled versions of Hallelujah

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Speaker 2: yep from I think I actually like here, I heard

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Speaker 2: the Rufus Waynwright ron, and then I went to LimeWire

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Speaker 2: and like looked up Hallelujah and got the Leonard Cohen

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Speaker 2: one and was like what bombers garbage? Yeah, and then

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Speaker 2: found the Buckley one and that just stuck in my brain.

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Speaker 2: I mean it's one of the greatest recordings of all time.

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Speaker 2: How could it not stick in your brain? But that

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Speaker 2: like stuck in my brain, And then I think I

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Speaker 2: finally heard the rest of Grace. But he's so uniquely

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Speaker 2: sad because it's just like, I mean, there's this one

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Speaker 2: thing that was just like the whole thing about sophomore albums, right,

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Speaker 2: is that you spend your whole life making your first record,

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Speaker 2: and then you have a year or two at best

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Speaker 2: to make your second. But like he didn't spend that

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Speaker 2: long at his first one, so not at all. So yeah,

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Speaker 2: so Grace still feels like the unfulfilled promise. Yeah, it

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Speaker 2: seems like he would have with some maturity, he would

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Speaker 2: have reined in and really honed this vision.

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Speaker 1: So he would have had a masterpiece. I mean, not

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Speaker 1: that Grace isn't, you know, close to a masterpiece, but

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Speaker 1: he probably would have had something, you know up there

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Speaker 1: with I don't know, okay, computer.

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Speaker 2: Or and just the fact that he was so eclectic

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Speaker 2: and could do all of that crazy shit with his voice. Man,

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Speaker 2: I mean, he could have done standards records out there.

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Speaker 2: He could have been like Rod Stewart, just like Mining

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Speaker 2: the great American songbook for like a decade plus, and

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Speaker 2: it would have been better than Rod Stewart's work, but

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Speaker 2: it would have just been still so endlessly fascinating because

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Speaker 2: he was such a magpie and just so musically omnivorous.

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Speaker 2: You know, yeah, it's incredible. Actually, you know, this record

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Speaker 2: didn't really do like I mean, it didn't do numbers

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Speaker 2: for me. What really did was I had a roommate

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Speaker 2: in Brooklyn. I'm trying to stop myself from saying that

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Speaker 2: he sucked. But he was a huge buckleyhead and played

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Speaker 2: the extended is it shiny shiny? I was sinne but

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Speaker 2: I what I know, no, because it's Gaelic and so

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Speaker 2: shinead O'Connor, so it's shinee whatever. He he played the

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Speaker 2: legacy version of that with like he played me Buckley's

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Speaker 2: version of the way young Lovers do, Oh Husband, like

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Speaker 2: all this stuff and that is just that, like that

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Speaker 2: more than Grace. I was just like, Holy, this kid

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Speaker 2: is like a phenom. I mean he's like he's like

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Speaker 2: Nina Simone honestly in the but like no shame to

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Speaker 2: Nina obviously, like I love Nina Simone, but like a

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Speaker 2: much better vocalist in the way that both of them

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Speaker 2: were able to interact with both of their instruments like

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Speaker 2: voice and guitar or voice and piano, in a truly incredible,

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Speaker 2: seamless way. I mean you listen to like like the

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Speaker 2: way young lovers do, and it is just a showcase

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Speaker 2: of one singular, like incorporated bit of artistry between his

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Speaker 2: voice and guitar playing. It's really wild.

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Speaker 1: That's interesting to me that you, in a really reductive

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Speaker 1: term as a singer songwriter, viewed him seemingly first and

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Speaker 1: foremost as an interpreter of songs. And the thing that

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Speaker 1: always blew me away was his songwriting.

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Speaker 2: I mean he's but you know, interpreter is such a disservice.

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Speaker 2: I mean he he was like a jazz artist, like

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Speaker 2: you know the way that he wouldn't say John Coltrane

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Speaker 2: interpreted my favorite things. I mean he reinvented it, you know,

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Speaker 2: I mean I would I would argue because there's just

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Speaker 2: like a I don't know, interpretation, just sounds like a

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Speaker 2: cover version, and what he was really doing was like

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Speaker 2: transforming them, you know, like the way young lovers do.

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Speaker 2: When I finally heard the Van Morrison version because I

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Speaker 2: was super late to Astra weeks like when I heard it,

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Speaker 2: I was like, this is lounge jazz, Like it doesn't

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Speaker 2: have any of the like the insane power that Buckley

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Speaker 2: brings to it, not just with his the insane runs

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Speaker 2: and stuff that he's doing with it. But yeah, I

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Speaker 2: mean I could have listened to him do that for

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Speaker 2: the rest of his career, just like the soul I mean,

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Speaker 2: and in his own songs too. He's obviously a beautiful songwriter,

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Speaker 2: but like that distillation of voice and guitar, like I

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Speaker 2: would be hard pressed to think of another male and

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Speaker 2: maybe another female like for guitar too. Yeah, I mean

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Speaker 2: he might have the most like seamless control of that

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Speaker 2: idiom of just like my voice plus a guitar, Like

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Speaker 2: he may be the greatest to have done it. I

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Speaker 2: mean you could argue that like oh Dylan or like

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Speaker 2: blah blah blah blah blah, but like just in terms

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Speaker 2: of technical talent on both of those things and integrating them. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: he's not just like strumming or hacking at guitar, Like

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Speaker 2: it's really I don't know. I mean that's my hyperbolic

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Speaker 2: take on him.

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Speaker 1: What you obviously already trained musician, and I am not

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Speaker 1: so for me. I think I was drawn to the

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Speaker 1: emotion of his original songs. I mean, you know, the

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Speaker 1: whole brooding, romantic thing.

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Speaker 2: Oh, I mean Lover You should Have Come Over is

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Speaker 2: like should have been like a forties jazz standard. Yeah, like,

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Speaker 2: oh my god.

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Speaker 1: I mean, when I was a teenager, I thought that

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Speaker 1: song was the most romantic song I'd ever heard in

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Speaker 1: my life, even though I was then and am still

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Speaker 1: repulsed by the term lover. But I mean just yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean even just the scanton. And I'm not a

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Speaker 1: lyric guy by any stretch of the imagination, but the

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Speaker 1: rhythm of the words and the way they all just

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Speaker 1: fell like Domino's into one another. I just was always

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Speaker 1: blown away by you know, Lonely is the room, the

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Speaker 1: bed is made, the open window lets the rain in

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Speaker 1: burning in the corner. Is the only wounded dreams he

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Speaker 1: had you with him. I mean it sings itself. My

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Speaker 1: body turns and yearns for a sleep that won't ever come.

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Speaker 1: Great internal rhyme, It's never over my kingdom for a

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Speaker 1: kiss upon her shoulder. It's never over all my riches

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Speaker 1: for her smiles when I've slept so soft against her.

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Speaker 1: I mean, it's everything I love and hate.

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Speaker 2: About this type of stuff.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I think when I was younger, I used

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Speaker 1: to think I was sensitive, and now I realize I

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Speaker 1: just like melodrama. But I mean he's like Jacques Brel.

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Speaker 1: I mean, he's like he definitely is in that lineage.

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Speaker 1: I gotta say I never was into the more like

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Speaker 1: hard rocking songs that he did that was not I

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Speaker 1: was more into the very like you know, emotional ethereal.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, the zeppelinst is one of those things that's really

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Speaker 2: interesting because of his friendship with Chris Cornell, and like

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Speaker 2: Chris Cornell is like to me, and not just me

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Speaker 2: considered like the Air Apparent to Robert Plant of that generation,

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Speaker 2: just in terms of range and tambre. But Buckley like

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Speaker 2: he's better than Robert Plant. I mean, he has a

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Speaker 2: four octave range and Robert Plant had like ruined his

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Speaker 2: within like a year and a half of being a Templin.

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Speaker 2: And Robert Plant can't scat, like he can't ad lib

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Speaker 2: and invent the same way Buckley could. So yeah, it's weird.

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Speaker 2: It just feels to me like stuff like Mojo Pin

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Speaker 2: and some of the more rock and stuff might have

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Speaker 2: gotten like ironed out of his system as he sort

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Speaker 2: of progressed. But who's to say. I mean he he

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Speaker 2: wept when he met Jimmy Page, so I mean who

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Speaker 2: among who among us, I probably wouldn't weep. I'd probably

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Speaker 2: be like, give me your money, you old id deserve it.

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Speaker 1: A part of my entry to Jeff Buckley that I

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Speaker 1: didn't mention was that I started digging into him because

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Speaker 1: I knew of his father, who will talk about the

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Speaker 1: Folks singer Tim Buckley, who died in the mid seventies,

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Speaker 1: and he was cited on all the VH one approved

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Speaker 1: lists of early rock casualties. So that was actually, if

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Speaker 1: I'm honest with myself, the initial entry point to Jeff.

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Speaker 1: I thought it was so spooky that there was this

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Speaker 1: father and son who again, as we'll talk about, barely

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Speaker 1: got to know one another, who both became singers and

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Speaker 1: both died young and tragically. So for me, he was

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Speaker 1: initially more of like a pop cultural figure than a

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Speaker 1: musical one, because when I was a tween, I bought

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Speaker 1: a book called Dream Brother by the great music journalist

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Speaker 1: David Brown, who's since become a friend of mine, and

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Speaker 1: he's a new book out, a great oral history on

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Speaker 1: the Greenwich.

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Speaker 2: Village, which is due out soon, as everybody checked that out.

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Speaker 1: But he was really the first journalist who championed Jeff

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Speaker 1: Buckley in a big way. He wrote a New York

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Speaker 1: Times profile on him way back in nineteen ninety three,

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Speaker 1: long before race. And he's since gone on to do

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Speaker 1: a lot of work with Jeff Buckley's estate. And he

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Speaker 1: oversaw the scrap book style book of Jeff's notebooks and

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Speaker 1: diaries back in two thousand and nine, called in his

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Speaker 1: own voice, which is really wonderful. I think you were

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Speaker 1: referencing some of the diary entries and notebook entries and

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Speaker 1: stuff a little while ago.

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Speaker 2: It's wonderful. And the rest of him, God was he

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Speaker 2: handsome and doomed? And god, what a singer? What a singer?

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Speaker 2: What else do we say about young Jeffrey? He had

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Speaker 2: a belly button piercing, did he? Oh? Yeah, that's how

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Speaker 2: they identified the body.

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Speaker 1: That was how they identified the body. I guess it

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Speaker 1: was several days until.

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Speaker 2: Several days in the water. Too much information, That's one

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Speaker 2: of them.

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Speaker 1: Boxley. Now, last week we had a few truly TMI

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Speaker 1: moments in the Punk Stumped the Buff section involving bodily functions. Well,

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Speaker 1: it's about time to dive in. From the deeply fraught

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Speaker 1: family saga the heart of the music to the hilarious

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Speaker 1: reason Columbia executives hated the cover, to the hilariously laid

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Speaker 1: back assembly of the band, and the comparison to Michael

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Speaker 1: Boltland that nearly killed the album before it was completed.

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Speaker 1: Here's everything you didn't know about Grace by Jeff Buckley.

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Speaker 1: Well sadly, folks, the story of Jeff Buckley is yet

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Speaker 1: another entry in tmi's patented guys with complex issues with

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Speaker 1: their dad category. This one's this one's a real doozy,

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Speaker 1: This one makes me sad.

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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean it's the er dad story in music, right,

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Speaker 2: I mean not. I'm sure people had dad issues before him,

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Speaker 2: But it's just like, you know, Murray Wilson of the

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Speaker 2: Beach Buys. Yea Murray Wilson wasn't also like an incredibly

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Speaker 2: gifted singer songwriter who literally never met his son, who

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Speaker 2: who was also an incredibly gifted singer songwriter.

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Speaker 1: You know, absolutely true? Yeah, Jeff spent much of his

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Speaker 1: life living in the specter of his late father, Tim Buckley,

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Speaker 1: a singer songwriter, of summary now and he was kind

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Speaker 1: of more of a cult figure who's gone on to

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Speaker 1: be uh, sort of a bigger presence in music these days,

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Speaker 1: you know, in a strange sense, asking in the reflected

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Speaker 1: glory of his son. He did have some success in

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Speaker 1: his own time. He performed I Believe in the final

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Speaker 1: episode of The Monkey's TV Show. She gets major points

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Speaker 1: with me. It's fitting because his voice is like a

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Speaker 1: more soulful Mickey Dolan's sigh. Right, sure, sure, you're humoring

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Speaker 1: me and I'll accept it. Yeah. His album Goodbye and

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Speaker 1: Hello on a Lecture is probably the best known because

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Speaker 1: it features the song Once I Was, which was included

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Speaker 1: in the movie Coming Home with Bruce Dern and Jane

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Speaker 1: Fonda and John Voight. And that's the one I think

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Speaker 1: this is actually the song plays underneath. It's the one

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Speaker 1: that ends with Bruce Dern. He's playing a traumatized Vietnam

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Speaker 1: vett and his character walks into the ocean to die. Spoilers.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's funny this came up because I associate that

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Speaker 3: line so much with Barton Fink, because Frazier's dad's character, John.

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Speaker 2: Mulaney is playing like a loose version of William Faulkner

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Speaker 2: h yas. He has like a throwaway line which might

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Speaker 2: have been improvised, where he's like, he's like walking away

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Speaker 2: from these two carrying a ball, and he's like, I'm

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Speaker 2: just gonna walk it down to the ocean and from

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Speaker 2: there I'll improvise. I don't think it's a nod to

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Speaker 2: that movie, but you can cut that.

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Speaker 1: I think it's a nod to because wasn't that how

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Speaker 1: Virginia Wolf dies? She has filled her pockets with stones?

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Speaker 1: Then he was in the lake.

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Speaker 2: It was a river.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, which brings us full circle back to mister Buckley

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Speaker 1: Buckley Buckley the Younger. Yes, Tim Buckley is a whole

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Speaker 1: other episode unto himself, so we'll go light on Tim's backstory,

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Speaker 1: but he was something of a troubled soul. He has

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Speaker 1: a section on his Wikipedia that just called the sex

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Speaker 1: funk Era, So I just I assume no good can

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Speaker 1: come of that.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I went and looked that up obviously,

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Speaker 2: and she sure you did. Yeah. Yeah, it's got a

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Speaker 2: pretty killer row of La Session guys playing on it,

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Speaker 2: and his cover Fred Neils Dolphins is released on one

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Speaker 2: of those.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, Tim Buckley left his young wife, Mary Gwiebert.

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Speaker 1: I think you say her name shortly before their son, Jeff,

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Speaker 1: was born on November seventeenth, nineteen sixty six, and for

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Speaker 1: years Jeff Buckley had no relationship with his biological dad.

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Speaker 1: His mother remarried and Jeff took his stepfather's surname, and

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Speaker 1: the transformation was complete when he also inexplicably took a

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Speaker 1: new first name too. I think he went by his

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Speaker 1: middle name. So he was known all growing up in

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Speaker 1: southern California as Scott moorehead, Scott more Ahead.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. I just I found a quote from him, and

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Speaker 2: he said he grew up and he spent his high

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Speaker 2: school in Anaheim. Oh, he said he was surrounded by

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Speaker 2: the quote Disneyland Nazi youth. That just might not be

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Speaker 2: super original, but just still funny and true way with words.

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Speaker 1: Oh do you think he knew Do you think he

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Speaker 1: knew anyone? From no doubt he was like probably like

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Speaker 1: four or five years older.

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Speaker 2: But no, he might have known Gwen Stefani's older brother.

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Speaker 1: Another tragic, unfulfilled talent of Yeah, what did they do

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Speaker 1: to the kids in Anaheim in the seventies.

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Speaker 2: That's a real two roads diverge. In a wood moment.

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Speaker 1: Wow, I'm just picturing young Jeff Buckley and young Gwen

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Speaker 1: Stefani in the shadow of the matterhorn.

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Speaker 2: Eric Matthew Stefani born nineteen sixty seven. Yeah, basically same age,

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Speaker 2: Jeff Buckley. Yeah, same age. That's wild. I do wonder

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Speaker 2: if any of each other Laura High School noted alumni. Yes,

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Speaker 2: Jeff Buckley, they went to be at the same high

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Speaker 2: school at the same time.

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Speaker 1: How does anyone like I need to google this now?

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Speaker 2: Jeff Buckley plus Eric Stefani. Yeah, just a Reddit post

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Speaker 2: that says they were classmates.

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Speaker 1: I'm glad we ended up here. I feel like we've

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Speaker 1: advanced the Jeff Buckley narrative. We don't usually do that.

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Speaker 1: Actually that's not true. We do that sometimes, but this

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Speaker 1: was a good one. But Jeff's upbringing was really sad

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Speaker 1: because he didn't know his biological father. He would tell

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Speaker 1: all the New York Times in nineteen ninety three. I

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Speaker 1: never knew him. I met him once when I was eight.

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Speaker 1: We went to visit him and he was working in

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Speaker 1: his room, so I didn't even get to talk to him.

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Speaker 2: And that was it.

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Speaker 1: And then any hopes for reconciliation were dashed two months

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Speaker 1: after this first meeting, when Tim died of a drug

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Speaker 1: overdose in June of nineteen seventy five. Tim reportedly died

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Speaker 1: in Debt, owning only a guitar and an amplifier, A

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Speaker 1: sobering glimpse.

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Speaker 2: Into the future for us both awful awful, yes.

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Speaker 1: And the estrangement between father and son continued even into death,

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Speaker 1: as Jeff was not invited to his father's funeral horrible

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Speaker 1: and this loss understandably stayed with Jeff. His mother would

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Speaker 1: say in a two thousand and two BBC four documentary,

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Speaker 1: he really didn't see himself linked to his father in

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Speaker 1: that way, that somehow he would inherit his father's lifespan.

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Speaker 1: Did we see evidence of him intentionally trying to avoid

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Speaker 1: the same pitfalls, in this case drugs, Absolutely, which makes

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Speaker 1: the fact that he followed his father to an early

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Speaker 1: grave all the more tragic. Was that I think by

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Speaker 1: all accounts, you know, I mean, he wasn't a monk,

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Speaker 1: but I don't think he you know, got into any

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Speaker 1: kind of hard drugs.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, there are people who said, especially in

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Speaker 2: the immediate aftermath of his death, I think his manager

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Speaker 2: has been saying that, oh, he was acting erradically, and

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Speaker 2: people said that he had been seen stoned like at

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Speaker 2: one point in his life. But his roadie who was

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Speaker 2: with him when he drowned, was he was like No,

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Speaker 2: Jeff was not an addict. He may have dabbled as

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Speaker 2: a young man in the music industry in the nineties,

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Speaker 2: may have, but he was by no means like an

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Speaker 2: addict the same way his dad was. That's something he

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Speaker 2: and his father did.

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Speaker 1: Obviously share his music, and Jeff develop an interest for

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Speaker 1: it early on. He said, I was really captured by it,

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Speaker 1: everything about it. It was my mother, it was my father.

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Speaker 1: It was my plaything, it was my toy. It was

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Speaker 1: the best thing in my life. That's a beautiful sentiment

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Speaker 1: for music. How do you feel about that as someone

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Speaker 1: who I assume feels the same way about music.

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Speaker 2: No, Now it's an albatross around my neck. But you know,

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Speaker 2: that's a great way of describing what it feels like

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Speaker 2: in your teens to discover music.

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Speaker 1: You know, Jef, they're old at the Musicians Institute in

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Speaker 1: Los Angeles to study guitar, where he sought to follow

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Speaker 1: in the footsteps not of his father but of his hero,

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Speaker 1: Jimmy Page.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we talked about I think we talked

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Speaker 2: about musicians Institute, but it was basically just where you

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Speaker 2: went to learn how to shred on your respective instrument.

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Speaker 2: It was like a waypoint for a lot of the

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Speaker 2: hair metal guys. Did Boby go there?

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Speaker 1: I remember it came up recently. No, it was Rivers Cuomo. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 1: I just find this so funny, although I guess you

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Speaker 1: can hear elements of it on Grace. Jeff would play

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Speaker 1: in a series of unsuccessful heavy metal bands in the

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Speaker 1: eighties where his singing was relegated to backing vocals.

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Speaker 2: I can't believe. Yeah, that's insane, man. I have to

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Speaker 2: think he was just too shy for maybe unlock his powers,

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Speaker 2: because I can't imagine anyone being like, yeah, you're the

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Speaker 2: backing vocalist after he hearing that.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, he would have been really young. I mean this

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Speaker 1: was like I saw some posters in that in the

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Speaker 1: scrap book we talked about earlier that had posts for

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Speaker 1: gigs in like eighty three, So he would have been

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Speaker 1: like seventeen eighteen. I mean that's still He's still fine

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Speaker 1: in his way, and of course, as you're interested in music,

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Speaker 1: Jeff fended off the obvious comparisons to his father Tim.

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Speaker 1: He would later say, I don't hate my father, and

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Speaker 1: I don't resent him existing. It's just something I've grown

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Speaker 1: up with all my life, not being a part of

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Speaker 1: a life that had so much energy. When you're a kid,

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Speaker 1: people assume you have no mind of your own, which

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Speaker 1: at a very early age I did. It's my way

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Speaker 1: of resisting people's singular vision of my music, by which

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Speaker 1: I think he means just trying to avoid comparisons.

