Posthumous Jeff Buckley at 20: a giant, or a ghost?
Undoubtedly influential, yet (sort of) stuck on pop culture’s periphery — trying to pinpoint Jeff Buckley’s odd legacy 20 years after his death
Monday was the day I envisioned 10 years ago — a longtime future moment that was suddenly the present.
I sat alone on my sister’s quiet porch, shaded from the Memorial Day sun, scrolling through Facebook. A post from Stereogum caught my attention: It was the 20th anniversary of Jeff Buckley’s death. A long-anticipated day, but it still snuck up on me somehow. I remember where I was exactly a decade before, the day of his death’s 10th anniversary. And I remember thinking about Buckley’s legacy that day in 2007, and how it might blossom over the next decade.
Now that the future had become the present, right there on my sister’s porch, I tried assessing the last 10 years of Buckleydom. I must admit, it does not look the way I thought it would.
That’s why I’m writing this, I suppose — not to eulogize or convince, but assess. Because as I sit here typing, I don’t have a succinct answer on where Buckley stands within culture at large. Instead, all I have are personal moments — encounters with Buckley’s history, glimpses of his impact — that I’ve accrued these past 10 years. As they currently reside in my brain, there’ s no clear takeaway.
And I don’t think a clear takeaway exists yet in the larger cultural ether. Jeff Buckley deserves at least that much.
* * *
Honestly, I hesitate to even write about him. I feel incapable of capturing the music, and its effect on me. There is a strange sense of reverence I feel about the task. That reverence also makes me feel slightly embarrassed: I shouldn’t care this much about one person’s music, yet I have, and I do.
This level of fandom — where you downplay your obsession around others because you know how abnormal it is — is why I was never really suited to predict Buckley’s future. My judgment was (and still is) clouded. I’m no good at the future here. I can only deal in the past and present.
So, what exactly did I predict 10 years ago? That Buckley would become a household name of sorts.
The sheer force and emotional depth of his voice, with its staggering, devastating beauty, seemed reason enough. How could anyone hear it and not want more?, I thought. If you’ve delved into Buckley’s music, however, you know it’s more than pretty singing. His talents as a songwriter, a guitar player, an arranger, and an interpreter are not as immediately obvious as those God-given pipes of his, but they’re no less abundant. (For reference: the eight-part YouTube tutorial — yes, that’s eight parts — on how to play one of his “poppier” songs, “Last Goodbye.”) He was a virtuoso.
Even in that assessment I feel unsure. Am I revising my own history? Now that I’ve spent years marinating in Buckley’s music/history/lore, I treat it as a cerebral pursuit. But was it not originally a matter of the heart? Did his music first make me think something, or feel something?
Predicting Buckley’s trajectory a decade ago, I assumed my reaction to his music was the norm. Wouldn’t anyone, upon finally hearing his music, react similarly? How could they not?
That’s the beautiful naiveté of fandom: It disregards circumstance and context, treating a piece of art’s subjective allure as inherently objective.
* * *
As time passes, I’m increasingly convinced this particular brand of Buckley fandom—the one in which I have long swam—has impeded his legacy.
Those who feel as I have about Buckley and his music aren’t few in number. We revere him. And it seems like most discussions about him either adopt this reverence or exist as a response to it. No one speaks up from the middle ground; passion rarely resides there. But on the intensely pro-Buckley side of things, it’s important to understand at least where those folks come from. Because yes, it is about the music — but it’s about a lot more than just that. Buckley not only sounded angelic, but he looked that way, too. He was a supremely handsome man. (These good looks, too, becomes something that folks either revere or mistrust.) I became enamored with Buckley’s music before I ever knew what he looked like. When I finally saw his picture, he somehow looked exactly as I imagined. The aching, the restlessness, the depth, the playfulness (Rolling Stone once described his voice as that of “an oversexed angel”) — the qualities that were so abundant in his music, it was all there in his countenance.
