The Last Goodbye
Sydney Telegraph, 6Juin 1997
par Dino Scatena

When singer Jeff Buckley drifted to his death down the Mississippi River this week, the scene was as eerie as the lyrics to his songs. The mysterious circumstances also paralleled the death of Buckley's father, 60s folk hero Tim Buckley. Music writer Dino Scatena examines an ironic finale.

The tragic details of Jeff Buckley's final few moments read like an overly dramatic draft for one of the artist's video clips. The imagery could have served as a perfect visual counterpart to his most famous song, "Last Goodbye." A carefree Buckley, laughing and singing as he walks fully clothed into the Mississippi River, floating on his back until the water's swirling hidden life-force rises to hug his fragile frame and lead it into eternity.

Buckley would have hated such a storyboard; too cliched, too grandiose. The 30-year-old singer/songwriter always strived to make his work uncluttered, simple, its power left to be carried through the innate beauty of his poetry and pure angelic voice.

The extraordinary circumstances surrounding the death of Jeff Buckley has once again sent a generation of rock fans around the world into deep mourning. It's an all too familiar tale: an artist with a seemingly mystic gift, a tortured and tormented soul whose presence is whisked away from us before its full potential is realised.

The abject sadness and loss felt by Buckley's fans in Sydney and across the rest of the world this week bears a nauseating similarity to the spill of emotion that followed Kurt Cobain's suicide in 1994. It's a similar pain to that which bonded a generation in the immediate aftermath of John Lennon's murder in 1980, Marc Bolan's car crash in 1977, Jim Morrison's bathtub drowning in 1971, Jimi Hendrix's overdose in 1970 ... the list is virtually endless.

As it's turned out, Buckley was only on this world long enough to release a single album, Grace will remain one of the most astonishing and well-rounded debuts of the modern rock age.

Of course, all the tragedy surrounding Buckley's passing is compounded by the fact that his father, Tim Buckley, met a similar premature end. Tim Buckley, who many still hail as the most original folk singer of his generation, died of a drug overdose in 1975 at the age of 28.

I lost myself on a cool damp night
I gave myself in that misty light
Was hypnotised by a strange delight
Under a lilac tree
("Lilac Wine")

Jeff Buckley's two visits to Sydney left an enduring impression. He came twice within six months, first in August of 1995 and then in February of last year. That first brief trip came on the back of an extended European tour. "I was getting tired of it in the last moments of playing in Europe, but it's entirely new here and I've had time to convalesce," he told a reporter on arrival.
Over the next few days, he gave two unforgettable performances: one at a small club called the Lounge in Melbourne and the other at Sydney's Metro nightclub. To those present, the Metro show on August 28 rates as one of the greatest musical performances ever witnessed in this city. In a magical 90 minutes, Buckley and his three-piece band delivered a remarkable set of light and shade featuring much of the Grace album as well as the aggressive covers of MC5's "Kick Out the Jams" and Big Star's "Kanga-Roo". Buckley's pure, acrobatic voice sounded all the more extraordinary in the flesh. "You could hear a pin drop," recalled tour manager John Pope. "He held the audience in the palm of his hand. He'd take you on the ride with him. He'd lift you and take you down. He paced his gigs with finesse. When he walked on to a stage, he felt a responsibility, but it wasn't to the audience. It was to something else. God knows what."

"There was high anticipation which was rewarded tenfold when he played, added Jen Brennan, manager of the night's local support act Crow. "He just moved a lot of people. It was quite extraordinary. It's not often that you get a crowd at the Metro that's so silent and still. It was serene and very powerful."

Indeed a couple of nights later at the Lounge show in Melbourne, the venue's management found it necessary to turn off the cash registers because their collective clanging messed with the ambience.

That first visit was meant to be a simply a quick promotional trip to push Grace, but such was the impact of the Metro show that Buckley was persuaded to return to Sydney and play two extra gigs at the Phoenician Club to quench the city's sudden fascination with him.

Within a few days of arriving, Buckley was gone. But he'd loved his time here and promised to return as soon as he could. Buckley kept his word and was back in February for a full-scale national tour.

It was now two years since the release of Grace and the pressures of life on the road as a high-profile recording artist were starting to show. "The whole Grace period has just been madness," he told the Daily Telegraph at the time. "I had no idea how completely crazy in the head I was until I came back and touched ground. I lost a lot of blood out there, meaning some things fell apart, some things got stronger. I think maybe I sensed my life would be altered forever, but not in any of the shapes it has. It's just like having a child. You can plan on it for years and years and think about it and daydream about it but when it actually happens, the ripple it causes in your life is really transforming."

Although that second tour may have been a bit flat on stage, Buckley was still in good spirits, the same free-wheeling reckless self. He had his girlfriend with him this time, a violinist named Joan from a band called the Dambuilders. There was a screaming match back at the band's hotel one night when one of Buckley's bandmates came back to his room to find the singer and his girlfriend had trashed the room and had sex in both beds. Another night when Joan's band was playing a show at the Annandale Hotel, Buckley went down and took care of the light show. When the Dambuilders started trashing their own instruments at the end of the show, Buckley abandoned his lighting duties and ran up on stage and helped them do it right.

Friends all describe Buckley as a warm, loving, open soul but the singer was often apprehensive when first approached by strangers. John Pope, who as tour manager for both visits spent virtually every day with Buckley while he was in Australia, described how the artist might appear cold as ice at first and then suddenly swing to the other extreme. "Someone on the street might say:'Are you Jeff Buckley?'" Pope explained. "And one day he night say: 'No he's over there, I saw him just go around the corner.' Or sometimes he might go, 'Yeah, I'm him' or 'Leave me alone.' Then they might say something funny and he'd open straight up to them and talk to them like they're long lost friends. It went that way in personal life, business life and with people he'd never met before."