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Speaker 2: With his dad.

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Speaker 1: And he would write a diary entry during his European

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Speaker 1: tour in nineteen ninety five that elaborate on his very

403
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Speaker 1: complicated feelings about his dad. He writes, it's not his

404
00:21:45,119 --> 00:21:48,200
Speaker 1: memory or his ghosts that I despise and avoid. It's

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Speaker 1: the fact that there's a large mass of people in

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Speaker 1: my path. His fans, critics, cultists, editors and writers of

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Speaker 1: our beloved rock press, my critics who have always known

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Speaker 1: to be ahead of me, to contrast and tear me

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Speaker 1: down under the shadow of my father, and sometimes in

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Speaker 1: my father's behalf, as if they have the knowledge and authority.

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Speaker 1: This is something I've known since I was small. I

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Speaker 1: almost just barely touched his life. I was so close,

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Speaker 1: but I lost him. I savor the morsel to this day.

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Speaker 1: The taste is almost gone. I was stuck with his cult,

415
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Speaker 1: his blurry memory blurred into obscurity ever after by secondhand stories, conjecture,

416
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Speaker 1: buried jealousies, guilt, secrets, accusations, and so much pain, so

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Speaker 1: so much, an ocean of pain. That's his diaries.

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Speaker 2: Who the Frights their diary at twenty nine? You know?

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Speaker 1: I mean, you know? I mean if they say personalities,

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Speaker 1: who you are when no one's watching, and this is

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Speaker 1: who he was in his diary when presumably no one

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Speaker 1: was watching, that's pretty incredible. But like it or not,

423
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Speaker 1: Jeff Buckley's career would take off thanks in large part

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Speaker 1: to his father, or at least his family name. However,

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Speaker 1: it went down in the most cinematic way possible, which

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Speaker 1: leads me to ask, was there a Jeff Buckley biopic

427
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Speaker 1: in the works, Like because this needs to be brought

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Speaker 1: to the big screen, or it doesn't need to be,

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Speaker 1: but it will be because it's inevitable.

430
00:23:17,880 --> 00:23:23,960
Speaker 2: There is one filmed in twenty twelve. Penn Badgely starred

431
00:23:24,560 --> 00:23:30,280
Speaker 2: as Jeff Gossip Badly of You and Gossip Girl. Yeah,

432
00:23:30,320 --> 00:23:34,400
Speaker 2: the movie is called Greetings from Tim Buckley, which sounds confusing,

433
00:23:34,440 --> 00:23:37,320
Speaker 2: But in twenty twenty one there was another one announced

434
00:23:37,840 --> 00:23:40,200
Speaker 2: that was done in conjunction with his mother and his estates,

435
00:23:40,200 --> 00:23:42,000
Speaker 2: So it was gonna have all of his songs in it,

436
00:23:42,760 --> 00:23:46,040
Speaker 2: and the guy from Spider Man Turn Off the Dark

437
00:23:48,000 --> 00:23:50,680
Speaker 2: was gonna be in it, and like Haiti's Town and

438
00:23:50,680 --> 00:23:52,680
Speaker 2: a bunch of other stuff. He's like a Broadway guy.

439
00:23:52,720 --> 00:23:56,040
Speaker 2: But no news since then, so I don't know, Yeah,

440
00:23:56,119 --> 00:23:58,159
Speaker 2: I don't know how Jeff would actually fit into like

441
00:23:58,240 --> 00:24:01,479
Speaker 2: the current music biopic Tamber you know. I mean they

442
00:24:01,560 --> 00:24:05,320
Speaker 2: just put out Amy, but like they haven't done despite

443
00:24:05,359 --> 00:24:07,679
Speaker 2: all the zoomers dressing like it's like the mid to

444
00:24:07,760 --> 00:24:11,600
Speaker 2: late nineties, Like they haven't done a grunge biopic, you know.

445
00:24:12,160 --> 00:24:14,560
Speaker 2: I think the closest thing is that depressing Gus Fan's

446
00:24:14,560 --> 00:24:17,800
Speaker 2: ant movie called like Last Days. Oh yeah, like whur

447
00:24:17,800 --> 00:24:21,240
Speaker 2: Where's Our Lane Staley biopic, Where's Our Jeff Buckley biopic?

448
00:24:21,320 --> 00:24:25,680
Speaker 2: You know, where's our the guy from Mother Lovebone who

449
00:24:25,760 --> 00:24:29,159
Speaker 2: died an inspired Temple of the Dog. They had so

450
00:24:29,200 --> 00:24:32,560
Speaker 2: many terrible band names back then, was that Mother Love Bone?

451
00:24:32,720 --> 00:24:33,160
Speaker 1: Yeah?

452
00:24:33,240 --> 00:24:36,080
Speaker 2: And Andrew wood and Wood. Yeah, it's gotta suck to

453
00:24:36,160 --> 00:24:38,160
Speaker 2: just have like, I don't know if there's an afterlife.

454
00:24:38,160 --> 00:24:40,119
Speaker 2: I would be pretty pissed off if like I had

455
00:24:40,160 --> 00:24:44,199
Speaker 2: never achieved anything. And then two vastly more talented of

456
00:24:44,240 --> 00:24:46,040
Speaker 2: my buddies came out and made one of the old

457
00:24:46,040 --> 00:24:50,240
Speaker 2: time grunge bangers just because I died. I'm referring, of course,

458
00:24:50,280 --> 00:24:52,680
Speaker 2: to Hunger Strike doesn't afterlife.

459
00:24:52,720 --> 00:24:54,800
Speaker 1: It's got to suck to watch a subpar movie biopic

460
00:24:54,880 --> 00:24:55,800
Speaker 1: being made of your life.

461
00:24:55,840 --> 00:24:59,360
Speaker 2: That's also true. Yeah, was it Franco got play him?

462
00:24:59,520 --> 00:25:02,760
Speaker 2: I don't remember that, but why not? Yeah?

463
00:25:02,800 --> 00:25:06,840
Speaker 1: Well, back to happier, happier topics. Jeff Buckley's musical assent.

464
00:25:07,800 --> 00:25:10,679
Speaker 1: In the spring of nineteen ninety one, friends and admirers

465
00:25:10,680 --> 00:25:13,400
Speaker 1: of Tim Buckley were putting together a tribute show at

466
00:25:13,400 --> 00:25:18,680
Speaker 1: Saint Anne's Church in Brooklyn. Jeff was initially not invited,

467
00:25:19,200 --> 00:25:21,920
Speaker 1: just as he was not invited to his funeral, since

468
00:25:21,960 --> 00:25:27,280
Speaker 1: Tim's obituaries had failed to mention him, and Tim likely

469
00:25:27,320 --> 00:25:30,160
Speaker 1: didn't tell his friends that he had a biological son either,

470
00:25:31,280 --> 00:25:33,919
Speaker 1: so as a result, most of Tim's friends and associates

471
00:25:33,920 --> 00:25:39,680
Speaker 1: didn't even realize that Jeff existed twentieth century parenting or fatherhood.

472
00:25:39,680 --> 00:25:41,760
Speaker 1: I should say that's crushing.

473
00:25:41,960 --> 00:25:42,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know.

474
00:25:43,760 --> 00:25:45,720
Speaker 1: But Tim's former manager, a guy by the name of

475
00:25:45,760 --> 00:25:49,640
Speaker 1: Herb Cohen, but latedly informed the organizers of the Junior

476
00:25:49,640 --> 00:25:53,400
Speaker 1: Buckley's existence in his talent, and an invitation was extended

477
00:25:53,440 --> 00:25:57,879
Speaker 1: to him to perform. Jeff was understandably a little skeptical

478
00:25:57,960 --> 00:26:01,159
Speaker 1: about performing a concert that he inhal he wasn't invited to,

479
00:26:01,440 --> 00:26:04,640
Speaker 1: but he ultimately accepted. He hoped that a concert would

480
00:26:04,640 --> 00:26:07,880
Speaker 1: help him process his unresolved feelings for his dad and

481
00:26:07,960 --> 00:26:11,520
Speaker 1: purge the grief that he'd stored up for his entire life.

482
00:26:11,600 --> 00:26:14,360
Speaker 1: He told Rolling Stone in nineteen ninety four, it bothered

483
00:26:14,400 --> 00:26:16,680
Speaker 1: me that I hadn't been to his funeral, that I'd

484
00:26:16,680 --> 00:26:19,560
Speaker 1: never been able to tell him anything. I use that

485
00:26:19,600 --> 00:26:23,159
Speaker 1: show to pay my last respects. And The show was

486
00:26:23,200 --> 00:26:26,920
Speaker 1: scheduled for April twenty sixth, nineteen ninety one, and first

487
00:26:26,920 --> 00:26:29,399
Speaker 1: hand reports indicate that the show got off to a

488
00:26:29,440 --> 00:26:32,600
Speaker 1: slow start with a bunch of tedious numbers by downtown

489
00:26:32,680 --> 00:26:36,640
Speaker 1: musicians like Richard Hall, Eric Anderson, and The Shams. One

490
00:26:36,680 --> 00:26:39,679
Speaker 1: of the attendees would tell the aforementioned author, David Brown,

491
00:26:39,720 --> 00:26:43,439
Speaker 1: that the setlist consisted of quote avant garde versions of

492
00:26:43,440 --> 00:26:46,760
Speaker 1: stuff that was avantcarde to begin with. At times it

493
00:26:46,800 --> 00:26:49,880
Speaker 1: was pretty painful. It was not an easygoing concert.

494
00:26:50,920 --> 00:26:52,960
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean it was produced by hol Wilner, right,

495
00:26:53,000 --> 00:26:55,400
Speaker 2: do you know about him a little bit? How Wilner

496
00:26:55,480 --> 00:26:57,560
Speaker 2: is really incredible. I mean he kind of had a

497
00:26:57,680 --> 00:27:01,840
Speaker 2: job that doesn't really exist anymore. It was just like, uh,

498
00:27:02,119 --> 00:27:05,400
Speaker 2: he would put together a bunch of these incredible tribute albums,

499
00:27:05,520 --> 00:27:07,280
Speaker 2: you know. I mean he was a regular, he was

500
00:27:07,280 --> 00:27:11,359
Speaker 2: a producer. He produced from Mary and Faithful. Yeah, but

501
00:27:11,480 --> 00:27:16,119
Speaker 2: he would do these these insane concept albums, like he

502
00:27:16,200 --> 00:27:18,960
Speaker 2: did a tribute to the Lonious Monk that has like

503
00:27:19,080 --> 00:27:21,359
Speaker 2: Doctor John on there. He has one to Kurt Veal.

504
00:27:21,760 --> 00:27:25,840
Speaker 2: He has one from uh that's just about Disney that

505
00:27:25,880 --> 00:27:30,199
Speaker 2: has like Disney songs covered by like Son Raw. You know,

506
00:27:30,800 --> 00:27:33,680
Speaker 2: Nino Rota. He has a whole one for Italian composer

507
00:27:33,760 --> 00:27:37,600
Speaker 2: Nino Rota, famous for the Godfather theme and Fellini films.

508
00:27:37,720 --> 00:27:40,880
Speaker 1: Stormy Weather, the music of Harold Arlen Wow.

509
00:27:41,040 --> 00:27:43,960
Speaker 2: Is one from Mingus. The one that's really interesting is

510
00:27:43,960 --> 00:27:47,000
Speaker 2: is Rogues Gallery. I was that it's pretty great. It's

511
00:27:47,040 --> 00:27:49,840
Speaker 2: a bunch of like old pirate and like nautical songs.

512
00:27:49,960 --> 00:27:52,000
Speaker 2: So if you've ever wanted to hear I think Tom

513
00:27:52,040 --> 00:27:58,040
Speaker 2: Waits and Keith Richards do Shenandoah. It's pretty great. He

514
00:27:58,160 --> 00:28:00,080
Speaker 2: just had juice. I mean, he like knew everyone, and

515
00:28:00,119 --> 00:28:02,880
Speaker 2: it would be like, why don't you like Brian Ferry,

516
00:28:03,160 --> 00:28:05,600
Speaker 2: you know, Nick Cave come in and sing a pirate

517
00:28:05,720 --> 00:28:09,200
Speaker 2: song and they would sting come sing a pirate song

518
00:28:09,359 --> 00:28:11,159
Speaker 2: bono like it's nuts.

519
00:28:12,200 --> 00:28:15,320
Speaker 1: So okay, this Hal Wilner guy puts together some incredible

520
00:28:15,359 --> 00:28:19,200
Speaker 1: concept albums for you know, tribute albums and tribute shows.

521
00:28:19,240 --> 00:28:22,399
Speaker 1: But some of them are a little uh, a little granular,

522
00:28:22,680 --> 00:28:26,480
Speaker 1: a little uh not for not for mass consumption. So

523
00:28:26,560 --> 00:28:29,080
Speaker 1: this was not this is not an easy going concert.

524
00:28:29,160 --> 00:28:34,440
Speaker 1: But then the atmosphere changes, the lights go down, Jeff

525
00:28:34,480 --> 00:28:37,120
Speaker 1: Buckley takes the stage. No one knows who he's is,

526
00:28:37,480 --> 00:28:40,520
Speaker 1: his back is to the audience, he's furiously strumming his guitar,

527
00:28:41,200 --> 00:28:44,200
Speaker 1: and then he starts to sing. And now, as we said,

528
00:28:44,200 --> 00:28:46,920
Speaker 1: most people didn't even realize that Tim Buckley had a son,

529
00:28:47,480 --> 00:28:49,680
Speaker 1: and so now here they were gathered at this tribute

530
00:28:49,680 --> 00:28:52,680
Speaker 1: concert at a church and some guy comes onto the

531
00:28:52,720 --> 00:28:54,840
Speaker 1: stage and they can't even see his face, and he

532
00:28:54,920 --> 00:29:02,280
Speaker 1: starts singing in this incredibly similar voice, but better question yes, yes, yes.

533
00:29:02,280 --> 00:29:07,200
Speaker 1: The effect was incredibly eerie, and also the song choice

534
00:29:07,640 --> 00:29:11,720
Speaker 1: was very, very poignant. Jeff performed Tim's song I Never

535
00:29:11,800 --> 00:29:13,720
Speaker 1: Asked to Be Your Mountain, and this is one of

536
00:29:13,720 --> 00:29:16,440
Speaker 1: Tim's most personal songs. It was basically a kiss off

537
00:29:16,480 --> 00:29:18,480
Speaker 1: to his wife and the infant son that he.

538
00:29:18,440 --> 00:29:19,280
Speaker 2: Was leaving behind.

539
00:29:20,600 --> 00:29:25,080
Speaker 1: Buckley was singing the tune of his own abandonment to

540
00:29:25,280 --> 00:29:29,200
Speaker 1: fans of the father that he never knew. It's heartbreaking,

541
00:29:29,320 --> 00:29:32,160
Speaker 1: it's terrible, it's cathartic. There's just so much wrapped up

542
00:29:32,200 --> 00:29:34,880
Speaker 1: in this and the song. I don't know if you

543
00:29:34,920 --> 00:29:37,240
Speaker 1: know if it's one of my favorite Tim he is

544
00:29:37,240 --> 00:29:39,760
Speaker 1: my favorite Tim Buckley song. It builds an intensity like

545
00:29:39,800 --> 00:30:23,760
Speaker 1: a runaway train. It just gets so frantic. Midway through

546
00:30:23,760 --> 00:30:26,880
Speaker 1: the song, the stage lights are switched on, illuminating Jeff's

547
00:30:26,920 --> 00:30:30,840
Speaker 1: face for the first time, casting his silhouette onto the

548
00:30:30,880 --> 00:30:35,560
Speaker 1: back wall very dramatically. This all made a huge impact,

549
00:30:36,360 --> 00:30:39,960
Speaker 1: although hilariously, Jeff himself did not appreciate this nod to

550
00:30:40,000 --> 00:30:42,440
Speaker 1: the theatrical, as he told a friend after the show,

551
00:30:43,000 --> 00:30:45,440
Speaker 1: my god, I stepped on stage and they backloaded it.

552
00:30:45,480 --> 00:30:46,960
Speaker 1: It was like the second coming.

553
00:30:47,120 --> 00:30:50,400
Speaker 2: He's admirably self aware of, like his looks and the

554
00:30:50,440 --> 00:30:53,200
Speaker 2: way that people tried to capitalize it on it, or

555
00:30:53,760 --> 00:30:55,840
Speaker 2: just this like flair for the dramatic that people had

556
00:30:55,880 --> 00:30:58,680
Speaker 2: when it came to his image and his father. Yeah.

557
00:30:58,760 --> 00:31:01,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, But from most of the audience, this essentially was

558
00:31:02,000 --> 00:31:04,360
Speaker 1: the second coming. One person in the audience told The

559
00:31:04,360 --> 00:31:07,080
Speaker 1: New York Times, everyone was there to celebrate the music

560
00:31:07,120 --> 00:31:09,480
Speaker 1: of Tim Buckley, and here was someone who looked like him,

561
00:31:09,640 --> 00:31:12,160
Speaker 1: sounded like him, and had the same vocal range. It

562
00:31:12,240 --> 00:31:16,640
Speaker 1: was very spooky, but impressive, and Jeff later returned that

563
00:31:16,760 --> 00:31:20,080
Speaker 1: night to perform more songs backed by former Captain Beefheart

564
00:31:20,120 --> 00:31:25,000
Speaker 1: guitarist Gary Lucas played the song Cepheronia, the King's Chain

565
00:31:25,680 --> 00:31:30,840
Speaker 1: and Don't Make Me Say This Phantasmagoria in two, but

566
00:31:30,960 --> 00:31:34,479
Speaker 1: the finale featured Jeff alone with an acoustic guitar, singing

567
00:31:34,600 --> 00:31:37,800
Speaker 1: Once I was one of his father's best known songs,

568
00:31:37,840 --> 00:31:40,680
Speaker 1: probably the best known song by his father, as he

569
00:31:40,720 --> 00:31:43,200
Speaker 1: told Musician Magazine in nineteen ninety four, it was the

570
00:31:43,240 --> 00:31:46,320
Speaker 1: first song my mother ever played me by Tim. Like

571
00:31:46,360 --> 00:31:49,440
Speaker 1: what he calls his dad Tim, So I learned it.

572
00:31:49,440 --> 00:31:51,360
Speaker 1: It was hard to learn it. I couldn't really do

573
00:31:51,400 --> 00:31:53,920
Speaker 1: a full version of it at home without crying. I

574
00:31:53,960 --> 00:31:57,360
Speaker 1: almost cried on stage. I broke a string on stage

575
00:31:57,400 --> 00:32:00,400
Speaker 1: at the end of that song. They were brand new strings.

576
00:32:00,920 --> 00:32:04,400
Speaker 1: I was really pissed. So mine is the guitar. Jeff

577
00:32:04,480 --> 00:32:08,360
Speaker 1: sang the last lines a cappella, And sometimes I wonder

578
00:32:08,440 --> 00:32:11,120
Speaker 1: for a while, do you ever remember me?

579
00:32:14,320 --> 00:32:22,480
Speaker 2: Forout the days when we're smile? And how is that

580
00:32:22,760 --> 00:32:35,040
Speaker 2: when word and the magic of a and the silence

581
00:32:35,160 --> 00:33:02,920
Speaker 2: surp sometimes sun, Oh, do you ever remember me?

582
00:33:19,440 --> 00:33:21,800
Speaker 1: And the words hung in the air like a bruising

583
00:33:21,840 --> 00:33:26,040
Speaker 1: indictment from a lost child to an absent father, and

584
00:33:26,080 --> 00:33:31,240
Speaker 1: the audience burst into applause and probably tears. Uh. It's

585
00:33:31,280 --> 00:33:34,680
Speaker 1: a slight exaggeration to say that the performance made him

586
00:33:34,680 --> 00:33:39,200
Speaker 1: an overnight star, but not far off. The afore mentioned

587
00:33:39,200 --> 00:33:42,040
Speaker 1: Hal Wilner, who produced the concert, would later say, over

588
00:33:42,080 --> 00:33:44,480
Speaker 1: the course of that one show, Jeff had been accepted

589
00:33:44,480 --> 00:33:47,840
Speaker 1: by almost every musical group being in New York. Everyone

590
00:33:47,880 --> 00:33:50,240
Speaker 1: had just adopted him, and it became a natural thing

591
00:33:50,280 --> 00:33:52,360
Speaker 1: for him to want to come here. It's like he

592
00:33:52,400 --> 00:33:54,920
Speaker 1: stepped into a new life, because remember, you'd flown in

593
00:33:54,960 --> 00:33:58,360
Speaker 1: from California to play this show. Those in attendance at

594
00:33:58,400 --> 00:34:01,200
Speaker 1: the tribute show recall the sworn of people rushing up

595
00:34:01,240 --> 00:34:04,400
Speaker 1: the Jeff to get near him. Musicians and industry figures

596
00:34:04,440 --> 00:34:07,080
Speaker 1: would hand them cards, and women flocked to him to

597
00:34:08,760 --> 00:34:11,040
Speaker 1: offer him a shoulder to cry on, shall we say it?

