Jeff Buckley - Grace
Listen to an audio version of this review by Greg
Recorded at Bearsville Studios in Woodstock, NY, Grace was produced by Andy Wallace. Andy has a laundry list of accolades including production, mixing, and engineering contributions to albums from bands such as Slayer,Run DMC, Nirvana, Sonic Youth, Helmet, Fishbone, Rush, Rage Against the Machine and over 75 more.
Now, I was introduced to Jeff Buckley through a former girlfriend who had an underrated ear for good music. When she first played me Grace, I was mesmerized by the strange minor chord structures that exist all over this record. Practically every verse of each song is in a minor chord, only to explode during the chorus into a very brief major chord. For those of you who are going, “huh? What’s a major chord? What’s a minor chord? Think of it this way……this is easy…almost every time you feel that “hook” in a song, usually during the part that repeats itself, the chorus, this is typically played in a major chord. An E, an A, a G, a D and so on. The darker, more mysterious parts of music many times are written in minor chords.
Even if you are an average musician, you can play a major chord and a minor chord fairly well. But what Jeff Buckley does so seamlessly in his music is develop minor chords and carefully place them into his songs where they many times are communicated as major chords. To really understand what I’m talking about, you’re going to have to listen to this album. AND for just the second time, I now am including clips of the songs we talk about to give you, the listener, an immediate opportunity to understand what we are describing.
I must tell a quick story. When we committed to reviewing this album several weeks back, I didn’t pull it up on my car stereo until about three weeks ago. While driving for about the first half mile, I remember thinking whether I should pick another album. For some reason I was not “committing” to this. I wasn’t getting the feelings like I remember. Then I tuned in to Jeff’s voice. I’m telling you people reading or listening to this review that Jeff might have the greatest male singing voice of all time. Just listening to him orchestrate his vocals over this music gives me dangerously deep goosebumps.
Jeff was once asked when was it that he knew he wanted to be a singer/songwriter/touring musician. He stated, “When I was about 13 years old, I did my first gig in a club, and that was it, you know? I went, I like this. It smells bad. I can be here. Everybody’s crazy. I don’t have to go to school. I have to, but I won’t.”
Buckley was an incredibly guarded person. I say was because he died tragically in 1997. Jeff went swimming one night outside Memphis, TN while taking a break from recording in the studio. The story goes that Jeff and a roadie in his band, Keith Foti, were hanging out at Wolf River Harbor, a channel of the Mississippi River. Jeff decided to go swimming, but Foti remained on shore. Buckley jumped into the river fully clothed. It was late May 1997 so the weather in Tennessee is very warm this time of year. When Foti left the riverbank to move some music equipment away from the water’s edge, he turned back around and noticed Jeff was no longer in sight. Strangely, the wake of a passing tugboat swept him under water. Jeff’s body was discovered six days later by passengers on a riverboat. His body had been caught in several branches when it was recovered.
His autopsy revealed no signs of drugs or alcohol in his system. His death was ruled an accident. Jeff drowned freakishly by accident. What a story.
To make the story even more sad, Jeff’s father, singer/songwriter, Tim Buckley died in 1975 when Jeff was just 9 years old. Tim reportedly died of an overdose of heroin, which is strange because I heard what must be an “old wives’ tale” that Tim also died by drowning, but several stories I found refuted that claim.
Well, on to the record itself. The album kicks off with Mojo Pin, an out of the ordinary opener to a debut album. The track showcases Jeff’s voice. Listen to this song on a pair of headphones. Jeff sounds like he’s standing right next to you, singing in your ear. Opening right away with him whispering into the mic and the song takes you on a relaxed journey. As I noted earlier in this review, the minor chords come out to play in this song. This track has somewhat of a psychedelic feel. About 3 mins and 45 seconds in, the song then takes a left turn and just proves nothing was like this in 1994. Nothing.