Pope's fondest personal memory of Buckley came during the first trip. The singer was furious when he found out that his tour manager hadn't told him that it was his birthday. Buckley promptly organised a penis-shaped cake and presented it to Pope on stage in Melbourne before shoving his face in the gift. Pope holds dear a photo of the pair on stage together, Buckley covered in cake and smiling broadly.

"I can imagine him doing exactly what he did," Pope offered in reference to the circumstances of Buckley's disappearance, recalling the time he tried to talk the singer out of going for a night swim at Coolangatta Beach. "From when I knew him, you'd say: 'You shouldn't do that Jeff.' And he'd go:'Nah, it'll be all right. Don't worry about it.' And off he'd go. He was carefree and easy-going like that about life. "There was an edge to him that comes with creative people. He was definitely touched. He'd have those moments of of madness like any artistic person does. But there was no self-destructiveness in it at all."

They're waiting for you
Like I waited for mine
And nobody ever came
("Dream Brother")

Jeff Buckley only ever met his famous father once. He spent a week with Tim, who left his mother Mary Guibert only a week after she gave birth to their only child, in April of 1975 when he was eight. Two months later, his father was dead. The weight his father's shadow cast on his life was the primary reason it took Jeff so long to take the leap into the limelight. "I knew there would be [comparisons] from the time I was a small child," Jeff once revealed. "From the time that his manager started calling my house when I was six or seven. I found my grandmother's guitar and [the manager] started calling the house: 'Has he written songs yet?' So I've been waiting and doing the maths in my head about the inevitable comparisons all my life. But I don't care."
Buckley was never comfortable discussing his father, deeply resented the fact that he wasn't invited to the funeral. But in 1991, he made an unannounced appearance at a Tim Buckley tribute concert in Brooklyn and performed a moving solo version of his father's "I Never Asked to be Your Mountain." "I both admired and hated it," the young Buckley said afterwards on the song written about his parents' relationship. "That's why I did it. It was something really private to me. I figured that if I went to the tribute and sang and paid my respects, I could be done with it."

Jeff Buckley spent his early childhood in Orange County, California, before moving to New York with his mother for high school. He then returned to LA to study music. His first band was a short-lived reggae outfit called Shinehead. He then moved back to New York to form a more rock-orientated band called Gods and Monsters. When that collapsed, Buckley started playing solo around New York's coffee house circuit. It was there that record companies started taking notice and the contract offers started rolling in.

It's night time coming
I'm not afraid to die ...
My love, now the rain is falling
I believe my time has come
It reminds me of the pain I might leave behind
("Grace")

Jeff Buckley signed to Columbia records home to the likes of Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, in 1993 and soon after released the EP Live At Sin-é.
In an exclusive interview with the Daily Telegraph yesterday, an emotional Donny Ienner -- head of Columbia Records and the man directly responsible for signing Buckley -- shared his reminiscences of that early period. "I remember the first time I went down to see Jeff after a few people had told me about his performances at Sin-é, I was so taken that night by the depth of his artistry. Of all the artists that I've ever personally signed, Jeff made the most immediate impact on my life. I felt that his reverence for the past, not to mention obviously the opportunities for the future, was incredible. He knew every record of Miles Davis and Edith Piaf and opera records and classical records and Led Zeppelin records. He was just such a great teacher of diverse music. He defies any sort of characterisation or trend. He had that at a very, very early age and the impact that he made on the world with just an EP and an album is going to be felt for decades to come. Jeff never worried about rock stardom, never worried about money, and never worried about the things that a lot of young artists worry about today. He was really worried about making sure his integrity was intact at all times. He was just an incredible thing."

Ienner also took the opportunity to reject widespread rumours that Buckley had been depressed in the weeks leading up to his disappearance because of problems with his record company over the shape his follow up to Grace should take. "I think he was in a good place in terms of making his second record," Ienner said. "The thing that I personally promised him when he signed to Columbia records was that he could take all the time he needed in between his records and we would not interfere on any level. He had over 100 songs and he was ready to go in at the end of June to make his record. He was in wonderful spirits, he was having an amazingly good time spiritually, emotionally and professionally down in Memphis (where Buckley had been since February)".

Ienner confirmed that late last year, Buckley completed seven new songs during sessions in New York with producer and former Television lynch-pin, Tom Verlaine. We have no plans to release anything right now. From what I understand from the people he's been working with, there are in excess of 50 or 60 songs that he was working on. So there's a wonderful legacy that he's left behind."

Looking out the door
I see the rain fall upon the funeral mourners
Parading in a wake of sad relations as their shoes fill up with water
Maybe I'm too young to keep good love from going wrong
But tonight you're on my mind so you'll never know
("Lover, You Should've Come Over")

Late on Wednesday evening, police found the body of Jeff Buckley within close proximity to the spot on the Mississippi River where he went missing a week earlier. Police rejected rumours that drugs and alcohol were involved in the singer's accident. As one of Buckley's friends explained, "Jeff used to use. Jeff didn't use. Some of his band did 'blow' but he didn't. In fact, they kept it from him."
Fans around the world had held out hope during the past week that by some miracle, Buckley would reappear somewhere downstream, wet but safe. That wasn't to be.

Jeff Buckley is gone but, like all the other great artists who were cut down in their prime, his music will long outlive his tragically short life.