598
00:34:12,160 --> 00:34:15,799
Speaker 1: And within weeks he'd relocated to New York City full time.

599
00:34:15,680 --> 00:34:18,480
Speaker 2: Back when you could do it. Yeah.

600
00:34:18,520 --> 00:34:20,680
Speaker 1: But this decision to pursue a new life would leave

601
00:34:20,800 --> 00:34:25,080
Speaker 1: Jeff uneasy, as he later told the Philadelphia Inquire in

602
00:34:25,120 --> 00:34:29,000
Speaker 1: a way, I sacrificed my nominymity for my father, whereas

603
00:34:29,080 --> 00:34:32,719
Speaker 1: he sacrificed me for his fame. So I guess I

604
00:34:32,760 --> 00:34:35,719
Speaker 1: made a mistake, Jesus.

605
00:34:36,520 --> 00:34:40,239
Speaker 2: Yeah, man, he had a lot going on under the hood. Yeah.

606
00:34:40,640 --> 00:34:42,759
Speaker 2: What does it mean when to say a man has

607
00:34:42,800 --> 00:34:49,160
Speaker 2: a lot going on? Jeff Buckley? As you meditate on that,

608
00:34:49,520 --> 00:34:52,240
Speaker 2: we'll be right back with more too much information after

609
00:34:52,280 --> 00:34:53,000
Speaker 2: these messages.

610
00:35:09,920 --> 00:35:12,480
Speaker 1: Well, the most immediate partnership to emerge from this tribute

611
00:35:12,480 --> 00:35:16,120
Speaker 1: show was with his guitar companist, afore mentioned Gary Lucas,

612
00:35:16,640 --> 00:35:21,760
Speaker 1: formerly of Captain Beefheart. Lucas had a band horrifically called

613
00:35:21,840 --> 00:35:22,920
Speaker 1: Gods and Monsters.

614
00:35:22,920 --> 00:35:25,120
Speaker 2: That's terrible. Oh your show in your ass here. Gods

615
00:35:25,160 --> 00:35:27,680
Speaker 2: and Monsters is a line from Bride of Frankenstein. Oh

616
00:35:27,719 --> 00:35:28,960
Speaker 2: I know what it is. I still think it's a

617
00:35:29,040 --> 00:35:32,040
Speaker 2: terrible name. Have you seen the movie Gods and Monsters.

618
00:35:32,160 --> 00:35:34,520
Speaker 2: It's a book too, right, Yeah, it's about James Whale.

619
00:35:34,560 --> 00:35:37,000
Speaker 2: I mean, Bride of Frankenstein is so fascinating because it's

620
00:35:37,040 --> 00:35:41,880
Speaker 2: like the gayest thing that ever came out of Universal.

621
00:35:42,040 --> 00:35:45,319
Speaker 2: And James Whale was the director, and you know, he

622
00:35:45,440 --> 00:35:49,440
Speaker 2: had an interesting career. He made a lot of classic whorrors.

623
00:35:49,480 --> 00:35:53,240
Speaker 2: He made the first Frankenstein, he made the Old Dark House.

624
00:35:54,600 --> 00:36:01,319
Speaker 2: He obviously Bride, He did The Invisible Man, and he

625
00:36:01,680 --> 00:36:05,479
Speaker 2: was I believe. Oh yes, he was openly gay, which

626
00:36:05,520 --> 00:36:10,719
Speaker 2: is insane for the twenties and thirties. And so the

627
00:36:10,760 --> 00:36:14,120
Speaker 2: movie Gods and Monsters stars I want to say, yeah,

628
00:36:14,160 --> 00:36:19,560
Speaker 2: Ian McKellen and Brendan Fraser, and it is is about

629
00:36:19,560 --> 00:36:24,399
Speaker 2: his later life and it's it's quite good. So shut

630
00:36:24,480 --> 00:36:27,719
Speaker 2: up about your terrible name. Gods and Monsters a sick name.

631
00:36:28,239 --> 00:36:33,839
Speaker 1: Fine, well, Gary Lucas invited Jeff Buckley to join Gods

632
00:36:33,920 --> 00:36:36,400
Speaker 1: and Monsters in the spring of nineteen ninety one, shortly

633
00:36:36,440 --> 00:36:39,400
Speaker 1: after the tribute show to Jeff's father, and it was

634
00:36:39,440 --> 00:36:42,280
Speaker 1: his early union that yielded early versions of the title

635
00:36:42,320 --> 00:36:45,799
Speaker 1: track to Grace and also Mojo Pinn. I think two

636
00:36:45,880 --> 00:36:49,000
Speaker 1: of my least favorite songs on the album, It's sorry

637
00:36:49,000 --> 00:36:50,440
Speaker 1: it sound like I have it in for Gary Lucas.

638
00:36:50,480 --> 00:36:50,799
Speaker 2: I don't.

639
00:36:51,440 --> 00:36:54,200
Speaker 1: Lucas recalled in the interview with song Facts. I invited

640
00:36:54,280 --> 00:36:56,759
Speaker 1: him into my group right away. I thought he could

641
00:36:56,760 --> 00:36:59,520
Speaker 1: be the great singer I've been looking for. He said

642
00:36:59,520 --> 00:37:01,640
Speaker 1: he would do it. One thing led to another and

643
00:37:01,680 --> 00:37:04,360
Speaker 1: he was in. Then I needed to write some music,

644
00:37:04,440 --> 00:37:06,680
Speaker 1: and I came up with Grace and Mojo pin as

645
00:37:06,760 --> 00:37:09,880
Speaker 1: instrumental guitar pieces. I sent them to him and he

646
00:37:09,960 --> 00:37:12,879
Speaker 1: had perfect lyrics and a perfect melody for each instrumental.

647
00:37:14,160 --> 00:37:17,279
Speaker 1: The words to Grace apparently came from saying goodbye to

648
00:37:17,360 --> 00:37:20,560
Speaker 1: his new girlfriend, Rebecca Moore on one rainy afternoon at

649
00:37:20,560 --> 00:37:24,960
Speaker 1: the airport. Like Lucas, Jeff had met her during rehearsals

650
00:37:25,000 --> 00:37:28,320
Speaker 1: for the Tim Buckley tribute show, where Moore, who's the

651
00:37:28,400 --> 00:37:31,520
Speaker 1: daughter of avant garde photographer Peter Moore, was setting up

652
00:37:31,520 --> 00:37:32,480
Speaker 1: a buffet.

653
00:37:32,080 --> 00:37:35,200
Speaker 2: For the performers. That's cute. I like that. That's a

654
00:37:35,200 --> 00:37:36,160
Speaker 2: good meet cute.

655
00:37:37,040 --> 00:37:39,040
Speaker 1: I was playing at a tribute show for my late

656
00:37:39,080 --> 00:37:41,480
Speaker 1: father I had never met, and she was setting up

657
00:37:41,520 --> 00:37:44,359
Speaker 1: the buffet backstage. Can we get someone on the line

658
00:37:44,360 --> 00:37:45,160
Speaker 1: for that, Jamie?

659
00:37:46,239 --> 00:37:48,600
Speaker 2: About the buffet? What was the buffet? Oh? You want

660
00:37:48,640 --> 00:37:51,560
Speaker 2: to do a rom com of this meeting? Okay, yeah,

661
00:37:51,719 --> 00:37:53,919
Speaker 2: I understand. I thought you were gonna be like, can

662
00:37:53,920 --> 00:37:55,759
Speaker 2: we find out what the catering was? And I was

663
00:37:55,760 --> 00:37:58,360
Speaker 2: gonna say, probably a bunch of really overdone chicken pacata

664
00:37:58,680 --> 00:37:59,839
Speaker 2: would be like the main thing.

665
00:38:00,120 --> 00:38:04,160
Speaker 1: Think about it. The only two non like MCU DCU

666
00:38:04,360 --> 00:38:07,759
Speaker 1: genres that are making any money right now, music, biopics

667
00:38:08,160 --> 00:38:11,560
Speaker 1: and rom coms. You put them together, you I'm such

668
00:38:11,600 --> 00:38:13,759
Speaker 1: a grech lot.

669
00:38:14,520 --> 00:38:16,879
Speaker 2: No, dude, Horror Are a whore is making a ton

670
00:38:16,920 --> 00:38:19,759
Speaker 2: of money right now, as it always does. That long

671
00:38:19,840 --> 00:38:22,960
Speaker 2: legs movie that they've been made like twenty three million

672
00:38:23,000 --> 00:38:27,760
Speaker 2: in one weekend and the budget was ten including marketing. Wow,

673
00:38:28,600 --> 00:38:30,440
Speaker 2: horr never loses bet the farm.

674
00:38:30,320 --> 00:38:32,719
Speaker 1: On Orror Horror.

675
00:38:32,840 --> 00:38:37,280
Speaker 2: Sorry anyway, this bit that you're doing it it has legs.

676
00:38:37,960 --> 00:38:39,960
Speaker 2: But except for the fact that all of his saddest

677
00:38:40,080 --> 00:38:43,160
Speaker 2: songs are also written about her.

678
00:38:43,920 --> 00:38:46,960
Speaker 1: I mean, like the Great Man once said, if you'd

679
00:38:47,040 --> 00:38:49,600
Speaker 1: like that sometimes fair, can I say that?

680
00:38:49,760 --> 00:38:52,719
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can say that. Okay, yeah, it do be

681
00:38:52,840 --> 00:38:55,080
Speaker 2: like that. So yes.

682
00:38:55,200 --> 00:38:57,399
Speaker 1: The words of the title track of Grace came from

683
00:38:57,440 --> 00:39:00,560
Speaker 1: saying goodbye to his new girlfriends at the airport or

684
00:39:00,600 --> 00:39:03,000
Speaker 1: New York as he was flying back to California to

685
00:39:03,040 --> 00:39:06,400
Speaker 1: basically wrap up his affairs there and relocate to New

686
00:39:06,480 --> 00:39:09,600
Speaker 1: York full time. And he was on the flight flying

687
00:39:09,640 --> 00:39:12,480
Speaker 1: back home for the last time to basically say goodbye,

688
00:39:12,920 --> 00:39:14,680
Speaker 1: and that's where all these words would come from. He

689
00:39:14,680 --> 00:39:18,440
Speaker 1: would later explain, Grace is just about life sometimes being

690
00:39:18,560 --> 00:39:22,879
Speaker 1: so long, which is a sad thing to hear him say,

691
00:39:23,640 --> 00:39:26,520
Speaker 1: considering he died at thirty. At the time, I was

692
00:39:26,560 --> 00:39:29,640
Speaker 1: anticipating leaving Los Angeles for New York, so I was

693
00:39:29,680 --> 00:39:32,880
Speaker 1: waiting to go. I'm not afraid to go, I'm not

694
00:39:32,920 --> 00:39:35,759
Speaker 1: afraid to die. I'm not afraid to go away from

695
00:39:35,800 --> 00:39:38,680
Speaker 1: this place or from any place. But it just goes

696
00:39:38,719 --> 00:39:41,480
Speaker 1: so slow. And I had somebody who loved me in

697
00:39:41,520 --> 00:39:47,759
Speaker 1: New York a lot, and it was amazing, poignant.

698
00:39:47,960 --> 00:39:51,200
Speaker 2: Ouch, yeah that hurt.

699
00:39:51,320 --> 00:39:55,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, both Grace and Mojo Pinn were songs that Jeff

700
00:39:55,080 --> 00:39:59,440
Speaker 1: performed frequently during his brief tenure in Gods and Monsters,

701
00:40:00,760 --> 00:40:03,040
Speaker 1: and he took the songs with them following their last

702
00:40:03,040 --> 00:40:07,240
Speaker 1: gig together in March nineteen ninety two. But rest assured folks,

703
00:40:07,560 --> 00:40:10,720
Speaker 1: Jeff Buckley and Gary Lucas stayed friendly after their band split,

704
00:40:11,200 --> 00:40:13,799
Speaker 1: and Jeff invited him into the studio during sessions for

705
00:40:13,840 --> 00:40:16,040
Speaker 1: Grace to contribute to the tracks that he co wrote,

706
00:40:16,880 --> 00:40:19,719
Speaker 1: and in Grace's liner notes, Gary Lucas is credited with

707
00:40:19,840 --> 00:40:25,400
Speaker 1: quote magical guitarists. Jeff's skill with words deserted him.

708
00:40:25,440 --> 00:40:31,800
Speaker 2: There'd be nice to him. He died, died as he lived,

709
00:40:32,000 --> 00:40:37,479
Speaker 2: Handsome New So it wasn't long after Jeff left Gods

710
00:40:37,480 --> 00:40:40,120
Speaker 2: and Monsters that he made his debut at the Siny Siney.

711
00:40:40,239 --> 00:40:41,640
Speaker 2: We're calling it Sinay, right.

712
00:40:41,560 --> 00:40:43,640
Speaker 1: I'm going to say Sinnay. I'm sorry to our Irish

713
00:40:43,640 --> 00:40:46,840
Speaker 1: friends out there. Yeah, I think it is shine because

714
00:40:46,840 --> 00:40:50,600
Speaker 1: of Shinead. But who's to say an Irish person would

715
00:40:50,640 --> 00:40:51,480
Speaker 1: be the person.

716
00:40:51,800 --> 00:40:53,799
Speaker 2: I'm going to text. I'm going to text somebody right now.

717
00:40:53,840 --> 00:40:57,399
Speaker 2: Actually it comes from some idiomatic phrase. What's it mean?

718
00:40:57,680 --> 00:41:03,160
Speaker 2: The full phrase is that it means, that is to say,

719
00:41:03,719 --> 00:41:08,000
Speaker 2: in other words, it's like, yeah, all the same. See

720
00:41:08,040 --> 00:41:11,279
Speaker 2: here it is here. It is an Ulster dialect se

721
00:41:11,640 --> 00:41:16,040
Speaker 2: a konnak dialect, it's shne, and in Munster dialect it's

722
00:41:16,080 --> 00:41:18,839
Speaker 2: all the same, it's shne. It wasn't long after Jeff

723
00:41:18,920 --> 00:41:20,719
Speaker 2: left Gods and Monsters that he made his debut at

724
00:41:20,760 --> 00:41:24,719
Speaker 2: the Shane, which is Gaelically named East Village. I don't

725
00:41:24,719 --> 00:41:29,880
Speaker 2: think they call it Gaelic anymore. You just call it Irish. Yeah, anyway,

726
00:41:29,920 --> 00:41:32,719
Speaker 2: the proprietor is Irish. He named after it's a word

727
00:41:32,760 --> 00:41:35,200
Speaker 2: in Gaelic or Irish. Please don't cancel us. I love

728
00:41:35,239 --> 00:41:36,160
Speaker 2: the Irish.

729
00:41:35,960 --> 00:41:38,800
Speaker 1: Friend Sarah friend Sarah's who was a listener of Tamas.

730
00:41:39,080 --> 00:41:42,600
Speaker 2: She's from Dublin. I believe, Oh wonderful Sarah. An East

731
00:41:42,640 --> 00:41:46,719
Speaker 2: Village coffee shop and club that became He's basically incubator

732
00:41:46,800 --> 00:41:49,400
Speaker 2: for this time period. You compared it to the Beatles'

733
00:41:49,520 --> 00:41:53,240
Speaker 2: famous Hamburg period. You got his ten thousand hours here. Actually,

734
00:41:53,239 --> 00:41:55,239
Speaker 2: if you went to Musicians Institute, he definitely got his

735
00:41:55,280 --> 00:41:58,399
Speaker 2: ten thousand hours there. But and I haven't heard him

736
00:41:58,400 --> 00:42:01,160
Speaker 2: sing at that concert, but I'm presumably his voice was

737
00:42:01,200 --> 00:42:04,960
Speaker 2: amazing there. But what's great about the Shine period is

738
00:42:05,080 --> 00:42:07,120
Speaker 2: that we have so much of it. We have like

739
00:42:07,360 --> 00:42:10,400
Speaker 2: thirty four tracks that have been released and probably more, honestly,

740
00:42:11,480 --> 00:42:14,440
Speaker 2: but you know, it was a humble abode, had scuffed

741
00:42:14,440 --> 00:42:17,520
Speaker 2: wooden floors and chipped brick walls. The club's owner was

742
00:42:17,560 --> 00:42:20,239
Speaker 2: an Irish expat named Shane Doyle, and he would later

743
00:42:20,280 --> 00:42:22,680
Speaker 2: recall in the documentary You and I. My memory is

744
00:42:22,680 --> 00:42:24,800
Speaker 2: he just kind of how offensive of an Irish accent?

745
00:42:24,800 --> 00:42:27,000
Speaker 2: Do you think I should do? Oh, I'll go for it.

746
00:42:27,400 --> 00:42:28,760
Speaker 1: We've already butchered the language.

747
00:42:28,760 --> 00:42:30,800
Speaker 2: You might as well go. No, I'm not going to

748
00:42:30,880 --> 00:42:32,840
Speaker 2: do it. My memory is he just kind of ambled

749
00:42:32,880 --> 00:42:35,000
Speaker 2: into the place, dragging his guitar in the middle of

750
00:42:35,040 --> 00:42:37,440
Speaker 2: the day with his head half down. He handed me

751
00:42:37,480 --> 00:42:39,560
Speaker 2: this tape with some paper wrapped around it and said

752
00:42:39,560 --> 00:42:42,319
Speaker 2: he wanted to play. Bucky's tape went down well enough

753
00:42:42,360 --> 00:42:44,960
Speaker 2: to earn him a regular spot on Monday nights, one

754
00:42:45,000 --> 00:42:48,720
Speaker 2: of the deadest nights in the entertainment industry.

755
00:42:49,239 --> 00:42:50,800
Speaker 1: So maybe the tape wasn't that great.

756
00:42:51,480 --> 00:42:54,080
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was gonna say. He had borrowed a telecaster,

757
00:42:54,360 --> 00:42:57,040
Speaker 2: a blonde one from Janine Nichols, who is one of

758
00:42:57,040 --> 00:42:59,800
Speaker 2: the people who helped put on the concerts at Saint Anne's,

759
00:43:00,880 --> 00:43:03,040
Speaker 2: and he was as we talked about at the top

760
00:43:03,080 --> 00:43:04,520
Speaker 2: of the episode. I don't know how much you're going

761
00:43:04,600 --> 00:43:06,520
Speaker 2: to keep that, but as we talked about at the

762
00:43:06,520 --> 00:43:09,400
Speaker 2: top of the episode, the shiney stuff is just amazing

763
00:43:09,440 --> 00:43:13,480
Speaker 2: for his breath taking musical influences. I mean, he plays

764
00:43:13,520 --> 00:43:17,120
Speaker 2: everything from Edith Poff to Billie Holiday to Judy Garland,

765
00:43:17,360 --> 00:43:21,280
Speaker 2: deep cuts from Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell, Elton, John Punk,

766
00:43:21,320 --> 00:43:24,319
Speaker 2: acts like Bad Brains and the MC five. He told

767
00:43:24,360 --> 00:43:27,200
Speaker 2: Rolling Stone in nineteen ninety four, I became a human jukebox,

768
00:43:27,440 --> 00:43:30,280
Speaker 2: learning all these songs I'd always known, discovering the basics

769
00:43:30,280 --> 00:43:33,279
Speaker 2: of what I do. Shane Doyle, though put it a

770
00:43:33,280 --> 00:43:36,359
Speaker 2: little less poetically. He did whatever he wanted. He might

771
00:43:36,400 --> 00:43:38,319
Speaker 2: play for half an hour, then he might drink some

772
00:43:38,360 --> 00:43:40,360
Speaker 2: wine and get up and he'd play some more. It

773
00:43:40,440 --> 00:43:43,200
Speaker 2: was his night, That's the way it was. He was experimenting,

774
00:43:43,239 --> 00:43:45,000
Speaker 2: and it was an opportunity to do that in front

775
00:43:45,000 --> 00:43:47,759
Speaker 2: of a very friendly audience, and if he made mistakes,

776
00:43:47,840 --> 00:43:49,960
Speaker 2: he had fun with that. So the place served him

777
00:43:50,040 --> 00:43:54,160
Speaker 2: very well in that way. And I I mean, you know,

778
00:43:54,160 --> 00:43:58,200
Speaker 2: it's impossible to pin down the chronology of his practice routine, right,

779
00:43:58,280 --> 00:44:02,840
Speaker 2: but like Buckley's voice live at Shane's is other worldly.

780
00:44:02,880 --> 00:44:05,360
Speaker 2: I mean, he's a four octave vocal range. That's nuts,

781
00:44:05,880 --> 00:44:06,200
Speaker 2: it is.

782
00:44:06,280 --> 00:44:09,560
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, like a short list of people

783
00:44:09,640 --> 00:44:12,360
Speaker 1: who have four octaves, right, yeah, three is pushing it.

784
00:44:12,440 --> 00:44:15,200
Speaker 2: I mean he's he's basically a lyric tenor in his

785
00:44:15,360 --> 00:44:19,279
Speaker 2: chest voice, which is the same range as Pavarotti, and

786
00:44:19,320 --> 00:44:22,560
Speaker 2: then with his falsetto. I mean, somebody's pinned all the

787
00:44:22,600 --> 00:44:25,480
Speaker 2: notes of his range actually on there, but it's it's

788
00:44:25,600 --> 00:44:28,040
Speaker 2: high and he could go deep as well. Four octaves

789
00:44:28,080 --> 00:44:30,799
Speaker 2: is a lot, especially the control he has over it.