Then there’s Buckley’s lineage, and his tragic end. He was estranged from his biological father, Tim Buckley, him too a musical cult hero, an avant-garde experimenter, and a gifted, ethereal vocalist. Tim Buckley died at 28 from a drug overdose. And although by all accounts Jeff avoided his father’s excesses, he died in the Mississippi River at age 30, drowned in the wake of a passing boat. The beauty, the famous father, the early death, the references to mortality in his life’s work — it’s downright messianic.
So yes, it all creates a sense of awe for his fans. And that seems to elicit an instinctive pushback: OK, Buckley’s great, but was he THAT great?
Case in point: a 2012 NPR piece titled You’ve Never Heard Jeff Buckley’s ‘Grace’?! The piece was part of an ongoing All Songs Considered series in which NPR’s “unimaginably young” interns, as they described them, reviewed classic albums they’d never heard before. (Grace, for reference, was Buckley’s only completed studio album.) This NPR piece really captures the aforementioned power struggle. I mean, just look at the piece’s title: It doesn’t end with a question mark, but a question mark and an exclamation point. That incredulity, as always, dictates the Buckley discussion.
It’s not that this intern, Dan Raby, doesn’t enjoy Grace. He does. He just thinks Buckley’s eclecticism, his attuned sense of melodrama, his bravado, feels less astounding in the context of today’s pop landscape, inhabited by similarly inclined folks like Lady Gaga and Arcade Fire.
That Buckley’s brand of theatricality mirrors what’s happening in popular music today — and that such a similarity could make him seem trivial or ordinary — perhaps testifies to his importance. What Buckley did pulled from disparate genres, and spilled over into others during the ensuing two decades after his death, in a way that perhaps grunge didn’t. (It’s not that he caused the shift — any musical movement takes more than a single person — but that he signaled the shift at such an early date.) The NPR piece ends with Raby conceding, “Maybe one day, when music tastes have shifted again and Buckley’s influence on current artists isn’t as prominent, I’ll go back to Grace and see something entirely new.” That seems like such cruel irony to me.
And perhaps this is why Buckley evangelizing elicits pushback: He mostly stood alone in his own time, an outlier in the era of grunge. After all, most legendary musicians — especially ones who die young — become imbued with the importance of the musical eras with which they’re associated. Joplin, Hendrix, Cobain, they all represent more than just their own music. They represent the music, the aesthetic, the ethos of their respective eras. Maybe Buckley’s uniqueness works against him here.
* * *
Now, Jeff Buckley was not obscure in his own lifetime. During his life he was occasionally on MTV, and was covered in plenty of publications. His influence wasn’t just posthumous. In retrospect, it seems his influence mostly happened overseas. This, too, might explain why he’s maintained some level of obscurity over the years. A 2014 Esquire piece addressed the influence of Buckley’s Grace, which celebrated its 20th anniversary that year. The piece is a collection of quotes and anecdotes from musicians who’ve cited his influence. Most of them — Coldplay, Damien Rice, Muse, Radiohead, Travis — are from the U.K., where Buckley achieved considerable acclaim during his lifetime.
I won’t rehash those stories, but it’s worth noting that Esquire’s list contains some of the largest figures in both commercially successful and critically acclaimed rock from the 2000s. And Buckley influenced these artists at important early junctures. Indeed, those anecdotes show Buckley was integral in helping these acts define their own artistic visions — which visions drew enormous attention. What would the last 15-plus years in indie rock look like without Radiohead? And what would commercial contemporary rock resemble without Coldplay during these same years? It’s hard to imagine.
Buckley’s impact hasn’t been contained to rock music: Adele — who along with Taylor Swift has seemed to keep the mainstream record industry afloat the past few years — has also cited Buckley as a major influence. Buckley’s musical footprint exists in the most prominent of places, both artistically and commercially.