Released during the height of grunge, this song and the entire album Grace were WAAAY ahead of their time. I feel it can most certainly hold up against today’s artists and musical genres. Jeff’s lyrics are telling. I need to pull out the word “romantic” when describing this album. Romantic is the best word. Not in a Sinatra way, where’s he’s talking about cuddling up next to the fireplace with his….”baby”. Buckley’s lyrics are DEEEEEEEP. Just so deep they cut your soul. In Mojo Pin, he sings, “Don't want to weep for you, don't want to know. I'm blind and tortured, the white horses flow. The memories fire, the rhythms fall slow. Black beauty I love you so”. Ok. What happened? I blacked out…!
The second tune, the title track, Grace, gives the rock fan the medicine they need to continue on this journey. The opening riff is addictive. I remember it was the first thing that got my attention as a “hook seeking” music fan when I first heard this in the mid 90s and then again when I was reacquainted with this record in 2002. The riff is addictive. You will immediately be “about face” as your attention grows. Filled once again with minor chords, Grace takes you on a journey to that fateful, “Wait in the fire, Wait in the fire” bridge that eventually leads you back to that hook riff that grabs you. This was the first single off the record. I don’t have much to say except just listen to this, guys. Just listen. Oh my…
I can remember seeing this video on MTV. It didn’t grab me back then. And I think I know why. This song is so complex. It’s not a Nirvana song. It’s buried in minor chords but with an angelic voice that doesn’t reflect the teenage angst that I was feeling at the time. No…for this was a sophisticated rock song that was above my pay grade at the time. I feel nothing but enjoyment going back now and listening to this. I can see multiple women falling in love with these lyrics. They are in many ways, also, romantic.
Last Goodbye, the third track, also gives you a hook riff at the beginning that draws you in. Jeff’s vocals begin about 30 seconds in, and like the track before it, once again you are picking yourself up off the ground wondering what happened? Did I pass out? Sorry..please continue!
Jeff’s best friend was Chris Dowd from the funk band Fishbone. Coincidentally, Jeff was friends with Dowd’s girlfriend, Carla Azar. In a 2019 interview, Chris tells the story of the night he met Jeff back in the early 90s.
Interestingly enough, Last Goodbye actually has an interesting back story. In the early to mid 1990s, the funk bandFishbone was crushing record sales and joining major US tours such as Lollapalooza. Fishbone keyboardist Chris Dowd told a story to a music magazine several years back on the origin of the song, “Last Goodbye”. One night Carla Azar [Dowd’s girlfriend and a classmate of Jeff’s at the Musicians Institute in Los Angeles, called him and said she was going for a ride and her friend Jeff was in the car. Dowd noted that night he was burned out from touring with Fishbone as they toured nonstop for two and a half years. Dowd admitted he was drunk when he got the call from Carla, but he jumped in the car with her and this new dude, Jeff and sat in the back seat. While they drove, Dowd remembered,
“It was raining, I had my head out the window, and it rained all over Jeff. He just sat there quietly, didn’t say anything. Carla called me and told me to call Jeff and apologize—I did, and we became friends. Jeff lived with me for like a year and a half, and I knew him as a guitar player only. I had no idea he could even sing”.
Chris and Jeff ended up sharing an apartment together in LA. And that is when Last Goodbye started to come together.
Dowd also noted, “Last Goodbye” is about Carla Azar, especially that line “Kiss me out of desire not consolation.”Dowd went on to say, “every guy at that time was in love with Carla. She played drums, she was pretty, she was the coolest girl you ever met in your entire life. Carla was the perfect girlfriend, but they were never a couple”.
The song throws all safety out the window at exactly three minutes in, when it hits what some may call the chorus, some may call a bridge. The song is so well designed and originally structured, it does not follow that typical “verse, chorus, verse” pattern.
At three minutes in, the riff reaches like a hand down your esophagus and just carefully “flicks” your heart when Jeff sings,
Did you say, "No, this can't happen to me". Did you rush to the phone to call? Was there a voice unkind in the back of your mind? Saying maybe you didn't know him at all. You didn't know him at all”.
What I had trouble figuring out was did Jeff actually have these real-life feelings about Carla Azar or was this simply a song about a crush with added drama to perk up the song more? Unfortunately, we will never know.