790
00:44:30,840 --> 00:44:32,920
Speaker 2: I mean like once you start getting up into the

791
00:44:33,280 --> 00:44:36,120
Speaker 2: your falsetto range or your belt range, there's like you

792
00:44:36,360 --> 00:44:38,200
Speaker 2: sacrifice control for some of those notes.

793
00:44:38,239 --> 00:44:40,839
Speaker 1: But not him, just some other people who have four

794
00:44:40,880 --> 00:44:46,880
Speaker 1: octave ranges, apparently Ariana Grande, which scans Paul McCartney, which,

795
00:44:47,640 --> 00:44:50,720
Speaker 1: though I love him with every fiber of my being,

796
00:44:50,800 --> 00:44:52,040
Speaker 1: that kind of surprises me.

797
00:44:52,520 --> 00:44:54,840
Speaker 2: Although I'm gonna go ahead and say that they're counting

798
00:44:55,080 --> 00:44:58,080
Speaker 2: his like woos as part of I don't think he

799
00:44:58,200 --> 00:45:01,879
Speaker 2: has the I've certainly never heard him span that much,

800
00:45:02,880 --> 00:45:05,880
Speaker 2: like impressively. I'm like, maybe some of the high notes

801
00:45:05,880 --> 00:45:10,239
Speaker 2: and screams he doesn't like, oh Darlin or golden slam

802
00:45:10,440 --> 00:45:10,799
Speaker 2: right now.

803
00:45:11,800 --> 00:45:16,799
Speaker 1: Yeah, Hailey Williams, Christina Aguilera, prince a prince that makes sense. Yeah,

804
00:45:16,920 --> 00:45:19,719
Speaker 1: Michael Jackson also makes sense. Freddie Mercury makes a ton

805
00:45:19,760 --> 00:45:23,400
Speaker 1: of sense. Yeah, Whitney Houston, Yeah, yeah, yeah, Mariah Carey

806
00:45:23,440 --> 00:45:26,920
Speaker 1: of course, yeah, yeah, yeah. What is he's in rarefied company,

807
00:45:27,160 --> 00:45:30,080
Speaker 1: Bruce Dickinson, Kate Bush.

808
00:45:30,160 --> 00:45:32,080
Speaker 2: That's so good. You mentioned this at the top of

809
00:45:32,120 --> 00:45:33,719
Speaker 2: the episode. But one of the things I find most

810
00:45:33,760 --> 00:45:38,040
Speaker 2: fascinating about Jeff Buckley is his love of a specific

811
00:45:38,680 --> 00:45:42,239
Speaker 2: singer in the Kali tradition. I'm probably butchering that it

812
00:45:42,320 --> 00:45:46,800
Speaker 2: is Sufi devotional music, and the guy he was obsessed

813
00:45:46,840 --> 00:45:50,960
Speaker 2: with was nus Alek Khan. He's from Pakistan, and to

814
00:45:50,960 --> 00:45:54,120
Speaker 2: the point where he interviewed him for Interview magazine and

815
00:45:54,200 --> 00:45:56,759
Speaker 2: he would later write a set of liner notes for Kahn.

816
00:45:57,040 --> 00:46:01,080
Speaker 2: They became friends. There's like photos of that together and stuff.

817
00:46:01,120 --> 00:46:04,920
Speaker 2: But con is like widely considered like the greatest of

818
00:46:04,960 --> 00:46:10,360
Speaker 2: all time in this tradition and his ability to spin

819
00:46:11,280 --> 00:46:14,400
Speaker 2: endless variations of melodic phrases off at the top of

820
00:46:14,440 --> 00:46:18,319
Speaker 2: his range, and his range, dexterity, and agility are just

821
00:46:18,400 --> 00:46:21,799
Speaker 2: like unparalleled. I mean, it's probably it's kind of a

822
00:46:21,800 --> 00:46:25,680
Speaker 2: hard cell for Western audiences because his tamber is very

823
00:46:25,719 --> 00:46:29,440
Speaker 2: harsh and scratchy, but it is just insane what he's

824
00:46:29,480 --> 00:46:32,520
Speaker 2: able to do with his voice. And Buckley was obsessed

825
00:46:32,520 --> 00:46:35,520
Speaker 2: with him, and he covers one of his songs. Yeah,

826
00:46:35,640 --> 00:46:38,160
Speaker 2: I'm not even going to pronounce it. He performs one

827
00:46:38,160 --> 00:46:43,200
Speaker 2: of Khn's songs and that one's released on Shane and

828
00:46:43,239 --> 00:46:45,680
Speaker 2: that is that's a six minute version, but there are

829
00:46:45,719 --> 00:46:49,080
Speaker 2: reports of him doing twenty minute versions of these songs. Wow.

830
00:46:49,920 --> 00:46:52,680
Speaker 2: There's a quote from Chris Cornell that I was looking

831
00:46:52,680 --> 00:46:54,759
Speaker 2: for and I haven't been able to find. But he

832
00:46:54,880 --> 00:46:59,200
Speaker 2: talks about like he was like Jeff had this fearlessness

833
00:46:59,239 --> 00:47:02,080
Speaker 2: with his false range, which was like, you know, could

834
00:47:02,080 --> 00:47:05,799
Speaker 2: be considered like an archetypally feminine thing or whatever, and

835
00:47:05,840 --> 00:47:09,080
Speaker 2: so he talks about like Jeff just spending like fifteen

836
00:47:09,160 --> 00:47:13,160
Speaker 2: or twenty minutes doing these quality style a cappella runs

837
00:47:13,239 --> 00:47:16,400
Speaker 2: in shne in front of like nineties East Village, like

838
00:47:16,440 --> 00:47:19,480
Speaker 2: punk grunge bikers, guys, and just like having the place

839
00:47:19,600 --> 00:47:22,360
Speaker 2: like quiet, you know, of just people being like, what

840
00:47:22,560 --> 00:48:12,160
Speaker 2: is happening? This is incredible? Yeah, it's it's insane. Anyway,

841
00:48:12,640 --> 00:48:15,520
Speaker 2: it was extremely laid back environment. There was no formal stage,

842
00:48:15,520 --> 00:48:18,040
Speaker 2: so Buckley just sat in a corner and played. And

843
00:48:18,400 --> 00:48:21,080
Speaker 2: you know, it was a hard road upwards because those

844
00:48:21,080 --> 00:48:25,000
Speaker 2: are not fun gigs. People don't really care. He would

845
00:48:25,040 --> 00:48:27,319
Speaker 2: later recall it wasn't easy at first. I mean when

846
00:48:27,360 --> 00:48:29,760
Speaker 2: I first walked into Shane or the Cornelia Street Cafe,

847
00:48:29,880 --> 00:48:32,120
Speaker 2: people talk their asses off. They didn't want to hear it.

848
00:48:33,200 --> 00:48:35,840
Speaker 2: And then, funnily enough, even when they did listen, his

849
00:48:35,960 --> 00:48:38,000
Speaker 2: songs were frequently drowned out by the buzz of a

850
00:48:38,000 --> 00:48:42,160
Speaker 2: cappuccino machine that he would later learn to mimic with

851
00:48:42,239 --> 00:48:46,839
Speaker 2: impressive accuracy. You know, but don't start bringing the sad

852
00:48:46,880 --> 00:48:49,440
Speaker 2: bells for Jeff, because he also used to wash the

853
00:48:49,480 --> 00:48:53,560
Speaker 2: dishes at these places. A former server named Tia Biassi

854
00:48:53,680 --> 00:48:56,000
Speaker 2: says in the U and I documentary, Jeff would come

855
00:48:56,000 --> 00:48:58,200
Speaker 2: in at two o'clock in the morning. The music would

856
00:48:58,200 --> 00:49:00,279
Speaker 2: be over and we'd be kind of cleaning up. He

857
00:49:00,320 --> 00:49:02,040
Speaker 2: would just, you know, need to clear his head, and

858
00:49:02,080 --> 00:49:03,440
Speaker 2: he would kick me out of the way and start

859
00:49:03,560 --> 00:49:06,759
Speaker 2: washing dishes. He loved to wash the dishes. We love

860
00:49:06,800 --> 00:49:09,880
Speaker 2: to let him wash the dishes. I'm going to reproduce

861
00:49:09,920 --> 00:49:13,520
Speaker 2: this in your exact writing because I love this. Before long, though,

862
00:49:13,800 --> 00:49:18,200
Speaker 2: this is the when the music the music turns different

863
00:49:18,239 --> 00:49:20,000
Speaker 2: in the behind the music, and the guy says. But

864
00:49:20,120 --> 00:49:22,959
Speaker 2: before long, the buzz of the cappuccino machine had turned

865
00:49:22,960 --> 00:49:27,240
Speaker 2: into metaphorical buzzz. Yes, springs turned to summer. In nineteen

866
00:49:27,320 --> 00:49:31,360
Speaker 2: ninety one, Shane attracted hordes of people to hear Jeff sing.

867
00:49:31,800 --> 00:49:34,520
Speaker 2: Soon the street outside was packed with limos carrying major

868
00:49:34,600 --> 00:49:37,040
Speaker 2: label execs who just had to check this guy out

869
00:49:37,080 --> 00:49:41,840
Speaker 2: for themselves. On one memorable night, Clive Davis, seymour Stein,

870
00:49:42,120 --> 00:49:45,520
Speaker 2: and Don Einer were all crammed into the tiny venue. Jordan,

871
00:49:45,760 --> 00:49:48,000
Speaker 2: do you want to run down why those people are important?

872
00:49:48,600 --> 00:49:53,200
Speaker 1: Clive Davis, head of Columbia for a million years, champion

873
00:49:53,280 --> 00:49:56,040
Speaker 1: of I mean, Jesus, it's like almost easier to name

874
00:49:56,080 --> 00:50:00,000
Speaker 1: the people that he didn't sign Jenis Joplin, Bruce Springstan, Billy,

875
00:50:00,160 --> 00:50:06,920
Speaker 1: Joel Earthwood, Fire, Whitney Houston when he founded Arista Records,

876
00:50:07,520 --> 00:50:10,719
Speaker 1: Alicia keys, Kelly Clarks, I mean, yeah, too many. He's

877
00:50:10,800 --> 00:50:13,759
Speaker 1: the guy and he recently appeared on an episode of

878
00:50:13,800 --> 00:50:16,280
Speaker 1: the Paul and Katok show Our Way that I Produce.

879
00:50:16,840 --> 00:50:17,880
Speaker 2: He was last week's guest.

880
00:50:18,239 --> 00:50:22,239
Speaker 1: Check it out, folks. Seymour Stein was the president and

881
00:50:22,280 --> 00:50:25,960
Speaker 1: I believe founder of Sire Records. Who is all on Sire?

882
00:50:26,200 --> 00:50:27,480
Speaker 1: I only know the punk names?

883
00:50:27,680 --> 00:50:31,120
Speaker 2: Oh, I mean he signed Ramones. Yeah, yeah, Madonna was

884
00:50:31,120 --> 00:50:33,759
Speaker 2: put stuff on Sire. I think talking Heads like a

885
00:50:33,760 --> 00:50:36,080
Speaker 2: lot of a or Blondie. I think it was Blondie

886
00:50:36,160 --> 00:50:37,200
Speaker 2: is the most famous one.

887
00:50:37,400 --> 00:50:39,400
Speaker 1: And Don Einer he was I think he was the

888
00:50:39,440 --> 00:50:43,240
Speaker 1: president of Sony. I believe these big old, all heavy dudes.

889
00:50:43,640 --> 00:50:47,560
Speaker 2: Buckley eventually went with Columbia Records. Like Billy Joel, he

890
00:50:47,640 --> 00:50:49,719
Speaker 2: was swayed by the fact that Bob Dylan was on

891
00:50:49,760 --> 00:50:53,040
Speaker 2: the label, as was Bruce Springsteen and Leonard Cohen. He

892
00:50:53,120 --> 00:50:56,080
Speaker 2: signed in October of nineteen ninety two and used some

893
00:50:56,120 --> 00:50:58,640
Speaker 2: of his advance to pay his grandmother back money he

894
00:50:58,719 --> 00:51:01,480
Speaker 2: owed her. He sent her a letter along with it,

895
00:51:01,520 --> 00:51:04,359
Speaker 2: writing I only think the angels I could ever send

896
00:51:04,400 --> 00:51:07,640
Speaker 2: this check, and then wrote a lengthy paragraph that consists

897
00:51:07,680 --> 00:51:11,480
Speaker 2: almost entirely of the words I Love You. A year

898
00:51:11,520 --> 00:51:14,480
Speaker 2: after signing Columbia would issue his first commercial recording, the

899
00:51:14,520 --> 00:51:17,320
Speaker 2: four song Live at Chaney, which has since been expanded

900
00:51:17,360 --> 00:51:20,480
Speaker 2: to like thirty four tracks, and apparently the label is

901
00:51:20,800 --> 00:51:23,920
Speaker 2: still in the Columbia vaults. Are his like you've heard

902
00:51:23,960 --> 00:51:27,440
Speaker 2: have you heard the Springsteen Hammond sessions where he's just

903
00:51:27,480 --> 00:51:29,960
Speaker 2: playing like stuff like Mary Queen of Arkansas and Acoustic

904
00:51:29,960 --> 00:51:33,200
Speaker 2: Guitar and Justice Royce. Those are good, They're on one

905
00:51:33,200 --> 00:51:35,640
Speaker 2: of the big box sets. But there's a there's apparently

906
00:51:35,640 --> 00:51:39,360
Speaker 2: in the Columbia vaults, like three days worth of recording

907
00:51:39,480 --> 00:51:44,600
Speaker 2: of Buckley running through his entire solo repertoire on guitar, keys,

908
00:51:45,080 --> 00:51:48,440
Speaker 2: harmonium at one point, which is hilarious and weird.

909
00:51:48,680 --> 00:51:50,279
Speaker 1: That's what they use on Lover. He should have come

910
00:51:50,320 --> 00:51:52,160
Speaker 1: over too, right? Is that the first sign You're here?

911
00:51:52,360 --> 00:51:55,040
Speaker 2: Yes? Yes, this was for an engineer and a Columbia

912
00:51:55,080 --> 00:51:57,720
Speaker 2: An r rap named Steve Berkowitz. So there's three days

913
00:51:57,760 --> 00:52:01,920
Speaker 2: worth of Wow, the Buckley profession studio stuff that is

914
00:52:01,960 --> 00:52:04,160
Speaker 2: still in the Columbia vaults, which I find amazing.

915
00:52:04,440 --> 00:52:06,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, Steve Berkowitz comes up a lot in this episode.

916
00:52:07,360 --> 00:52:09,799
Speaker 1: First follow up to the Live at Cheney EP, the

917
00:52:09,880 --> 00:52:14,440
Speaker 1: DEBUTLP that would become Grace, Buckley decided to assemble a band.

918
00:52:14,520 --> 00:52:16,759
Speaker 1: He didn't want to go to the acoustic route. As

919
00:52:16,760 --> 00:52:18,920
Speaker 1: soon as the EP came out, I was dining with

920
00:52:18,960 --> 00:52:22,279
Speaker 1: a band, he later said. I was dying for the relationship,

921
00:52:22,320 --> 00:52:26,400
Speaker 1: for the chemistry people, the warm bodies, male or female,

922
00:52:26,520 --> 00:52:30,879
Speaker 1: bass drums, dulcimer two, but anything anyway that the band

923
00:52:30,880 --> 00:52:31,640
Speaker 1: would work out.

924
00:52:33,160 --> 00:52:34,839
Speaker 2: I love it. I love the enthusiasm.

925
00:52:36,160 --> 00:52:39,240
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, Jeff didn't work out the specifics of this band

926
00:52:39,320 --> 00:52:41,680
Speaker 1: until weeks before the sessions were due to begin in

927
00:52:41,719 --> 00:52:45,760
Speaker 1: September nineteen ninety three. The band thing was a total unknown.

928
00:52:46,000 --> 00:52:49,560
Speaker 1: Grace producer Andy Wallace says in David Brown's book Dream Brother,

929
00:52:49,719 --> 00:52:52,239
Speaker 1: The Lives and Music of Jeff and Tim Buckley, he

930
00:52:52,280 --> 00:52:56,840
Speaker 1: didn't have a band. The label executives were getting understandably anxious,

931
00:52:56,880 --> 00:52:58,759
Speaker 1: and Jeff did everything he could to keep them at

932
00:52:58,880 --> 00:53:01,760
Speaker 1: arm's length. This didn't really go well.

933
00:53:01,960 --> 00:53:03,960
Speaker 2: One thing execs don't like, yeah.

934
00:53:03,760 --> 00:53:07,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, he told Juice magazine in nineteen ninety six. Rather

935
00:53:07,200 --> 00:53:09,960
Speaker 1: than have anybody pick my band, I decided to stall

936
00:53:10,080 --> 00:53:12,799
Speaker 1: until I found the right people. So I stalled and

937
00:53:12,880 --> 00:53:16,800
Speaker 1: I lied nothing was really happening because I hadn't found anybody,

938
00:53:17,160 --> 00:53:20,600
Speaker 1: But gradually an ad hoc group began to coalesce. He

939
00:53:20,680 --> 00:53:24,360
Speaker 1: met bassist Mick Grondel after a gig inside a crypt

940
00:53:24,440 --> 00:53:28,439
Speaker 1: at Columbia University that summer. Just leave that one there

941
00:53:29,120 --> 00:53:29,839
Speaker 1: as one does.

942
00:53:29,960 --> 00:53:30,240
Speaker 2: Yes.

943
00:53:30,719 --> 00:53:33,840
Speaker 1: Drummer Matt Johnson came at the recommendation of his girlfriend,

944
00:53:33,920 --> 00:53:36,840
Speaker 1: Rebecca Moore. Jeff didn't know him, but he left a

945
00:53:36,880 --> 00:53:40,440
Speaker 1: message on his answering machine. It's cold calling a drummer.

946
00:53:41,120 --> 00:53:44,120
Speaker 1: He's new to New York, I guess. And later on

947
00:53:44,200 --> 00:53:46,600
Speaker 1: in the sessions, Jeff with thicken his guitar parts with

948
00:53:46,680 --> 00:53:48,759
Speaker 1: help from Michael Tingey.

949
00:53:48,960 --> 00:53:50,000
Speaker 2: I think it's how you say.

950
00:53:49,880 --> 00:53:52,120
Speaker 1: It, a twenty one year old friend of his girlfriend's

951
00:53:52,440 --> 00:53:55,320
Speaker 1: who'd had more training as an actor than as a musician,

952
00:53:55,880 --> 00:53:58,200
Speaker 1: and in fact, he barely played music outside of high

953
00:53:58,200 --> 00:54:01,880
Speaker 1: school jam sessions, and he he didn't even own a guitaristtrap.

954
00:54:02,800 --> 00:54:05,440
Speaker 1: Well before long, Jeff in his rhythm section minus the

955
00:54:05,440 --> 00:54:08,839
Speaker 1: other guitarists were jamming at Jeff's rehearsal space, and it

956
00:54:08,880 --> 00:54:11,799
Speaker 1: all seemed very loose until Jeff dropped the bomb on

957
00:54:11,840 --> 00:54:14,560
Speaker 1: these guys that he had a deal with Columbia and

958
00:54:14,680 --> 00:54:18,600
Speaker 1: was due to record his debut album soon. These guys

959
00:54:18,640 --> 00:54:20,440
Speaker 1: had no idea. I think they thought they were just

960
00:54:20,520 --> 00:54:23,680
Speaker 1: jamming with their new friend. Drummer Matt Johnson would recall.

961
00:54:23,760 --> 00:54:25,920
Speaker 1: Within a few weeks we were recording a record, So

962
00:54:26,000 --> 00:54:28,640
Speaker 1: it was very quick, very shocking to go for meeting

963
00:54:28,680 --> 00:54:31,000
Speaker 1: someone and playing with them to recording in about two

964
00:54:31,120 --> 00:54:35,440
Speaker 1: or three weeks. It was really scary. Jeff's producer, Andy Wallace,

965
00:54:35,440 --> 00:54:37,440
Speaker 1: who would oversee the Gray sessions.

966
00:54:37,280 --> 00:54:38,160
Speaker 2: Was also scared.

967
00:54:38,840 --> 00:54:41,359
Speaker 1: He attended one of the group's East Village rehearsals and

968
00:54:41,520 --> 00:54:44,359
Speaker 1: was not thrilled with what he heard. He would say

969
00:54:44,400 --> 00:54:46,560
Speaker 1: they would start a riff that would turn into a jam,

970
00:54:46,800 --> 00:54:49,120
Speaker 1: eventually abandoned the riff, and then it would go on

971
00:54:49,200 --> 00:54:52,520
Speaker 1: for ten minutes. It was interesting, but my impression was,

972
00:54:52,920 --> 00:54:55,080
Speaker 1: wait a minute, I thought you guys were learning songs.