And yet, how many Jeff Buckley songs can the average person name? Perhaps only one: “Hallelujah.” (If I’m not mistaken, omitting “Hallelujah” in a Jeff Buckley essay will get you arrested.) I won’t dedicate a ton of space to the song here, though one certainly could. You can’t discuss Buckley’s impact without addressing this song.
Its popularity, and its relationship to Buckley’s legacy, is a curiosity.
Buckley’s “Hallelujah” isn’t technically an original — it’s a cover of John Cale’s 1991 version, which was a cover of Leonard Cohen’s 1984 original — but Buckley’s take has become the definitive version. It’s been used in countless TV shows, and will be covered horribly at talent shows and open mic nights in perpetuity. Everyone wants a piece of this song; it has struck a chord in popular culture to a degree that few songs have. (For reference: Malcolm Gladwell dedicated a Revisionist History episode to the song’s unlikely cultural ascent in Buckley’s hands — it’s a fascinating story whether or not you’re a Jeff Buckley fan.)
The two problems most one-hit wonders face, though, is their hit song either doesn’t exemplify the rest of their work, or that it’s too similar. That’s what makes “Hallelujah” so strange: It absolutely captures Jeff Buckley’s essence without giving it all away. It’s the ideal entry point to an enriching, varied-yet-cohesive catalog. So why do so many people stop at “Hallelujah”? For all my reading, writing, listening, pondering, this question remains unanswered.
* * *
A few years back I interviewed Ben Folds for a story in my college newspaper. At one point, Folds said somewhat offhandedly, “I’m not stepping out like Jeff Buckley with the pipes…”. My Buckley alarm went off, and like normal, a momentary surge of endorphins rushed through me. The brief moment indicated quite a lot about Buckley’s legacy, and what it’s like to be his fan. In many circles, Buckley’s name has become a kind of shorthand for vocal virtuosity in popular music — not just for voices that are powerful, but ones that are dynamic, chilling, and seemingly effortless. Because Buckley isn’t a household name, that shorthand also serves as a hip namedrop.
I knew exactly what Folds meant when he said it. That moment stands out for me, but in reality, it’s just like all the other moments that compose my fandom. These little mentions of Buckley are what compelled me to seek him out when I was 16 — in my case, it was (1) the Badly Drawn Boy song “You Were Right,” (2) a friend’s homemade Jeff Buckley T-shirt, and (3) Jamie Cullum’s cover of “Lover, You Should’ve Come Over.” These were my starting points. That’s why it feels like nothing has changed these past 10 years: It’s still these obscure moments that keep Buckley on my radar — a Jeff Buckley namedrop in a pop song, a date telling me her mom went to high school with Buckley. They are moments I notice mostly because I’ve trained myself to notice.
Weeks ago, when the suicide of Soundgarden and Audioslave frontman Chris Cornell made the news cycle, Buckley got another such mention. During Cornell’s final concert there was a red telephone placed onstage. An attendee asked Cornell about the phone, and Cornell said it belonged to Jeff Buckley. The two were friends in the ’90s. Cornell even wrote a song about Buckley, “Wave Goodbye,” off Cornell’s 1999 solo album Euphoria Morning.
And perhaps that red phone captures Buckley’s odd legacy better than anything else: It sits there in plain sight, but only means anything if you decide to ask about it.
And if you do ask about it, there’s an entire world to explore. Be it his music alone, or commemorative articles, or BBC documentaries, or exhaustive written examinations, it’s all there just beneath the surface.
When I first discovered Jeff Buckley, it was as if I’d stumbled upon an enormous, tragically wonderful, wonderfully tragic secret. Back then, he was both a giant and a ghost. He seems to have remained that way. And maybe there’s something quite beautiful about that.
Court Mann is an arts and entertainment editor for the Deseret News in Salt Lake City, Utah, with previous bylines at Men’s Journal, Salt Lake City Weekly and the Provo Daily Herald. Read more of his work here.