This album just continues to give you paper cuts with the next track, Lilac Wine. I think I may put these lyrics in the top, ….eh…maybe 20 best lyrics I’ve ever read. Lilac Wine is a song written by James Shelton, in 1950. James Shelton was an American, 1930s Broadway actor, composer, and writer. Lilac Wine was introduced to the public by Hope Foye in the short-lived theater musical revue, Dance Me a Song. The song has since been recorded by many artists including Eartha Kitt, Nina Simone, Jeff Beck, John Legend, Miley Cyrus, and SEVERAL other musicians. I didn’t know this was a cover song until I researched the album more.
This song makes feel. It makes me feel and think. It makes me think of sad moments and happy moments. It is such a ballad. I picture Buckley serenading a woman in the front row. The song draws a parallel between being drunk, being disoriented and being in love. Not a jogging song. This is a “sitting in a quiet, dark room watching the artist spill his or her guts out”, song. I have much respect for James Shelton and had never heard of him until I researched this.
So Real is the fifth track on this record. It was Michael Tighe (pron: “Tie”), Jeff’s guitar player in the band who noted that the recording of “So Real” was very spontaneous. Many times, this is how Jeff worked in the studio. The song was also the third single that Jeff released off the album. His vocal track was also done in one take. It was such a good take that Jeff and producer, Andy Wallace were satisfied and decided to keep it.
Also, Jeff’s friend Chris Dowd was present in the studio during the recording of this song. Agreeing with the spontaneity description, Dowd lamented.
It was exactly like that. Also keep in mind I had never seen Jeff in process. I had no idea I was witnessing this as being “the take.” It is such a process to capture “the take” that I don’t think until Michael told you that story did I realize that he had done that spontaneously perfect take. It is such a rarity to see that happen in the flesh. But knowing Jeff and his process, he had done it and thrown it all away, torn it down a thousand times in his head, before he actually shared it with us. Then also thinking back we had such a close relationship and were so protective of one another it was also him sharing with me and saying, “I got this! You don’t have to be scared for me anymore. I have become the artist you always wanted and helped me become.” We would slide in and out of those roles for the entire relationship: Friend, brother, loved one, father, brother.
The next track may be the album’s most popular, depending on who you ask. Hallelujah, a Leonard Cohen cover, brings me to tears each time I listen to it. This song is THAT moving. I don’t listen to it much anymore just because it brings so much emotion back. My memories with this song mainly stem from September 11th, 2001. When I returned home after being let out early from work, I watched the remainder of that horrible day unfold on television, and as the sun was setting over Manhattan, I can remember the TV network playing this song. And right in front of my roommate, I cried my eyes out.
Hallelujah was not originally written by Jeff. It was a Leonard Cohen song off his 1984 album, Various Positions. It received little notoriety initially. In 1991, singer John Cale, recorded the song for a Leonard Cohen tribute album titled, I’m Your Fan. This version inspired Jeff to cover it for 1994’s Grace and his version became widely popular.
After his death, the Buckley version of this song has been used in film and television dramas, including the series The West Wing, Crossing Jordan, Without a Trace, The O.C., Third Watch, LAX and Justica. Time Magazine quoted Jeff Buckley’s publisher as saying, "Hallelujah can be joyous or bittersweet, depending on what part of it you use". The magazine’s view in their article was that the song’s liberal use in some cases was "a tacit admission that neither the writers nor the actors could convey their characters' emotions as well as Buckley." On April 20, 2013, Buckley's version of the song was played at Fenway Park during a tribute honoring the victims of the Boston Marathon Bombing before the Red Sox played their first home game following the tragedy.
When Jeff first played Hallelujah live, you could hear a feather drop. It was at that moment Dave Lory, Jeff’s manager, said everyone knew he tapped into something extraordinarily special.
As this song and Grace became more popular, Jeff’s preference was to shy away from the attention. He even disappeared for a while and applied to be a butterfly keeper at the Memphis Zoo. After achieving success, he just wanted to disappear into the unknown.
Jeff suffered great depression and anxiety on recording his 2nd record, the follow up to Grace, which was released after Jeff’s passing. He once turned down $50,000 to use one of his songs on the TV show Homicide, a show that starred Richard Belzer, Andre Braugher, and the late Ned Beatty (from Superman and Deliverance fame) and ran from 1993-1999. That’s just the kind of guy Jeff was.