973
00:54:55,160 --> 00:54:58,160
Speaker 1: We've got studio time booked, and just six weeks after

974
00:54:58,200 --> 00:55:01,040
Speaker 1: his band's first rehearsal, Jeff and his rhythm section were

975
00:55:01,120 --> 00:55:03,640
Speaker 1: doing Bearsville's Studios, ninety miles.

976
00:55:03,400 --> 00:55:05,040
Speaker 2: North of Manhattan in the.

977
00:55:05,120 --> 00:55:09,040
Speaker 1: Rural artist enclave of Woodstock, New York. They planned to

978
00:55:09,040 --> 00:55:11,279
Speaker 1: meet at Jeff's East village apartment on the morning of

979
00:55:11,320 --> 00:55:15,720
Speaker 1: September twentieth and carpool up together, but they were running behind.

980
00:55:17,080 --> 00:55:20,160
Speaker 1: Jeff left the message on his girlfriend's answering machine, it's

981
00:55:20,200 --> 00:55:23,080
Speaker 1: twelve thirty and nobody in the band is ready. Of course,

982
00:55:24,120 --> 00:55:27,600
Speaker 1: eventually the rhythm section finally arrived and together they set

983
00:55:27,640 --> 00:55:31,880
Speaker 1: off on the two mile track to Bearsville and the

984
00:55:31,920 --> 00:55:35,239
Speaker 1: sessions at a promising start. The afore mentioned Columbia An

985
00:55:35,400 --> 00:55:38,239
Speaker 1: r man Steve Berkowitz would describe the first weeks as

986
00:55:38,360 --> 00:55:42,360
Speaker 1: quote a volcanic eruption of artistry from Jeff. He was

987
00:55:42,440 --> 00:55:46,279
Speaker 1: fond of trying endless arrangements of his songs. Burkowitz would say,

988
00:55:46,280 --> 00:55:48,640
Speaker 1: it was hundreds of ideas and guitar parts and vocal

989
00:55:48,680 --> 00:55:50,880
Speaker 1: parts and backwards parts and extra drum parts.

990
00:55:51,360 --> 00:55:54,160
Speaker 2: Yeah. Andy Wallace would tell tape off that the biggest

991
00:55:54,239 --> 00:55:57,319
Speaker 2: challenge of the record was just keeping Jeff focused. He

992
00:55:57,360 --> 00:55:59,719
Speaker 2: said he had so many ideas, he was so diverse.

993
00:56:00,200 --> 00:56:02,120
Speaker 2: The album, though, never would have gotten done if he

994
00:56:02,160 --> 00:56:04,480
Speaker 2: didn't have someone there to pull the reins in. So

995
00:56:04,520 --> 00:56:06,640
Speaker 2: they did two and a half to three months at Bearsville,

996
00:56:06,760 --> 00:56:08,480
Speaker 2: and then Jeff went out to la for a while

997
00:56:08,480 --> 00:56:11,160
Speaker 2: and worked on some more songs after he came back

998
00:56:11,160 --> 00:56:14,279
Speaker 2: from La So all told, Wallace said, they probably spent

999
00:56:14,320 --> 00:56:17,279
Speaker 2: about six months on Grace for a debut. That's like,

1000
00:56:17,760 --> 00:56:20,759
Speaker 2: that's a lot, it is, Yeah, I mean it just

1001
00:56:20,840 --> 00:56:22,400
Speaker 2: kind of shows I guess the high hopes that they

1002
00:56:22,440 --> 00:56:25,839
Speaker 2: had for him and the major label budget that well. Yeah,

1003
00:56:25,960 --> 00:56:27,480
Speaker 2: early in the mid nineties.

1004
00:56:30,440 --> 00:56:33,920
Speaker 1: The in studio experimentation sounds like a special sort of

1005
00:56:33,960 --> 00:56:38,520
Speaker 1: torture for his extremely green band, but also for Jeff himself.

1006
00:56:39,360 --> 00:56:42,640
Speaker 1: The thought of capturing the quote definitive version of his

1007
00:56:42,719 --> 00:56:46,520
Speaker 1: songs was it deeply at odds with a spontaneous personality,

1008
00:56:46,840 --> 00:56:50,439
Speaker 1: not to mention his perfectionist tendencies, He would say while

1009
00:56:50,440 --> 00:56:54,560
Speaker 1: promoting Grace, the nature of recording is excruciating. It's obsessive

1010
00:56:54,640 --> 00:56:57,600
Speaker 1: because you're dealing with ultimate things. It's not like a

1011
00:56:57,640 --> 00:57:00,040
Speaker 1: live show where you play and it just disappears in

1012
00:57:00,160 --> 00:57:03,920
Speaker 1: the air like smoke. It's like painting sound painting. It's

1013
00:57:03,920 --> 00:57:07,239
Speaker 1: in a crystallized form, So it's very nerve racking. Which

1014
00:57:07,280 --> 00:57:09,880
Speaker 1: brain cell do I put down here forever and ever?

1015
00:57:11,120 --> 00:57:14,480
Speaker 1: And this makes me so sad. His anxiety was kicked

1016
00:57:14,520 --> 00:57:17,560
Speaker 1: in the overdrive following what we'll refer to as.

1017
00:57:18,080 --> 00:57:19,360
Speaker 2: The Michael Bolton incident.

1018
00:57:19,640 --> 00:57:21,480
Speaker 1: Were you familiar with the Michael Bolton incident?

1019
00:57:21,960 --> 00:57:24,520
Speaker 2: Not before reading this, but totally understandable. Yes.

1020
00:57:25,560 --> 00:57:27,919
Speaker 1: Jeff read a review of the Live at shinne ep

1021
00:57:28,240 --> 00:57:32,400
Speaker 1: in News Day, and it unfavorably compared it to Michael

1022
00:57:32,400 --> 00:57:36,360
Speaker 1: Bolton's latest album. The two releases were paired together with

1023
00:57:36,400 --> 00:57:40,680
Speaker 1: the phrase two white vocalists with affecting voices drawn directly

1024
00:57:40,720 --> 00:57:45,040
Speaker 1: from black idiom. The critic wrote that quote both Jeff

1025
00:57:45,040 --> 00:57:48,160
Speaker 1: Buckley and Michael Bolton awkwardly reached for a balance of

1026
00:57:48,200 --> 00:57:52,240
Speaker 1: emotion and technique, eventually relying on sheer voice of will

1027
00:57:52,640 --> 00:57:56,280
Speaker 1: over singing and flaking out. How do you feel about.

1028
00:57:56,080 --> 00:58:00,000
Speaker 2: That, critics? Should it should be fired? I mean, yeah,

1029
00:58:00,200 --> 00:58:03,160
Speaker 2: Jeff Buckley does have a large amount of songs by

1030
00:58:03,160 --> 00:58:05,880
Speaker 2: black artists and his repertoire, but a lot of them

1031
00:58:05,880 --> 00:58:11,200
Speaker 2: are women. Actually it's okay to rip women off, no,

1032
00:58:11,360 --> 00:58:14,360
Speaker 2: but it's a little more forward thinking than Bolton. And

1033
00:58:14,400 --> 00:58:16,720
Speaker 2: also they don't have the same voice Jeff Boltons or

1034
00:58:16,800 --> 00:58:19,920
Speaker 2: Jeff Pulton. Michael Bolton's whole thing is like heroically straining,

1035
00:58:19,960 --> 00:58:21,960
Speaker 2: so he sounds like he's having a hernia. He has

1036
00:58:22,000 --> 00:58:26,920
Speaker 2: like absolutely zero of Buckley's ability to invent and utilize his.

1037
00:58:27,000 --> 00:58:28,800
Speaker 1: Voice both former metal guys.

1038
00:58:29,160 --> 00:58:33,760
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, but no, that's a stupid, facile comparison, and

1039
00:58:33,840 --> 00:58:35,840
Speaker 2: I want to find out who did it and yell

1040
00:58:35,920 --> 00:58:36,240
Speaker 2: at them.

1041
00:58:36,440 --> 00:58:38,680
Speaker 1: I left it out of a lot of what I'm

1042
00:58:38,800 --> 00:58:41,320
Speaker 1: citing in this episode is from a deep dive I

1043
00:58:41,360 --> 00:58:44,480
Speaker 1: did for Rolling Stone Into the Making, Now Grace, I'm

1044
00:58:44,480 --> 00:58:49,479
Speaker 1: telling them, well, don't do that. Well, no, in case

1045
00:58:49,480 --> 00:58:52,720
Speaker 1: somebody from Rolling Stone here catches me. Is a review

1046
00:58:52,760 --> 00:58:55,040
Speaker 1: a news Day, Yes, I left the name of the

1047
00:58:55,080 --> 00:58:57,280
Speaker 1: person out of that, and I'm wondering if I did

1048
00:58:57,280 --> 00:58:58,960
Speaker 1: that for reasons of diplomacy.

1049
00:58:59,000 --> 00:59:01,040
Speaker 2: So it might have been a cent famous writer. Well

1050
00:59:01,320 --> 00:59:04,400
Speaker 2: that's a stupid thing that they said. So New York

1051
00:59:04,520 --> 00:59:08,520
Speaker 2: news Day review by Charles Aaron This is a savage review.

1052
00:59:08,960 --> 00:59:12,680
Speaker 2: He calls Buckley a rising alterna hunk. They shamelessly appeal

1053
00:59:12,720 --> 00:59:16,960
Speaker 2: to their audiences, Buckley wailing and scatting folky blues for

1054
00:59:17,040 --> 00:59:21,480
Speaker 2: wounded bohemians, while Bolton succeeds feebly on a grand stage

1055
00:59:21,600 --> 00:59:25,120
Speaker 2: and Buckley fails grandly on a small stage. He's a

1056
00:59:25,200 --> 00:59:29,760
Speaker 2: leather lunged louden rainwait a slacker, Robert Plant, a loopy Chanson,

1057
00:59:29,960 --> 00:59:32,720
Speaker 2: and finally a hyper jazz bo using his voice to

1058
00:59:32,720 --> 00:59:35,360
Speaker 2: mimic his guitars, whale, a horn solo, the Ghost of

1059
00:59:35,440 --> 00:59:38,480
Speaker 2: Van Morrison. In fact, he does everything short of human beatboxing,

1060
00:59:38,920 --> 00:59:43,120
Speaker 2: and he does it passionately. Wow you, Charles Erin.

1061
00:59:46,200 --> 00:59:48,920
Speaker 1: But this critique sent Jeff into a tailspin, and he

1062
00:59:49,000 --> 00:59:53,360
Speaker 1: reportedly postponed work on Grace for two whole days while

1063
00:59:53,400 --> 00:59:57,760
Speaker 1: he pondered this criticism. According to producer Andy Wallace, Jeff

1064
00:59:57,880 --> 01:00:02,200
Speaker 1: was almost apoplectic. It stopped him cold. He says in

1065
01:00:02,320 --> 01:00:04,880
Speaker 1: dream brother, if somebody had thought, who can I use

1066
01:00:04,920 --> 01:00:07,360
Speaker 1: to really get his goat, you could have chosen somebody

1067
01:00:07,360 --> 01:00:10,680
Speaker 1: better than Michael Bolton. Jeff was clearly still bothered by

1068
01:00:10,760 --> 01:00:12,480
Speaker 1: it months later when he sat for a Q and

1069
01:00:12,520 --> 01:00:15,760
Speaker 1: a with Interview magazine. When they asked him about the review,

1070
01:00:15,800 --> 01:00:19,480
Speaker 1: he said, that's really disgusting. The thing is, I'm not

1071
01:00:19,520 --> 01:00:22,080
Speaker 1: taking from that tradition. I don't want to be black.

1072
01:00:22,440 --> 01:00:25,960
Speaker 1: Michael Bolton desperately wants to be black. He also sucks

1073
01:00:27,760 --> 01:00:31,240
Speaker 1: his word it's not mine but also mine, and also heigels.

1074
01:00:31,440 --> 01:00:33,600
Speaker 2: But I think that's correct, Like I think it's too

1075
01:00:33,760 --> 01:00:36,160
Speaker 2: he's too eclectic to be tarred with this brush of

1076
01:00:36,200 --> 01:00:38,280
Speaker 2: like I want to be black, like he also wants

1077
01:00:38,360 --> 01:00:41,280
Speaker 2: to be Pakistani. He also wants to be If you're

1078
01:00:41,360 --> 01:00:44,920
Speaker 2: just if you're taking his absorption of these styles as

1079
01:00:44,960 --> 01:00:47,320
Speaker 2: just reducing it down to I want to be X,

1080
01:00:48,160 --> 01:00:51,840
Speaker 2: that's false. That's stupid. Like you take all of those

1081
01:00:51,840 --> 01:00:54,240
Speaker 2: influences and you put out something and the guy died

1082
01:00:54,240 --> 01:00:58,000
Speaker 2: before you could put out like half his corpus is covers.

1083
01:00:58,120 --> 01:00:59,400
Speaker 2: So I mean it would be.

1084
01:00:59,400 --> 01:01:02,400
Speaker 1: Like if you know, John Lennon and Paul McCartney died,

1085
01:01:02,480 --> 01:01:05,400
Speaker 1: you know, mid nineteen sixty three, when they had one

1086
01:01:05,560 --> 01:01:09,200
Speaker 1: LP complete and half of you know, the second one done.

1087
01:01:09,360 --> 01:01:12,720
Speaker 1: It was either recordings done from clubs, which were mostly covers,

1088
01:01:13,320 --> 01:01:16,160
Speaker 1: or please please me their first album, which was you know,

1089
01:01:16,200 --> 01:01:19,440
Speaker 1: probably half covers. It's not a fair assessment. But in

1090
01:01:19,480 --> 01:01:23,080
Speaker 1: a hilarious slash poignant coda, years later, when Jeff was

1091
01:01:23,120 --> 01:01:25,840
Speaker 1: working on his intended follow up to Grace, he surprised

1092
01:01:25,840 --> 01:01:28,320
Speaker 1: friends by buying a pile of cheap cassettes from a

1093
01:01:28,320 --> 01:01:31,920
Speaker 1: street vendor in Memphis, and this pile of tapes included

1094
01:01:32,000 --> 01:01:35,480
Speaker 1: the dreaded Michael Bolton. When they asked him why he

1095
01:01:35,640 --> 01:01:38,560
Speaker 1: just bought some Michael Bolton cassettes. He replied, do you

1096
01:01:38,560 --> 01:01:41,080
Speaker 1: know how much blank tape is? I just got ten

1097
01:01:41,120 --> 01:01:45,360
Speaker 1: tapes to record on. And so then after Jeff died

1098
01:01:46,040 --> 01:01:49,720
Speaker 1: and friends were coming through his demos, they were amused

1099
01:01:49,760 --> 01:01:53,800
Speaker 1: to find that his musical fragments were interspersed with Michael

1100
01:01:53,840 --> 01:01:54,920
Speaker 1: Bolton power ballots.

1101
01:01:55,080 --> 01:01:59,120
Speaker 2: That must have been a truly dizzying experience. Yes, now

1102
01:01:59,120 --> 01:02:02,240
Speaker 2: you have to talk, of course about Hallelujah, the track

1103
01:02:02,280 --> 01:02:06,280
Speaker 2: on Grace that everyone knows. Jeff didn't think he had

1104
01:02:06,760 --> 01:02:10,880
Speaker 2: enough strong original material to fill a full album, and

1105
01:02:10,920 --> 01:02:13,600
Speaker 2: so instead he revisited his days as a quote human

1106
01:02:13,680 --> 01:02:18,240
Speaker 2: jukebox at Chiny and called through his formidable repertoire of

1107
01:02:18,320 --> 01:02:21,520
Speaker 2: cover songs. But don't call them cover songs, which is

1108
01:02:21,600 --> 01:02:24,560
Speaker 2: exactly what I said earlier, said Columbia A and R

1109
01:02:24,600 --> 01:02:28,640
Speaker 2: man Steve Berkowitz. Jeff didn't play cover songs, he explained

1110
01:02:28,640 --> 01:02:31,280
Speaker 2: in a twenty sixteen interview with Uncut. He played other

1111
01:02:31,320 --> 01:02:35,200
Speaker 2: people's compositions and made them his own. He consumed the

1112
01:02:35,240 --> 01:02:38,240
Speaker 2: idea and the feel. He really was a blues singer.

1113
01:02:38,280 --> 01:02:41,040
Speaker 2: I think he had that religious depth of feeling that

1114
01:02:41,040 --> 01:02:45,040
Speaker 2: blues music has or that Billy Holliday had. I think no,

1115
01:02:45,160 --> 01:02:49,200
Speaker 2: I mean, Billy Holliday is obviously tremendous, but I would compare,

1116
01:02:49,240 --> 01:02:51,880
Speaker 2: I would honestly compare him more to Ella Fitzgerald, like

1117
01:02:52,360 --> 01:02:56,800
Speaker 2: in the ability just the ability to extemporaneize and like

1118
01:02:57,080 --> 01:03:00,880
Speaker 2: with because Billy Holliday, like God bless her. I don't

1119
01:03:00,880 --> 01:03:04,440
Speaker 2: think she was known as an especially agile vocalists because

1120
01:03:04,840 --> 01:03:07,640
Speaker 2: you know, since her first recordings were with big bands,

1121
01:03:07,760 --> 01:03:10,400
Speaker 2: they didn't really have a ton of opportunity for vocalists

1122
01:03:10,400 --> 01:03:12,960
Speaker 2: to just step out in front and wail or like

1123
01:03:13,000 --> 01:03:15,560
Speaker 2: scat to extended. And then by the time she had

1124
01:03:15,560 --> 01:03:18,880
Speaker 2: stopped doing that and was recording in like, you know,

1125
01:03:18,960 --> 01:03:20,680
Speaker 2: you think of her later period where like some of

1126
01:03:20,680 --> 01:03:22,720
Speaker 2: the stuff is recorded with the realist orchestra and her

1127
01:03:22,800 --> 01:03:25,240
Speaker 2: voice straight up sounds like garbage, but she's able to

1128
01:03:25,280 --> 01:03:28,720
Speaker 2: impart such feeling and beauty in these phrases, whereas people

1129
01:03:28,760 --> 01:03:32,280
Speaker 2: like Ella and Sarah Vaughan are just like insane virtuosos

1130
01:03:32,320 --> 01:03:35,480
Speaker 2: with their voice, and I think Jeff falls more into that.

1131
01:03:35,600 --> 01:03:39,080
Speaker 2: But anyway, this is just me on other people's takes.

1132
01:03:39,760 --> 01:03:44,240
Speaker 2: I understand why people hate me Grace contains three cover songs,

1133
01:03:44,280 --> 01:03:47,240
Speaker 2: which Jeff curated to show off his multiple musical moods

1134
01:03:47,520 --> 01:03:51,200
Speaker 2: great alliteration. There's Lilac Wine, a jazz standard recorded by

1135
01:03:51,200 --> 01:03:54,360
Speaker 2: the likes of Earth a Kit, and Buckley's version is

1136
01:03:54,360 --> 01:03:57,800
Speaker 2: based on Nina Simone's. He does an uninarrowingly good cover

1137
01:03:57,960 --> 01:04:02,720
Speaker 2: of good version of Nina's Simones be My Husband. At Shane.

1138
01:04:03,440 --> 01:04:07,960
Speaker 2: He also performs the Benjamin Britten arrangement of the Middle

1139
01:04:08,040 --> 01:04:12,520
Speaker 2: English hymnal Corpus Christy Carroll. And then, of course there's

1140
01:04:12,560 --> 01:04:17,440
Speaker 2: his interpretation of Leonard Cohen's epic Hallelujah. He'd first heard

1141
01:04:17,480 --> 01:04:20,280
Speaker 2: the song about how sitting for the aforementioned Jeanine Nichols,

1142
01:04:20,320 --> 01:04:22,920
Speaker 2: who had loaned him the guitar that he recorded this

1143
01:04:23,000 --> 01:04:26,520
Speaker 2: so on and was a program director at Sant Anne's church,

1144
01:04:27,360 --> 01:04:30,040
Speaker 2: and she got a thanks in the liner notes to

1145
01:04:30,200 --> 01:04:32,800
Speaker 2: live at Shane for her efforts. So he was staying

1146
01:04:32,840 --> 01:04:35,560
Speaker 2: at her apartment in Park Slope and taking care of

1147
01:04:35,560 --> 01:04:37,840
Speaker 2: her cat. He came across a copy of the Leonard

1148
01:04:37,880 --> 01:04:41,440
Speaker 2: Cohen tribute album that how Wilner had produced, called I'm

1149
01:04:41,480 --> 01:04:45,600
Speaker 2: Your Fan, and he especially like John Cale's reworking of Hallelujah.

1150
01:04:45,720 --> 01:04:48,280
Speaker 2: Jeff was not familiar with the original, and this is

1151
01:04:48,280 --> 01:04:52,160
Speaker 2: important because Cale's version differs greatly from the Cohen's dirge

1152
01:04:52,280 --> 01:04:56,080
Speaker 2: like original. Leonard Cohen's original for this has like eighty

1153
01:04:56,240 --> 01:04:59,880
Speaker 2: verses that he whittled down and would interchange. I guess, however,

1154
01:05:00,120 --> 01:05:02,800
Speaker 2: his feeling and when Cale went to cover it, he

1155
01:05:02,880 --> 01:05:06,240
Speaker 2: recalled later that he was watching his fax machine with

1156
01:05:06,280 --> 01:05:10,040
Speaker 2: a sort of amused stare, because more and more just

1157
01:05:10,120 --> 01:05:13,680
Speaker 2: kept coming. All eighty verses came out, taking up fifteen pages.

1158
01:05:13,760 --> 01:05:17,040
Speaker 1: Well, because Denny asked Cohen the like send He's like, yeah, can.

1159
01:05:16,960 --> 01:05:18,200
Speaker 2: You send me the lyrics?

1160
01:05:18,600 --> 01:05:23,400
Speaker 1: The lyrics and then yeah. There's a great book by

1161
01:05:24,280 --> 01:05:27,720
Speaker 1: a wonderful music journalist, Alan Light called The Holy, the

1162
01:05:27,720 --> 01:05:31,840
Speaker 1: Broken Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley and the Unlikely Assent of Hallelujo.

1163
01:05:32,000 --> 01:05:33,560
Speaker 2: It's just all about the.

1164
01:05:33,440 --> 01:05:36,360
Speaker 1: Long storied history of this song and it's a really

1165
01:05:36,440 --> 01:05:36,960
Speaker 1: cool book.

1166
01:05:37,000 --> 01:05:39,360
Speaker 2: Come out fairly recent.

1167
01:05:39,400 --> 01:05:43,080
Speaker 1: I think they're making a documentary of it too. Thirteen

1168
01:05:43,240 --> 01:05:43,960
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen.

1169
01:05:44,720 --> 01:05:48,160
Speaker 2: Buckley revisited this song frequently during his sessions for Grace.

1170
01:05:48,240 --> 01:05:51,640
Speaker 2: He recorded over twenty takes of it, and Andy Wallace

1171
01:05:51,640 --> 01:05:53,680
Speaker 2: would later say there was never any question about this

1172
01:05:53,720 --> 01:05:56,520
Speaker 2: one going on the album. It was something special, had

1173
01:05:56,520 --> 01:05:58,840
Speaker 2: a magic to it, and that was there from the beginning.

1174
01:05:59,520 --> 01:06:03,080
Speaker 2: The finish recording was actually comps from a bunch of

1175
01:06:03,080 --> 01:06:05,600
Speaker 2: different takes, which I think is interesting because it sounds

1176
01:06:05,640 --> 01:06:08,840
Speaker 2: so seamless. It really sounds like it's done line. His

1177
01:06:08,960 --> 01:06:13,400
Speaker 2: guitar playing is so beautiful on there, the fingerpicking. You know,

1178
01:06:13,680 --> 01:06:17,560
Speaker 2: it's it's Jeff's song. It's not anyone else's song anymore.

1179
01:06:17,840 --> 01:06:20,520
Speaker 2: It's Jeff's song. Now it has three hundred and sixty

1180
01:06:20,560 --> 01:06:24,000
Speaker 2: five million streams on Spotify, and the runner up, Lover

1181
01:06:24,080 --> 01:06:26,960
Speaker 2: You Should Have Come Over has a third of that. However,

1182
01:06:27,360 --> 01:06:31,280
Speaker 2: Rolling Stone was not impressed. In her review of Grace,

1183
01:06:31,400 --> 01:06:35,439
Speaker 2: Critic Stephanie Zacharak writes that the young Buckley's vocals don't

1184
01:06:35,480 --> 01:06:39,080
Speaker 2: always stand up. He doesn't sound battered or desperate enough

1185
01:06:39,120 --> 01:06:42,600
Speaker 2: to carry off Leonard Cohen's Hallelijah, Yeah, you idiot. He

1186
01:06:42,600 --> 01:06:45,640
Speaker 2: sounds like a goddamn angel. He holds one of those

1187
01:06:45,720 --> 01:06:50,480
Speaker 2: falsetto notes for something like twenty three seconds. Jesus, I

1188
01:06:50,520 --> 01:06:54,480
Speaker 2: can't imagine anyone listening to that and be like, n Yeah,

1189
01:06:54,520 --> 01:06:57,840
Speaker 2: what the these people? Why did we give them music.

1190
01:06:57,880 --> 01:07:00,480
Speaker 2: Criticism is a mistake. These people never have had this

1191
01:07:00,600 --> 01:07:01,080
Speaker 2: much power.

1192
01:07:01,160 --> 01:07:03,720
Speaker 1: I mean, here's an unfair question. Then there is no

1193
01:07:03,880 --> 01:07:07,880
Speaker 1: right or wrong answer to this. How much of this

1194
01:07:08,040 --> 01:07:11,919
Speaker 1: feeling is now that Jeff is literally an angel, We

1195
01:07:12,000 --> 01:07:15,439
Speaker 1: imbue this song with a certain significance that it maybe

1196
01:07:15,520 --> 01:07:17,320
Speaker 1: didn't have in nineteen eighty four.

1197
01:07:18,280 --> 01:07:23,080
Speaker 2: Now I disagree, I mean just from I'm obviously I'm biased,

1198
01:07:23,120 --> 01:07:28,200
Speaker 2: but like I cannot understand how someone heard that recording

1199
01:07:28,280 --> 01:07:32,120
Speaker 2: and went eh, like that is really mind boggling. It's

1200
01:07:32,160 --> 01:07:36,760
Speaker 2: an astounding vocal performance. The guitar playing is beautiful. No,

1201
01:07:37,280 --> 01:07:39,919
Speaker 2: I mean, yes, obviously it has added resonance now because

1202
01:07:39,920 --> 01:07:42,520
Speaker 2: he died, but contemporaneously. For someone to listen to that

1203
01:07:42,560 --> 01:07:43,920
Speaker 2: and be like mid.

1204
01:07:46,120 --> 01:07:50,240
Speaker 1: Stupid, it is interesting to me, though, I am hard

1205
01:07:50,240 --> 01:07:53,600
Speaker 1: pressed to name a song that's not just like a

1206
01:07:53,680 --> 01:07:57,120
Speaker 1: jazz standard or something that has so many I mean,

1207
01:07:57,160 --> 01:08:00,680
Speaker 1: obviously I think Buckley's version is the one that triumphs

1208
01:08:00,760 --> 01:08:03,720
Speaker 1: over all of them, but I mean, yeah, so many

1209
01:08:03,760 --> 01:08:09,320
Speaker 1: extremely well known versions, from Leonard Cohen to John Kyle's version,

1210
01:08:09,480 --> 01:08:12,440
Speaker 1: to Jeff Buckley's version, to Rufus Wainwright's version, which I

1211
01:08:12,440 --> 01:08:14,760
Speaker 1: think in some Circles is probably the most famous of

1212
01:08:14,800 --> 01:08:17,040
Speaker 1: all of them. I mean, that's that's kind of I mean,

1213
01:08:17,040 --> 01:08:19,280
Speaker 1: I guess, but Winwright is just is.

1214
01:08:19,280 --> 01:08:23,000
Speaker 2: Just doing the Kale version from his live record Fragments

1215
01:08:23,040 --> 01:08:25,400
Speaker 2: of a Rainy Season. I mean, it's just that's the

1216
01:08:25,479 --> 01:08:27,160
Speaker 2: most straightforward possible cover.

1217
01:08:27,439 --> 01:08:29,360
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you're right. But I just think it's interesting

1218
01:08:29,400 --> 01:08:33,599
Speaker 1: that I can't think of a non standard that has

1219
01:08:33,680 --> 01:08:36,120
Speaker 1: had you know, so many lives. I mean, I guess

1220
01:08:36,160 --> 01:08:38,080
Speaker 1: that's why Allan wrote that book about it and they're

1221
01:08:38,080 --> 01:08:39,080
Speaker 1: doing documentary about it.

1222
01:08:39,080 --> 01:08:41,519
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean it regularly climbs the I mean

1223
01:08:41,560 --> 01:08:43,840
Speaker 2: now that singing competitions aren't really a thing anymore, but

1224
01:08:43,840 --> 01:08:46,439
Speaker 2: it would regularly like climb back up the charts whenever

1225
01:08:46,439 --> 01:08:50,160
Speaker 2: somebody would do it there, I mean justin Timberlake covered it,

1226
01:08:50,160 --> 01:08:57,000
Speaker 2: and I want a charity thing furiously Googles. It's weird.

1227
01:08:57,040 --> 01:09:01,240
Speaker 2: It didn't really escape containment until Shrek. And it's funny

1228
01:09:01,240 --> 01:09:03,960
Speaker 2: because I think this is one of those weird instances

1229
01:09:04,040 --> 01:09:07,160
Speaker 2: where Cale is singing it in the movie but the

1230
01:09:07,320 --> 01:09:12,759
Speaker 2: sound yeah yeah, yeah, so that's even that's a weirder

1231
01:09:12,800 --> 01:09:13,400
Speaker 2: thing too.

1232
01:09:13,720 --> 01:09:16,799
Speaker 1: Is there another like big cover that I'm oh, Katie

1233
01:09:16,840 --> 01:09:20,760
Speaker 1: Lang Lang did a big version Pansatonics.

1234
01:09:21,720 --> 01:09:24,960
Speaker 2: That sounds awful that I would rather kill myself than

1235
01:09:25,000 --> 01:09:27,240
Speaker 2: listen to an a cappella group do a version of

1236
01:09:27,520 --> 01:09:30,760
Speaker 2: that song, especially like an acappella group that's so like

1237
01:09:30,960 --> 01:09:39,280
Speaker 2: self consciously virtuosic. Ugh, that's my two thousand and nine

1238
01:09:39,360 --> 01:09:42,720
Speaker 2: Cohen said, I think it's a good song, but I

1239
01:09:42,760 --> 01:09:44,240
Speaker 2: think too many people sing.

1240
01:09:44,040 --> 01:09:50,800
Speaker 1: It, says the man, I would assume earning checks every

1241
01:09:50,880 --> 01:09:52,040
Speaker 1: time somebody sings it.

1242
01:09:52,360 --> 01:09:57,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, well he's not earning anything anymore. But yeah. Timberlake

1243
01:09:57,680 --> 01:10:01,519
Speaker 2: performed it during the Hope for Haiti Now, which wasn't.

1244
01:10:01,320 --> 01:10:04,040
Speaker 1: This Oh, it was the one that y Cleft why

1245
01:10:04,080 --> 01:10:04,720
Speaker 1: cuff Jean Ye.

1246
01:10:04,840 --> 01:10:08,880
Speaker 2: This wasraud to be an enormous defrauded situation by y

1247
01:10:08,920 --> 01:10:09,599
Speaker 2: Cleft Sean.

1248
01:10:10,439 --> 01:10:13,080
Speaker 1: Allegedly allegedly allegedly for legal reasons, et cetera.

1249
01:10:14,040 --> 01:10:15,840
Speaker 2: No, I think he was actually convicted. I don't think

1250
01:10:15,880 --> 01:10:17,800
Speaker 2: we have to say that anymore. They sang it after

1251
01:10:18,000 --> 01:10:22,400
Speaker 2: Sandy Hook Boy Jesus Christ, This is gonna make me

1252
01:10:22,479 --> 01:10:27,040
Speaker 2: have a stroke. Adam Sandler performed an off cuddler parody

1253
01:10:27,080 --> 01:10:30,320
Speaker 2: of Hallelujah at Madison Square Garden as part of the

1254
01:10:30,360 --> 01:10:33,599
Speaker 2: concert for Hurricane Sandy Relief with Paul Schaef from piano.

1255
01:10:34,560 --> 01:10:38,720
Speaker 2: Sandler's version contained numerous references to Hurricane Sandy and contemporary

1256
01:10:38,760 --> 01:10:42,480
Speaker 2: events in local culture, sports, and politics.

1257
01:10:42,840 --> 01:10:46,080
Speaker 1: It was also the Senate live call open after the

1258
01:10:46,120 --> 01:10:48,080
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen election, with.

1259
01:10:48,960 --> 01:10:52,559
Speaker 2: Hilar racing Yeah yes, yes, aw Man Lincoln Park front

1260
01:10:52,560 --> 01:10:57,160
Speaker 2: Manchester Bennington saying Hallelujah at Chris Cornell's funeral in Hollywood.

1261
01:10:57,200 --> 01:10:59,640
Speaker 2: Forever did they die of the same year?

1262
01:11:00,120 --> 01:11:03,240
Speaker 1: Seventeen I think so Christmas seventeen.

1263
01:11:04,320 --> 01:11:09,000
Speaker 2: July and Cornell mess yeah, so like two months afterwards,

1264
01:11:09,000 --> 01:11:10,479
Speaker 2: and they were friends. I know they talked a lot

1265
01:11:10,479 --> 01:11:16,480
Speaker 2: about this kind of stuff. But that is tough, huh

1266
01:11:16,640 --> 01:11:20,000
Speaker 2: olia oh Man. Adam Sandler has has to answer for

1267
01:11:20,080 --> 01:11:23,320
Speaker 2: that elaborate for turning it into a parody song about

1268
01:11:23,360 --> 01:11:26,960
Speaker 2: Hurricane Sandy. Like, good lord, I'm not like, I'm not like.

1269
01:11:27,080 --> 01:11:29,200
Speaker 1: How do you turn something into a parody song about

1270
01:11:29,200 --> 01:11:29,840
Speaker 1: a disaster?

1271
01:11:30,200 --> 01:11:32,320
Speaker 2: That's the thing I don't understand. I'm gonna let I'm

1272
01:11:32,360 --> 01:11:36,439
Speaker 2: gonna let you and the listeners discuss. No, that's all right,

1273
01:11:37,000 --> 01:11:39,439
Speaker 2: I'm I will never listen to that. I'm so I

1274
01:11:39,520 --> 01:11:42,320
Speaker 2: gotta hate Adam Sandler. Red Letter Media did this whole

1275
01:11:42,360 --> 01:11:45,200
Speaker 2: breakdown about Jack and Jill about how his movies are

1276
01:11:45,560 --> 01:11:49,880
Speaker 2: probably not money laundering but basically embezzlement schemes because there's

1277
01:11:49,920 --> 01:11:52,760
Speaker 2: they look so shy, and they're shot so poorly and

1278
01:11:52,800 --> 01:11:56,240
Speaker 2: so badly, and they have these enormous budgets that he

1279
01:11:56,280 --> 01:12:00,000
Speaker 2: has got to be pocketing way more than his quarter

1280
01:12:00,040 --> 01:12:01,920
Speaker 2: un quote nominal fee for because it's all through his

1281
01:12:02,000 --> 01:12:05,679
Speaker 2: production company. That's interesting, Yeah, And also like he puts

1282
01:12:05,680 --> 01:12:08,320
Speaker 2: out like a movie every like four years that people

1283
01:12:08,360 --> 01:12:11,840
Speaker 2: have to obligatorily be like, well, actually, I'm Sandler's a

1284
01:12:11,880 --> 01:12:14,200
Speaker 2: good actor. Have you seen uncod Gems? And I just

1285
01:12:14,280 --> 01:12:16,920
Speaker 2: I want to scream it was a good movie. We

1286
01:12:17,080 --> 01:12:19,759
Speaker 2: used to let white people go so far on making

1287
01:12:19,840 --> 01:12:25,400
Speaker 2: goofy voices, like it was so easy for them, Mike Myers,

1288
01:12:25,439 --> 01:12:28,479
Speaker 2: Adam Sandler, a Jim Gaffigan, Like it was just you

1289
01:12:28,520 --> 01:12:31,200
Speaker 2: had to have like two funny voices, or in Sandler's case,

1290
01:12:31,280 --> 01:12:34,559
Speaker 2: one in your arsenal, and people would just bark like

1291
01:12:34,600 --> 01:12:36,679
Speaker 2: seals at you and throw millions at you.

1292
01:12:36,800 --> 01:12:42,000
Speaker 1: What's the what's the funny voice? Women did that back?

1293
01:12:42,439 --> 01:12:44,560
Speaker 2: I mean even on SNL, Like none of his characters

1294
01:12:44,640 --> 01:12:47,479
Speaker 2: like maybe Opera Man or like Cajun Man, but none

1295
01:12:47,520 --> 01:12:50,120
Speaker 2: of those like escaped containment. He's all in all of

1296
01:12:50,120 --> 01:12:53,240
Speaker 2: his movies. He only did that stupid voice and everyone

1297
01:12:53,360 --> 01:12:55,759
Speaker 2: was like, my god, comic mastermind of the nineties.

1298
01:12:56,120 --> 01:12:58,519
Speaker 1: Can I tell you a secret. I knew the silly voice.

1299
01:12:58,560 --> 01:12:59,720
Speaker 1: I just wanted to hear you do it.

1300
01:13:00,280 --> 01:13:01,479
Speaker 2: Oh, you son of a BITCHU.

1301
01:13:04,320 --> 01:13:06,519
Speaker 1: We're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be right

1302
01:13:06,600 --> 01:13:09,200
Speaker 1: back with more too much information in just a moment.

1303
01:13:17,479 --> 01:13:19,040
Speaker 2: Wow.

1304
01:13:22,720 --> 01:13:27,080
Speaker 1: So that is the extremely abbreviated story of Hallelujah.

1305
01:13:27,160 --> 01:13:32,599
Speaker 2: For more check out It goes blinding rage, rage towards it,

1306
01:13:33,160 --> 01:13:35,559
Speaker 2: not towards it as no, not towards the song.

1307
01:13:35,680 --> 01:13:39,080
Speaker 1: No, the song is innocent, except for the Leonard Coen version.

1308
01:13:39,120 --> 01:13:40,559
Speaker 1: That one that's a tough listen.

1309
01:13:40,880 --> 01:13:45,479
Speaker 2: It is affair with synthesizers was really tragic one.

1310
01:13:45,600 --> 01:13:48,679
Speaker 1: Yeah, how long is his version?

1311
01:13:49,240 --> 01:13:49,519
Speaker 2: Is it?

1312
01:13:49,600 --> 01:13:52,519
Speaker 1: Like? Because he didn't sing like eighty verses, did he

1313
01:13:53,040 --> 01:13:55,719
Speaker 1: that's a good question. Yeah, it's only four minutes thirty

1314
01:13:55,800 --> 01:13:59,519
Speaker 1: nine seconds. So moving on from a Hallelujah, there's one

1315
01:13:59,600 --> 01:14:02,040
Speaker 1: song that didn't make the final cut of the album,

1316
01:14:02,439 --> 01:14:05,160
Speaker 1: and it's called Forget Her, and it came just days

1317
01:14:05,160 --> 01:14:08,320
Speaker 1: before sessions were due to end. Jeff brought the song

1318
01:14:08,400 --> 01:14:10,559
Speaker 1: in half finished and they work up a quick arrangement

1319
01:14:10,560 --> 01:14:13,040
Speaker 1: on the spot, and producer Andy Wallace and A and

1320
01:14:13,120 --> 01:14:16,040
Speaker 1: R man Steve Berkerwitz were blown away by what they heard.

1321
01:14:16,800 --> 01:14:19,160
Speaker 1: Even though Jeff said the lyrics weren't finished, he was

1322
01:14:19,200 --> 01:14:21,479
Speaker 1: persuaded to take a shot at the vocals on the spot,

1323
01:14:22,400 --> 01:14:26,360
Speaker 1: and the lyrics that came out I presumably extemporaneously were

1324
01:14:26,520 --> 01:14:32,360
Speaker 1: extremely and uncharacteristically venomous about a woman who was quote

1325
01:14:32,400 --> 01:14:35,880
Speaker 1: heartbreak the moment you met her. All assumed this was

1326
01:14:35,920 --> 01:14:39,479
Speaker 1: about his rapidly deteriorating relationship with his girlfriend, Rebecca Moore.

1327
01:14:40,400 --> 01:14:44,920
Speaker 1: The record executives, showing their trademark sensitivity and compassion, seems

1328
01:14:44,960 --> 01:14:47,200
Speaker 1: not to care. They felt like it was a hit,

1329
01:14:47,280 --> 01:14:50,880
Speaker 1: and they were thrilled upon hearing it. Forget Her was

1330
01:14:50,880 --> 01:14:53,400
Speaker 1: included on early test pressings of Grace, and it was

1331
01:14:53,439 --> 01:14:56,799
Speaker 1: even earmarked to be a single, But still Jeff felt

1332
01:14:56,880 --> 01:14:59,960
Speaker 1: uneasy about it, and weeks after the sessions for Grace

1333
01:15:00,240 --> 01:15:02,720
Speaker 1: wrapped in the spring of nineteen ninety four, he and

1334
01:15:02,760 --> 01:15:05,759
Speaker 1: his band gathered once again to record some B sides,

1335
01:15:06,320 --> 01:15:08,880
Speaker 1: and Jeff decided to finish a new song that would

1336
01:15:08,880 --> 01:15:12,639
Speaker 1: becomes so Real, a title that always cracked me up,

1337
01:15:13,520 --> 01:15:16,040
Speaker 1: with a backing track for so Real Complete. He took

1338
01:15:16,040 --> 01:15:18,479
Speaker 1: a walk around the block to finish the words, and

1339
01:15:18,600 --> 01:15:21,800
Speaker 1: much like forget Her, it came very quickly that one

1340
01:15:21,800 --> 01:15:22,599
Speaker 1: I produced live.