Chris Dowd was quoted as saying, “I know that the idea of him being a star made him incredibly uncomfortable—being written up in the tabloids, with Courtney Love and what not, that freaked him out. He wanted to buy every newspaper and burn it, because he was embarrassed. He was kind of like this reluctant rock star”.
Coincidentally and untimely, one of the last things Jeff said to his manager Dave Lory was, “I’m ready to be popular” after years of telling Dave he wanted nothing to do with pop and popularity.
Lover, You Should've Come Over is the seventh track on the album. Inspired by the ending of the relationship between Jeff and Rebecca Moore, an American musician, actress and human rights activist, the song is about (quote) “the despondency of a young man growing older, finding that his actions represent a perspective he feels that he should have outgrown”. The only word that comes back to me is romantic. Heavily romantic. I remember riding the T to work in Boston one day listening to this on my DISCMAN and stopping in my tracks. That is the affect music has on me. On this entire album, I feel the lyrics, “It’s Never Over. She’s a tear that hangs inside my soul forever”….. are hands down the best Jeff has EVER written. Wow. That is moving. Jeff always said when writing “All women influence me in some way”.
Like many others on this album, Lover, You Should've Come Over was covered by many artists such as English jazz pianist songwriter Jamie Cullum, American singer-songwriter John Mayer, Australian singer-songwriter Matt Corby, Texas singer-songwriter Natalie Maines and the English rock band Nothing But Thieves. The song was also featured on several TV shows. This of course was after Jeff’s death.
The next track, Corpus Christi Carol is another cover. Also known as Falcon Carol, this song makes you feel like it’s Christmas Eve and you’re listening to a beautiful choir in church, only this version is just one man and his guitar. Many historical records date the song’s origins all the way back to 1504. The original writer of the carol remains anonymous. Inspired by a version of the song by Janet Baker from 1967, Jeff wanted to put this on his record. Corpus Christi Carol is a very different song compared to the other nine tracks. Jeff felt that this song was.
“a fairytale about a falcon who takes the beloved of the singer to an orchard. The singer goes looking for her and arrives at a chamber where his beloved lies next to a bleeding knight and a tomb with Christ's body in it".
The ninth track, Eternal Life brings you back to a rock n’ roll album. I would characterize this as a “heavy” song. This one fits more with the mid 90s genre. Great running, workout song. It will pump you up and get the blood flowing. This song was the fourth and final single from the Grace album. Definitely a more radio friendly tune. It is believed to have been influenced by Jeff’s love for Led Zeppelin. Certainly, a departure from the other softer tracks. This one rocks.
Jeff was quoted as saying this song is;
“an angry song. Life's too short and too complicated for people behind desks and people behind masks to be ruining other people's lives, initiating force against other people's lives, on the basis of their income, their color, their class, their religious beliefs, their whatever...”
In Buckley's own words, Eternal Life was inspired by a few things including his anger over James Earl Ray, the man who shot MLK, also his anger over World War II and the Manson Murders.
For most studio copies of the Grace album, "Dream Brother" is the last track on the original release. Jeff wrote this with his bass player Mick Grondahl and his drummer, Matt Johnson. The three wrote it as an urge for Jeff’s friend, Chris Dowd of Fishbone, not to walk out on his pregnant girlfriend in a similar way Jeff’s own father, Tim Buckley did. Jeff rarely, if ever, wanted to talk about his father. He was known for walking out of interviews when asked about his dad. Jeff writes a message to his dear friend Chris in the song when he sings, "Don't be like the one who made me so old. Don't be like the one who left behind his name. 'Cause they're waiting for you like I waited for mine. And nobody ever came". Man really, really deep lyrics there….AGAIN
Jeff is quoted as saying;
Dream Brother is a song about a friend of mine, who's led a rather excessive life... He is in trouble. This song is for him. I know what self-destruction can lead to, and I have tried to warn him. But I am one big hypocrite because when I called him up and told him about the song, I'd written that same night I took an overdose of hash and woke up the next day feeling terrible. It is very hard not to give in to one's negative feelings. Life is total chaos”.
The title Dream Brother was also used for a biography of Jeff and his father Tim, written by journalist David Browne. It was also used as the name of an album called Dream Brother: The Songs of Tim and Jeff Buckleywhich featured covers of both Tim and Jeff’s music from various artists.
Buckley was an incredibly spiritual person. Kind of reminds me of Jim Morrison. They were both very passionate, well educated, articulate and deliberate. They were also very self-deprecating.
I think Jeff Buckley sounded even better live. Although I did not get a chance to see him in concert, when you compare some of his live performances to this album, he is borderline, perfect. We really lost a remarkable talent that day in 1997.
In a 1994 interview Jeff once noted:
“Everybody knows what it’s like to create an artistic moment. It’s just a heightened human language. If you’ve spent a night making love, you know exactly what it means to strip your ego down, where you are there, expressing yourself wordlessly, collaborating on a moment that has an energy about it that is replenishing. That is the way art really is”.
In terms of Jeff’s Lord God, Jimmy Page was the godfather of Jeff’s music. A lot of people thought his dad Tim was the influence on Jeff, but it was really Zeppelin.
If you haven’t had a chance yet, read the book Jeff Buckley, From Hallelujah to Last Goodbye, written by Jeff’s former manager Dave Lory. You feel like you are talking to Dave when reading this book.
You can pick up a copy in the bookstore at ALBUMREVIEW.NET. In this book, Dave, who also managed The Allman Brothers Band at one time, writes, “Jeff could pick you apart in regard to nailing down all your mannerisms in 5 mins after meeting you”. When the book was published, Lory noted, “There were a lot of incorrect things written about Jeff, and I wanted to write the TRUTH”. When Dave wrote the chapter about Jeff’s death, he said he cried for three days. He never really grieved until that moment. “Jeff was a composer”, Lory lamented. “He wasn’t a song writer. So, it took him longer to write songs than most artists”.
Strangely, Jeff’s music was not extremely big in the U.S. but was MASSIVE in the rest of the world, especially Europe.
Jeff’s closest friend Chris felt more than most albums he’d ever heard, Grace connected with so many people. He felt it had great timing. Jeff wanted a second guitar player and Michael Tighe was there. “Jeff needed someone to follow what he did. It was very strategic the way he picked those guys—who are seasoned musicians now. And they sounded unbelievably great on Grace”.
Chris best remembered Jeff as someone who, “had no filter, which was both hilarious and priceless. And rare. He had no agenda—he was air and earth unfettered! Tell me, how many people in your life you have known like that, that still have a childlike innocence? A Zen-like understanding of human beings. And a heart as big as a whale”.
Grace was also declared his "favorite album of the decade" by Zeppelin guitarist, Jimmy Page. Robert Plant was equally complimentary, which I think is rare as I feel Plant frequently bashes other artists in the media. I want to jump through the TV when I see these interviews and go, “C’mon Robert!? Don’t be like that man? We’ve had so many good times together. Why are you dissing my other favorites artists?!” Actor Brad Pitt even mentioned the influence Grace had on him in an interview unrelated to music. Pitt noted, "There's an undercurrent to his music, there's something you can't pinpoint. Like the best of films, or the best of art, there's something going on underneath, and there's a truth there. And I find his stuff absolutely haunting. It just... it's under my skin." Others who had influenced Buckley's music applauded him. Bob Dylan named Buckley one of the great songwriters of the 1990s and David Bowie stated that Grace was arguably the best album ever made, and that it would be one of his ten "Desert Island Records."
In closing, I feel it’s necessary to mention Dave Lory’s comments after his book tour for From Hallelujah to Last Goodbye, ended. Lory said, “Somebody asked me what I was going to do when this book tour was finished. I told them, after the last book signing gig, I’m going to get on the plane in Sydney to fly back and I’m gonna look up (and while holding back his tears Dave says) and I’m going to say to Jeff, I hope I did you proud. And then I’m never talking about him again”.
For me, and this review….I hope Jeff would feel I did him proud. I hope the readers and listeners to the podcast out there who have not heard this album yet will get a copy of their own. THIS album….is purchase worthy..