1341
01:15:23,040 --> 01:15:25,040
Speaker 2: Oh. I was just thinking of the Jennifer Lopez song

1342
01:15:25,120 --> 01:15:29,760
Speaker 2: like uh Real, oh wow, so Real.

1343
01:15:31,640 --> 01:15:34,840
Speaker 1: That one I produced live all one moment, Buckley told

1344
01:15:34,920 --> 01:15:38,080
Speaker 1: Juice magazine in nineteen ninety six. We recorded the vocal

1345
01:15:38,120 --> 01:15:40,519
Speaker 1: in one take, all in one take. It was three

1346
01:15:40,560 --> 01:15:44,680
Speaker 1: o'clock in the morning. Jeff ultimately decided to swap so

1347
01:15:44,800 --> 01:15:47,000
Speaker 1: Real in for forget Her on the track list, a

1348
01:15:47,120 --> 01:15:49,640
Speaker 1: choice that led to much hand ringing at Columbia and

1349
01:15:49,760 --> 01:15:52,920
Speaker 1: our man Steve Berkowitz says in David Brown's book Dream Brother,

1350
01:15:53,439 --> 01:15:56,719
Speaker 1: Obviously I did not share Jeff's feeling. I thought forget

1351
01:15:56,760 --> 01:15:59,439
Speaker 1: Her was the song the largest mass of people would

1352
01:15:59,439 --> 01:16:02,960
Speaker 1: be able to identify with. Label chiefs took Jeff to

1353
01:16:03,000 --> 01:16:05,720
Speaker 1: dinner at a fancy Upper West Side Italian restaurant and

1354
01:16:05,760 --> 01:16:09,800
Speaker 1: attempted to change his mind. Jeff was unmoved. I'm just

1355
01:16:09,800 --> 01:16:11,880
Speaker 1: imagining that meme of the guy sitting at the table

1356
01:16:11,880 --> 01:16:13,800
Speaker 1: at the sign that says changed my mind in a big,

1357
01:16:13,880 --> 01:16:16,880
Speaker 1: dry yeah yeah, Jeff said, if I hear that song again,

1358
01:16:16,920 --> 01:16:19,760
Speaker 1: I'm gonna throw up. Not a whole lot anyone could

1359
01:16:19,760 --> 01:16:22,240
Speaker 1: really say to that, so the matter was dropped soon after.

1360
01:16:23,720 --> 01:16:26,679
Speaker 1: Jeff never spoke openly about his exact reasons for switching

1361
01:16:26,680 --> 01:16:29,080
Speaker 1: the songs, but most believe it was because he felt

1362
01:16:29,280 --> 01:16:31,960
Speaker 1: Forget Her was much too personal and he didn't wish

1363
01:16:32,000 --> 01:16:33,960
Speaker 1: to put his ex on blast in such a way.

1364
01:16:34,360 --> 01:16:37,240
Speaker 1: Others believed he hated how much the studio executives loved

1365
01:16:37,280 --> 01:16:40,080
Speaker 1: it and was turned off by how chart friendly it sounded.

1366
01:16:41,240 --> 01:16:44,639
Speaker 1: Uh be kind of touched on this earlier. Jeff's suspicion

1367
01:16:44,680 --> 01:16:48,639
Speaker 1: of major label attention is something that he never really

1368
01:16:48,680 --> 01:16:51,559
Speaker 1: got over, and it's articulated in many notes that he'd

1369
01:16:51,600 --> 01:16:54,320
Speaker 1: written to himself and others that were compiled into the

1370
01:16:54,439 --> 01:16:57,879
Speaker 1: scrap book Jeff Buckley his Own Voice in twenty nineteen.

1371
01:16:58,640 --> 01:17:01,960
Speaker 1: One memorable note read, I don't write my music for Sony.

1372
01:17:02,080 --> 01:17:04,160
Speaker 1: I write it for the people who are screaming down

1373
01:17:04,160 --> 01:17:08,120
Speaker 1: the road, crying to a full blast stereo. There's also

1374
01:17:08,280 --> 01:17:11,280
Speaker 1: music I'll make that will never ever ever be for sale.

1375
01:17:11,840 --> 01:17:14,639
Speaker 1: This is my music alone. This is my true home

1376
01:17:15,439 --> 01:17:18,040
Speaker 1: from which all things are born, and from which all

1377
01:17:18,080 --> 01:17:22,880
Speaker 1: my life will spring, untainted and unworried, fully of my

1378
01:17:23,000 --> 01:17:27,600
Speaker 1: own body. Okay, Buddy, I was waiting. I'm amazed it

1379
01:17:27,640 --> 01:17:29,240
Speaker 1: took this long in this episode to get.

1380
01:17:29,120 --> 01:17:31,960
Speaker 2: To that point with you. Yeah, I just I mean,

1381
01:17:32,479 --> 01:17:36,599
Speaker 2: it's impossible for me to have anything but retroactive scorn

1382
01:17:36,840 --> 01:17:40,799
Speaker 2: for people griping about the music industry, throwing the millions

1383
01:17:40,800 --> 01:17:41,559
Speaker 2: of dollars like.

1384
01:17:43,640 --> 01:17:45,400
Speaker 1: They didn't know how bad it was gonna get.

1385
01:17:46,000 --> 01:17:49,360
Speaker 2: Yeah, they sure didn't. I mean, God, there's like, if

1386
01:17:49,439 --> 01:17:51,639
Speaker 2: Buckley was like alive today, there would be like four

1387
01:17:51,760 --> 01:17:55,200
Speaker 2: thousand kids like burying him on TikTok before he even

1388
01:17:55,720 --> 01:17:59,280
Speaker 2: made it to Shane, like they yeah, never mind.

1389
01:17:59,520 --> 01:18:03,200
Speaker 1: To like coffee shop musicians. Still even is that still

1390
01:18:03,200 --> 01:18:05,400
Speaker 1: even a thing? I like to hope it is.

1391
01:18:06,320 --> 01:18:09,000
Speaker 2: It's certainly the only economically viable thing anymore. We are

1392
01:18:09,040 --> 01:18:10,280
Speaker 2: you gonna take a band on tour?

1393
01:18:11,120 --> 01:18:14,240
Speaker 1: True, So Columbia hated that he edged out forget her

1394
01:18:14,479 --> 01:18:17,240
Speaker 1: for so real, And another thing Columbia hated was the

1395
01:18:17,280 --> 01:18:20,559
Speaker 1: cover for Grace, or rather Jeff's choice for a cover

1396
01:18:20,640 --> 01:18:23,719
Speaker 1: portrait for those of you who don't remember. It depicts

1397
01:18:23,800 --> 01:18:26,559
Speaker 1: Jeff clad and a woman's sequin jacket, with his eyes

1398
01:18:26,640 --> 01:18:30,800
Speaker 1: soulfully closed, clutching a vintage microphone. It was shot by

1399
01:18:30,800 --> 01:18:33,760
Speaker 1: his friend Mary Cyril, who recalls Jeff showing up at

1400
01:18:33,800 --> 01:18:37,240
Speaker 1: her Williamsburg studio at the end of nineteen ninety three.

1401
01:18:37,360 --> 01:18:40,760
Speaker 1: She recalled in Jeff Buckley from Halleluja to the Last Goodbye.

1402
01:18:41,200 --> 01:18:43,799
Speaker 1: We shot it in this loft belonging to my friend Billy.

1403
01:18:44,320 --> 01:18:47,439
Speaker 1: The loft had weird architecture, vaulted ceilings and a lot

1404
01:18:47,479 --> 01:18:50,759
Speaker 1: of natural light in the stairwells, which is beautiful. Billy

1405
01:18:50,760 --> 01:18:53,400
Speaker 1: had made a small stage area inside the loft. He

1406
01:18:53,400 --> 01:18:56,760
Speaker 1: actually did little events there with cabaret acts. Jeff had

1407
01:18:56,760 --> 01:18:59,439
Speaker 1: brought this Duffel bag full of his clothes, all smashed

1408
01:18:59,439 --> 01:19:02,360
Speaker 1: in there, none of them pressed or even clean. There

1409
01:19:02,400 --> 01:19:04,840
Speaker 1: was a giant bed, and Jeff emptied his bag onto

1410
01:19:04,880 --> 01:19:07,559
Speaker 1: it and spread his clothes all over the bed. I

1411
01:19:07,600 --> 01:19:10,280
Speaker 1: selected items from what he'd brought to go with each setup,

1412
01:19:10,320 --> 01:19:12,280
Speaker 1: and the jacket that he wore what ultimately became the

1413
01:19:12,320 --> 01:19:15,559
Speaker 1: cover photo was obtained from a local thrift shop, and

1414
01:19:15,600 --> 01:19:20,439
Speaker 1: he called it his Judy Garland Glitter Jacket. Photographer Mary

1415
01:19:20,479 --> 01:19:23,679
Speaker 1: Seel added to author Jeff Apter, there was one point

1416
01:19:23,720 --> 01:19:26,519
Speaker 1: when he was eating this banana and I went, okay,

1417
01:19:26,880 --> 01:19:29,879
Speaker 1: it sort of sid Vicious meets Leonard Cohen meets Elvis

1418
01:19:30,000 --> 01:19:32,960
Speaker 1: or something like that. Even the ones where he's looking

1419
01:19:33,000 --> 01:19:36,439
Speaker 1: so broody from a comic series of pictures, he was

1420
01:19:36,479 --> 01:19:37,200
Speaker 1: just rown.

1421
01:19:37,320 --> 01:19:37,519
Speaker 2: You know.

1422
01:19:38,720 --> 01:19:41,320
Speaker 1: He's actually listening to a playback of the song dream

1423
01:19:41,400 --> 01:19:44,280
Speaker 1: Brother in the cover shot, which is ultimately what drew

1424
01:19:44,400 --> 01:19:46,800
Speaker 1: him to it. When I presented with an assortment of

1425
01:19:46,800 --> 01:19:49,760
Speaker 1: potential images, Jeff immediately pointed to it and said, this

1426
01:19:49,880 --> 01:19:52,719
Speaker 1: is the one. I love it because I'm listening to music.

1427
01:19:53,560 --> 01:19:58,280
Speaker 1: It basically showed him at peace. Label executives, however, were

1428
01:19:58,320 --> 01:20:01,120
Speaker 1: not at peace. It's the theme of this section. They

1429
01:20:01,120 --> 01:20:04,040
Speaker 1: were disturbed by his lack of eye contact, not to

1430
01:20:04,080 --> 01:20:08,320
Speaker 1: mention his glam rock attire. Sonny had Don Einer was

1431
01:20:08,600 --> 01:20:11,559
Speaker 1: very much not pleased, apparently shouting he looks like a

1432
01:20:11,840 --> 01:20:16,280
Speaker 1: found singer. Upon seeing the photo, he toned it down

1433
01:20:16,320 --> 01:20:18,320
Speaker 1: a bit. When being interviewed for the book Dream Brother.

1434
01:20:18,360 --> 01:20:22,479
Speaker 1: A few years later, after Jeff's death, Sparkley Jacket sent

1435
01:20:22,560 --> 01:20:25,400
Speaker 1: a different message than we wanted. He said it was

1436
01:20:25,439 --> 01:20:28,920
Speaker 1: a little flashy, we thought, compared to the earthiness of Shine.

1437
01:20:29,280 --> 01:20:32,479
Speaker 1: We tried to steer him away from it. Others at

1438
01:20:32,520 --> 01:20:34,920
Speaker 1: the label thought it made him look like adam ant

1439
01:20:35,240 --> 01:20:39,960
Speaker 1: the eighties new wave, slightly ridiculous skin Oh, you're right,

1440
01:20:39,960 --> 01:20:42,120
Speaker 1: you're right, you're right, new romantic, that was the term

1441
01:20:42,160 --> 01:20:45,759
Speaker 1: they preferred, kind of more ridiculous than new wave.

1442
01:20:46,280 --> 01:20:51,160
Speaker 2: It is yes, okay because of the makeup, makeup, yeah yeah.

1443
01:20:51,320 --> 01:20:54,240
Speaker 1: Jeff fought for days, as co manager said, it was

1444
01:20:54,280 --> 01:20:57,400
Speaker 1: like pulling teeth, but eventually he got the photo that

1445
01:20:57,439 --> 01:21:00,879
Speaker 1: he wanted, and photographer Mary Ceyl had a very interesting

1446
01:21:00,920 --> 01:21:03,759
Speaker 1: take on the choice. She said it captured his quote

1447
01:21:03,800 --> 01:21:07,000
Speaker 1: split personality. He wanted to be on this major label

1448
01:21:07,040 --> 01:21:09,719
Speaker 1: and get all this worldwide exposure, but he also wanted

1449
01:21:09,720 --> 01:21:11,880
Speaker 1: to act like he was on an indie label. I

1450
01:21:11,920 --> 01:21:14,280
Speaker 1: think he envied that freedom he had in the beginning

1451
01:21:14,280 --> 01:21:17,280
Speaker 1: at Hine, when he wasn't being judged by the specific

1452
01:21:17,320 --> 01:21:17,920
Speaker 1: point of view.

1453
01:21:18,439 --> 01:21:21,439
Speaker 2: I don't know. He was so handsome, like who's gonna

1454
01:21:21,479 --> 01:21:25,000
Speaker 2: do who? I don't know. Speaking of Jeff Buckley's handsomeness,

1455
01:21:25,000 --> 01:21:27,160
Speaker 2: now we have to talk about the movie and the

1456
01:21:27,240 --> 01:21:28,200
Speaker 2: Kmart ad.

1457
01:21:28,600 --> 01:21:30,599
Speaker 1: One of ESOPs less successful fables.

1458
01:21:30,760 --> 01:21:33,280
Speaker 2: Like most creative people who are super attractive but want

1459
01:21:33,320 --> 01:21:36,439
Speaker 2: to be taken seriously, Jeff had an uneasy relationship with

1460
01:21:36,479 --> 01:21:39,760
Speaker 2: his handsomeness because he feared it distracted from his art.

1461
01:21:39,880 --> 01:21:42,760
Speaker 2: He was, for example, mortified when People magazine named him

1462
01:21:42,760 --> 01:21:45,519
Speaker 2: one of the fifty most Beautiful People of nineteen ninety five,

1463
01:21:46,080 --> 01:21:47,920
Speaker 2: and when a fan asked him to sign the issue,

1464
01:21:47,920 --> 01:21:49,760
Speaker 2: he said about playfully defacing it.

1465
01:21:50,640 --> 01:21:53,080
Speaker 1: The funny part is, we know the people who would

1466
01:21:53,080 --> 01:21:53,839
Speaker 1: have been choosing.

1467
01:21:54,160 --> 01:21:56,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, those people when we were there, were there in

1468
01:21:56,880 --> 01:21:57,840
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety five.

1469
01:21:58,640 --> 01:21:58,800
Speaker 1: Uh.

1470
01:21:59,240 --> 01:22:01,760
Speaker 2: But when Jeff was young and hungry, he used his

1471
01:22:01,800 --> 01:22:04,479
Speaker 2: face to help pay the bills, his face if he

1472
01:22:04,600 --> 01:22:05,000
Speaker 2: was lucky.

1473
01:22:07,560 --> 01:22:09,719
Speaker 1: And I wrote that too, and it didn't even occur

1474
01:22:09,800 --> 01:22:11,600
Speaker 1: to me. Oh.

1475
01:22:11,720 --> 01:22:15,639
Speaker 2: While competing with the cappuccino machine at Schenet, he tried

1476
01:22:15,680 --> 01:22:18,280
Speaker 2: out for acting gigs, even auditioning to play a kmart

1477
01:22:18,320 --> 01:22:21,080
Speaker 2: shopper in an ad. He was turned down, but then

1478
01:22:21,120 --> 01:22:23,760
Speaker 2: the Gap approached him the following year. Then some he

1479
01:22:23,800 --> 01:22:26,000
Speaker 2: turned them down, apparently because he'd been fired as a

1480
01:22:26,000 --> 01:22:28,920
Speaker 2: clerk at Banana Republic, part of the Gap family of

1481
01:22:28,960 --> 01:22:30,960
Speaker 2: brands years earlier.

1482
01:22:30,880 --> 01:22:36,800
Speaker 1: For being inaccurately accused of shoplifting apparently. Oh fascinating. I

1483
01:22:36,800 --> 01:22:38,880
Speaker 1: thought when you're attractive, he can just take things. He

1484
01:22:38,920 --> 01:22:39,880
Speaker 1: probably thought so too.

1485
01:22:42,200 --> 01:22:45,160
Speaker 2: Following the release in success of Grays, Though, Buckley started

1486
01:22:45,160 --> 01:22:48,599
Speaker 2: to get better acting offers. According to co manager Dave Lorie,

1487
01:22:48,960 --> 01:22:51,200
Speaker 2: he was asked to play the role of the student

1488
01:22:51,520 --> 01:22:54,679
Speaker 2: in the nineteen ninety six Barbara Streisen film The Mirror

1489
01:22:54,760 --> 01:22:57,320
Speaker 2: Has Two Faces. Jordan tell us about The Mirror Has

1490
01:22:57,360 --> 01:22:57,920
Speaker 2: Two Faces.

1491
01:22:58,479 --> 01:23:01,160
Speaker 1: I have no idea, but I believe that part went

1492
01:23:01,200 --> 01:23:03,800
Speaker 1: on to be played uncredited by Eli Roth.

1493
01:23:04,120 --> 01:23:09,720
Speaker 2: That's sickening. He got offered that role, and that was

1494
01:23:09,760 --> 01:23:13,000
Speaker 2: one of many. Laurie says a wished for song. He

1495
01:23:13,040 --> 01:23:14,800
Speaker 2: turned out a lot of money to write the theme

1496
01:23:14,880 --> 01:23:18,320
Speaker 2: song for a Quentin Tarantino film, It's wacky.

1497
01:23:18,479 --> 01:23:22,439
Speaker 1: Yeah, So wait a minute, I mean it could really only.

1498
01:23:22,280 --> 01:23:24,320
Speaker 2: Be Stu a little let's do it's got it? Yeah,

1499
01:23:24,360 --> 01:23:24,679
Speaker 2: go ahead.

1500
01:23:24,720 --> 01:23:26,640
Speaker 1: It could only be pulp fiction, which came out in

1501
01:23:26,720 --> 01:23:28,920
Speaker 1: ninety four, which means that they would have asked him

1502
01:23:28,920 --> 01:23:31,840
Speaker 1: when he was like a young upcoming or Jackie Brown

1503
01:23:31,920 --> 01:23:32,679
Speaker 1: in ninety seven.

1504
01:23:33,040 --> 01:23:35,479
Speaker 2: It must it has to be Jackie Brown by process

1505
01:23:35,520 --> 01:23:38,599
Speaker 2: of elimination because pulp fiction is all like found sounds.

1506
01:23:38,600 --> 01:23:40,280
Speaker 2: I don't think there's an original song in there.

1507
01:23:40,600 --> 01:23:44,240
Speaker 1: No, you're right, but jack I just can't imagine.

1508
01:23:44,360 --> 01:23:46,599
Speaker 2: And it would have been Jackie's reduction in ninety if

1509
01:23:46,640 --> 01:23:49,599
Speaker 2: that was in production in nineteen ninety three, I don't

1510
01:23:49,600 --> 01:23:52,240
Speaker 2: think he would have. Yeah, there's no way that he

1511
01:23:52,280 --> 01:23:54,479
Speaker 2: would have been in contention for that.

1512
01:23:54,880 --> 01:23:58,000
Speaker 1: But Jackie Brown, I just can't imagine a Jeff Buckley

1513
01:23:58,040 --> 01:24:02,360
Speaker 1: song in a blaxploitation parody.

1514
01:24:03,880 --> 01:24:07,400
Speaker 2: Actually, now that I'm not that Yeah, now that I'm

1515
01:24:07,400 --> 01:24:11,360
Speaker 2: looking at it, Jackie Brown doesn't have doesn't have contemporaneous

1516
01:24:11,400 --> 01:24:16,120
Speaker 2: music either. Oh wait, I lied. It has Slash's snake

1517
01:24:16,200 --> 01:24:18,879
Speaker 2: Pit Slash from cunsin Roses Solar Project.

1518
01:24:19,720 --> 01:24:22,120
Speaker 1: Can you guess the name of well, name the song?

1519
01:24:22,960 --> 01:24:27,600
Speaker 2: Yes, I'll just stop you right now. It's an instrumental

1520
01:24:27,640 --> 01:24:29,000
Speaker 2: track called Jizz de Pit.

1521
01:24:29,479 --> 01:24:33,080
Speaker 1: What's the middle word duh oh lowercase da. He can

1522
01:24:33,120 --> 01:24:33,479
Speaker 1: say that.

1523
01:24:33,560 --> 01:24:36,400
Speaker 2: Though. This has to have been some kind of like

1524
01:24:36,680 --> 01:24:39,760
Speaker 2: Mirrormax thing where they were like, let's get so, let's

1525
01:24:39,800 --> 01:24:42,160
Speaker 2: get a hot young guy to write this song. I

1526
01:24:42,200 --> 01:24:44,160
Speaker 2: have no idea. I can't find any.

1527
01:24:44,080 --> 01:24:48,040
Speaker 1: Maybe it was unrealized. Maybe Quentin was like, oh, man

1528
01:24:48,120 --> 01:24:50,080
Speaker 1: Buckley doesn't want to do a song, Well, all right,

1529
01:24:50,120 --> 01:24:51,639
Speaker 1: well I guess I'll do Jackie Brown.

1530
01:24:53,280 --> 01:24:56,439
Speaker 2: H that is funny. I wonder what unrealized? Does Quentin

1531
01:24:56,439 --> 01:24:58,240
Speaker 2: Tarantina have a bunch of unrealized projects.

1532
01:24:58,280 --> 01:25:00,479
Speaker 1: I almost could see him not I could see him

1533
01:25:00,520 --> 01:25:01,800
Speaker 1: just being like, this is what I want to do,

1534
01:25:02,080 --> 01:25:04,080
Speaker 1: and then yeah, oh.

1535
01:25:04,080 --> 01:25:08,879
Speaker 2: No, there's a Wikipedia for unrealized projects. Untitled Luke Cage

1536
01:25:08,960 --> 01:25:11,960
Speaker 2: film that makes sense, The Man from Uncle.

1537
01:25:12,240 --> 01:25:14,719
Speaker 1: Oh wow, well that got made eventually.

1538
01:25:15,040 --> 01:25:21,240
Speaker 2: Yeah, a remake of Luccio Fulci's Gallo movie. An untitled

1539
01:25:21,240 --> 01:25:25,280
Speaker 2: Silver Surfer film, untitled Green Lantin film, untitled Iron Man film.

1540
01:25:25,680 --> 01:25:28,120
Speaker 2: Maybe it was for this film The Killer Inside Me.

1541
01:25:28,560 --> 01:25:30,080
Speaker 2: I don't know, this is gonna haunt me. This is

1542
01:25:30,080 --> 01:25:31,879
Speaker 2: like really gonna haunt my life.

1543
01:25:32,360 --> 01:25:32,519
Speaker 1: Um.

1544
01:25:34,120 --> 01:25:36,720
Speaker 2: Instead, Buckley would throw himself into a new album. He

1545
01:25:36,760 --> 01:25:39,519
Speaker 2: tapped Tom Verlaine of television to produce The Fallow Up

1546
01:25:39,560 --> 01:25:43,360
Speaker 2: to Grace, overseeing tortured sessions that dragged on for months.

1547
01:25:43,880 --> 01:25:46,479
Speaker 2: We should mention also that in between this, Buckley and

1548
01:25:46,520 --> 01:25:49,320
Speaker 2: his band went on tour for like a year and

1549
01:25:49,360 --> 01:25:54,240
Speaker 2: a half, and I think relationships between the drummer and

1550
01:25:54,280 --> 01:25:56,439
Speaker 2: the rest of the band broke down around that time,

1551
01:25:56,520 --> 01:25:58,439
Speaker 2: so that was also an issue that he was facing.

1552
01:25:58,560 --> 01:26:01,760
Speaker 2: Why did that happen? I don't know. I just saw

1553
01:26:01,800 --> 01:26:04,800
Speaker 2: that sighted as like a complicating factor in the time

1554
01:26:04,840 --> 01:26:09,040
Speaker 2: between the tour and his follow up. And so he

1555
01:26:09,080 --> 01:26:12,040
Speaker 2: was living in Memphis in February of nineteen ninety seven.

1556
01:26:12,240 --> 01:26:15,000
Speaker 2: He was performing there under a lot of unassumed nay are,

1557
01:26:15,080 --> 01:26:17,599
Speaker 2: a lot of fake names, and had a little shotgun

1558
01:26:17,640 --> 01:26:19,479
Speaker 2: shock that he liked so much he offered to buy

1559
01:26:19,520 --> 01:26:22,639
Speaker 2: it from the owner. And you know the quiet part

1560
01:26:22,680 --> 01:26:25,320
Speaker 2: out loud is that that's where he died. He waded

1561
01:26:25,360 --> 01:26:29,200
Speaker 2: into a channel of the Mississippi called what is it?

1562
01:26:29,200 --> 01:26:33,200
Speaker 2: It's called something Wolf River. Yeah. In May of nineteen

1563
01:26:33,280 --> 01:26:36,760
Speaker 2: ninety seven, Buckley waded fully clothed into a channel of

1564
01:26:36,800 --> 01:26:41,040
Speaker 2: the Mississippi River called the Wolf River, and his roady

1565
01:26:41,120 --> 01:26:44,080
Speaker 2: Keith Fody, told Rolling Stone then as Buckley waded in,

1566
01:26:44,240 --> 01:26:47,360
Speaker 2: he said, you can't swim in there. Buckley was cold, sober,

1567
01:26:47,400 --> 01:26:51,919
Speaker 2: as toxicology reports would later reveal, and in Fody's recollection

1568
01:26:52,000 --> 01:26:54,280
Speaker 2: of this event in The Rolling Stone, he said that

1569
01:26:54,360 --> 01:26:57,120
Speaker 2: he saw a boat coming down the channel and was

1570
01:26:57,160 --> 01:27:00,840
Speaker 2: trying to warn Jeff to swim back to shore, and

1571
01:27:00,880 --> 01:27:03,040
Speaker 2: as the boat passed, Jeff was caught in its wake

1572
01:27:03,120 --> 01:27:08,519
Speaker 2: and undertow, and he vanished from sight. His body washed

1573
01:27:08,600 --> 01:27:11,400
Speaker 2: up five days later at the feet of Memphis famed

1574
01:27:11,439 --> 01:27:15,320
Speaker 2: Beale Street. His final recordings would be released as a

1575
01:27:15,360 --> 01:27:19,000
Speaker 2: posthumous record called Sketches for My Sweetheart The Drunk in

1576
01:27:19,040 --> 01:27:21,400
Speaker 2: May of nineteen ninety eight, a year after his death,

1577
01:27:21,479 --> 01:27:24,519
Speaker 2: in a project that was largely shepherded along by Chris Cornell,

1578
01:27:25,200 --> 01:27:27,640
Speaker 2: but one that may have pissed off Buckley, who was

1579
01:27:27,720 --> 01:27:30,960
Speaker 2: a known perfectionist. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

1580
01:27:31,320 --> 01:27:36,120
Speaker 1: Jordans Grace was released in August nineteen ninety four. It

1581
01:27:36,160 --> 01:27:39,479
Speaker 1: didn't exactly set the charts on fire. The string laden

1582
01:27:39,560 --> 01:27:43,280
Speaker 1: Laskabie cracked the top twenty of Billboard's Alternative Song Charts.

1583
01:27:43,960 --> 01:27:46,519
Speaker 2: I didn't write that, thank you for adding yes, thank you.

1584
01:27:47,160 --> 01:27:49,519
Speaker 1: But still it earned critical acclaim from some of the

1585
01:27:49,520 --> 01:27:53,439
Speaker 1: most respected names in the industry. David Bowie, speaking to

1586
01:27:53,520 --> 01:27:56,439
Speaker 1: paulse sighted the album as one he'd take with him

1587
01:27:56,479 --> 01:28:01,880
Speaker 1: to a desert island. High praise. Paul McCartney visited Jeff

1588
01:28:01,920 --> 01:28:05,320
Speaker 1: backstage during a show at New York's Roseland Ballroom. Rip

1589
01:28:06,120 --> 01:28:09,240
Speaker 1: Bono declared the singer quote a pure drop in an

1590
01:28:09,320 --> 01:28:13,360
Speaker 1: ocean of noise in the YouTube fan magazine Propaganda, and

1591
01:28:13,479 --> 01:28:18,080
Speaker 1: later dedicated numerous shows on the PopMart tour to Jeff

1592
01:28:18,200 --> 01:28:21,880
Speaker 1: following his death. Is that the one where they would

1593
01:28:21,880 --> 01:28:23,320
Speaker 1: bring like cars and stuff?

1594
01:28:23,360 --> 01:28:26,479
Speaker 2: And yeah? Is there no one cool that Bono won't

1595
01:28:26,479 --> 01:28:28,719
Speaker 2: attach himself to in an effort to seem cooler?

1596
01:28:29,160 --> 01:28:31,280
Speaker 1: What were we just talking about? Somebody who was like, yeah,

1597
01:28:31,479 --> 01:28:33,519
Speaker 1: oh no, it was Boby. Moby was like Bono said

1598
01:28:33,560 --> 01:28:34,320
Speaker 1: it was cool.

1599
01:28:34,120 --> 01:28:36,000
Speaker 2: Right, maybe yes, yes, yes. Day.

1600
01:28:36,040 --> 01:28:41,680
Speaker 1: Around this time, Tom Yorke reportedly recorded his vocals for

1601
01:28:41,760 --> 01:28:45,719
Speaker 1: the Ben's track Fake Plastic Trees after witnessing Buckley perform

1602
01:28:45,760 --> 01:28:49,160
Speaker 1: at the Garage in London. Radio Head producer John Lecky

1603
01:28:49,240 --> 01:28:51,840
Speaker 1: later observed it made Tom realize you could sing in

1604
01:28:51,880 --> 01:28:55,800
Speaker 1: a falsetto without sounding dripping. Think of that which you will.

1605
01:28:55,840 --> 01:28:57,200
Speaker 1: That's a bit of British slang.

1606
01:28:57,240 --> 01:28:59,720
Speaker 2: I don't know that performance of Fake Plastic Trees is

1607
01:29:00,439 --> 01:29:02,920
Speaker 2: incredible on the record or is there a live one?

1608
01:29:03,000 --> 01:29:04,920
Speaker 2: Yeah on the record. I mean that's one of my

1609
01:29:04,920 --> 01:29:08,480
Speaker 2: favorite Radiohead songs. Actually, oh yeah.

1610
01:29:08,600 --> 01:29:12,520
Speaker 1: In the weeks after his death, Jeff's mother told Now magazine.

1611
01:29:12,760 --> 01:29:15,640
Speaker 1: Even Bob Dylan, in an interview with the French magazine,

1612
01:29:15,800 --> 01:29:19,160
Speaker 1: named Jeff as one of the great songwriters of this decade.

1613
01:29:19,520 --> 01:29:22,360
Speaker 1: This is hilarious to me because Jeff once pissed Bob

1614
01:29:22,400 --> 01:29:24,879
Speaker 1: off with an on stage impression of him in November

1615
01:29:24,880 --> 01:29:27,919
Speaker 1: of nineteen ninety three, leading him to write his Columbia

1616
01:29:27,960 --> 01:29:31,080
Speaker 1: label mate a contrite letter, which is featured in the

1617
01:29:31,080 --> 01:29:33,760
Speaker 1: aforementioned scrap book that was published a few years back.

1618
01:29:34,600 --> 01:29:37,519
Speaker 1: He writes, in part, the truth is that I was

1619
01:29:37,600 --> 01:29:40,000
Speaker 1: off on a tangent on a stage, my mind going

1620
01:29:40,040 --> 01:29:42,519
Speaker 1: where it goes, trying to be funny, and it wasn't

1621
01:29:42,520 --> 01:29:47,320
Speaker 1: funny at all. And I shop the letter you can

1622
01:29:47,320 --> 01:29:50,839
Speaker 1: see it in full. It's pretty funny. But for Jeff Buckley,

1623
01:29:51,360 --> 01:29:54,080
Speaker 1: the one time medalhead who grew up worshiping led Zeppelin,

1624
01:29:54,520 --> 01:29:58,040
Speaker 1: the most meaningful praise came from Jimmy Page himself.

1625
01:29:59,240 --> 01:29:59,680
Speaker 2: I love this.

1626
01:30:00,080 --> 01:30:03,639
Speaker 1: Early collaborator remembers asking Jeff about his professional five year

1627
01:30:03,720 --> 01:30:08,120
Speaker 1: plan when he was like probably seventeen eighteen, and he said,

1628
01:30:08,160 --> 01:30:10,000
Speaker 1: I want to make an album that makes people forget

1629
01:30:10,040 --> 01:30:13,400
Speaker 1: about led Zeppelin two. So this was part of the

1630
01:30:13,400 --> 01:30:14,400
Speaker 1: plan from early on.

1631
01:30:14,560 --> 01:30:16,880
Speaker 2: It's interesting though, because I think he said that led

1632
01:30:16,960 --> 01:30:20,519
Speaker 2: Zeppelin two was the record that his stepdad gave him

1633
01:30:20,600 --> 01:30:23,200
Speaker 2: that like blew his mind as far as heavy music went.

1634
01:30:23,240 --> 01:30:26,519
Speaker 2: But he later said led Zeppelin three was really his favorite.

1635
01:30:26,520 --> 01:30:29,080
Speaker 2: And you can hear it because like that's their quote

1636
01:30:29,160 --> 01:30:31,639
Speaker 2: unquote weird one that has like a lot more drone

1637
01:30:31,760 --> 01:30:35,360
Speaker 2: and it's when Jimmy Page like had heard John Fahee

1638
01:30:35,520 --> 01:30:37,840
Speaker 2: was playing in a bunch of like fingerpicking and open

1639
01:30:37,880 --> 01:30:40,760
Speaker 2: tuning stuff, and it's just a wider ranging record. I

1640
01:30:40,760 --> 01:30:43,320
Speaker 2: think you can hear that. Tangerine is like such a

1641
01:30:43,320 --> 01:30:46,080
Speaker 2: pretty one, and I think that's like the pretty Zeppelin

1642
01:30:46,120 --> 01:30:49,960
Speaker 2: album to me. Yeah, like Gallow's poll that's the way.

1643
01:30:50,360 --> 01:30:51,519
Speaker 2: Hats off to Roy Harper.

1644
01:30:52,080 --> 01:30:54,960
Speaker 1: Anyway, Well, this all worked out for Jeff because Jimmy

1645
01:30:55,000 --> 01:30:56,720
Speaker 1: Page turned out to be as big a fan of

1646
01:30:56,800 --> 01:30:59,759
Speaker 1: him as he was of led Zeppelin. Page called Jeff

1647
01:30:59,800 --> 01:31:03,600
Speaker 1: the best technical singer that's appeared in two decades. I

1648
01:31:03,640 --> 01:31:06,040
Speaker 1: started to play Grace constantly, he said in a two

1649
01:31:06,080 --> 01:31:09,080
Speaker 1: thousand and two BBC documentary, and the more I listened

1650
01:31:09,080 --> 01:31:11,920
Speaker 1: to the album, the more I appreciated Jeff's talents in

1651
01:31:12,000 --> 01:31:15,439
Speaker 1: Jeff's total ability to which he was just a wizard.

1652
01:31:16,160 --> 01:31:19,680
Speaker 1: It was close to being my favorite album of the decade.

1653
01:31:19,840 --> 01:31:23,240
Speaker 1: And when Jimmy and Jeff cross paths in person, they

1654
01:31:23,280 --> 01:31:27,479
Speaker 1: apparently cried upon meeting each other. Friend Chris Dowd told

1655
01:31:27,560 --> 01:31:30,479
Speaker 1: uncutt in twenty fifteen, they actually cried when they met

1656
01:31:30,520 --> 01:31:33,800
Speaker 1: each other. Jimmy heard himself and Jeff, and Jeff was

1657
01:31:33,840 --> 01:31:37,799
Speaker 1: meeting his idol. Jimmy Page was the godfather of Jeff's music.

1658
01:31:38,240 --> 01:31:40,400
Speaker 1: A lot of people thought Tim Buckley was an influence

1659
01:31:40,439 --> 01:31:43,439
Speaker 1: on Jeff, but it was really Zeppelin. Jeff also said

1660
01:31:43,439 --> 01:31:45,400
Speaker 1: he cried when he met Robert Plant at a Rock

1661
01:31:45,439 --> 01:31:47,760
Speaker 1: and Roll Hall of Fame induction dinner around the same

1662
01:31:47,800 --> 01:31:51,040
Speaker 1: period too, And this is so sweet. Not only was

1663
01:31:51,120 --> 01:31:53,000
Speaker 1: Jimmy Page a big fan, but let's say, you know,

1664
01:31:53,000 --> 01:31:55,960
Speaker 1: you're the best kind of fan. He was evangelical Bob Buckley.

1665
01:31:56,240 --> 01:31:59,360
Speaker 1: He took his friend Robert Plant to one of Jeff's concerts.

1666
01:32:00,120 --> 01:32:02,599
Speaker 1: This went down when they were touring together as Page

1667
01:32:02,600 --> 01:32:05,800
Speaker 1: and Plant in the mid nineties. Jimmy Page continued, we

1668
01:32:05,840 --> 01:32:08,040
Speaker 1: actually made a point of going to hear him play

1669
01:32:08,080 --> 01:32:11,240
Speaker 1: and it was absolutely scary. One of the things that

1670
01:32:11,320 --> 01:32:13,240
Speaker 1: was a little frightening was that I was convinced that

1671
01:32:13,280 --> 01:32:16,240
Speaker 1: he probably did things in tunings, and he didn't. He

1672
01:32:16,320 --> 01:32:19,439
Speaker 1: was doing things in standard tunings. I thought, oh, gee,

1673
01:32:19,439 --> 01:32:20,840
Speaker 1: he really is clever.

1674
01:32:20,680 --> 01:32:21,720
Speaker 2: Isn't he.

1675
01:32:21,720 --> 01:32:24,080
Speaker 1: He quite clearly had his feet on the ground and

1676
01:32:24,120 --> 01:32:29,120
Speaker 1: his imagination was flying, flying, way way out there, beyond beyond.

1677
01:32:29,479 --> 01:32:32,639
Speaker 2: That must have been so humbling for Robert Plant, like, Wow,

1678
01:32:32,720 --> 01:32:34,639
Speaker 2: this guy is better than I was at my peak,

1679
01:32:34,680 --> 01:32:36,200
Speaker 2: which was thirty years ago.

1680
01:32:39,439 --> 01:32:42,759
Speaker 1: He was a huge fan. He called the performance mind altering.

1681
01:32:42,800 --> 01:32:46,840
Speaker 1: In a twenty ten interview with QTV Spectacular Singing, he said,

1682
01:32:46,880 --> 01:32:51,840
Speaker 1: and so much conviction. And this is where the behind

1683
01:32:51,880 --> 01:32:55,960
Speaker 1: the music soundtrack shifts into a minor key. Jeff was

1684
01:32:56,040 --> 01:32:58,640
Speaker 1: cheerfully singing a whole lot of love to himself on

1685
01:32:58,680 --> 01:33:01,760
Speaker 1: the night of May twenty nine, nineteen ninety seven, when

1686
01:33:01,760 --> 01:33:05,360
Speaker 1: he went for that swim in the Wolf River, floating

1687
01:33:05,400 --> 01:33:07,840
Speaker 1: on his back and taking in the evening summer sky.

1688
01:33:08,640 --> 01:33:12,040
Speaker 1: He spent his last moments alive, joyously celebrating the music

1689
01:33:12,080 --> 01:33:15,679
Speaker 1: that had provided his creative spark. As his mother would

1690
01:33:15,720 --> 01:33:19,160
Speaker 1: later reflect, if that's not a state of grace, I.

1691
01:33:19,120 --> 01:33:20,120
Speaker 2: Don't know what is.

1692
01:33:21,920 --> 01:33:24,720
Speaker 1: And honestly, I think that's probably the best ending we

1693
01:33:24,720 --> 01:33:28,000
Speaker 1: could possibly have, So I think we'll just leave it there. Higo,

1694
01:33:28,040 --> 01:33:29,800
Speaker 1: what do you think I mean?

1695
01:33:29,880 --> 01:33:34,240
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's it. Just go check out Jeff Buckley

1696
01:33:34,960 --> 01:33:36,400
Speaker 2: if you want to hear the limits of what a

1697
01:33:36,560 --> 01:33:39,800
Speaker 2: voice and an instrument can do. My name is Alex

1698
01:33:39,840 --> 01:33:42,479
Speaker 2: Heigel and my name is Jordan Runtag. We'll catch you

1699
01:33:42,520 --> 01:33:43,000
Speaker 2: next time.

1700
01:33:48,160 --> 01:33:50,640
Speaker 1: Too Much Information was a production of iHeartRadio.

1701
01:33:50,880 --> 01:33:54,120
Speaker 2: The show's executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan Rundog.

1702
01:33:54,280 --> 01:33:57,280
Speaker 1: The show's supervising producer is Michael Alder June.

1703
01:33:57,400 --> 01:34:00,559
Speaker 2: The show was researched, written and hosted by Jordan Runtalg

1704
01:34:00,560 --> 01:34:01,680
Speaker 2: and Alex Heigel.

1705
01:34:01,520 --> 01:34:04,719
Speaker 1: With original music by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Funk Orchestra.

1706
01:34:05,080 --> 01:34:07,120
Speaker 1: If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave

1707
01:34:07,160 --> 01:34:10,120
Speaker 1: us a review. For more podcasts and iHeartRadio, visit the

1708
01:34:10,160 --> 01:34:13,439
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio Apple Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your

1709
01:34:13,479 --> 01:34:14,200
Speaker 1: favorite shows.