Jeff Buckley still resonates 20 years after death (2024)

The section of the Wolf River that acclaimed singer-songwriter Jeff Buckley waded into on May 29, 1997, had been called "The Chute".

The relatively narrow span of water that separates downtown Memphis from neighbouring Mud Island more often than not appears surface-calm, despite its reputation for notorious undertows.

Buckley had moved to Memphis earlier in the year, renting a small shotgun-style house and digging in.

The plan had been to simply be alone, woodshed and road test some new material at a local hole-in-the wall, while continuing work on the sophom*ore record, My Sweetheart, the Drunk, after a slew of botched attempts to record it had not met personal expectations.

Above all else, Memphis meant anonymity and the chance to dream it all up again.

Just as dusk descended on a humid evening, Buckley, accompanied by friend and roadie, Keith Foti, decided to climb down to the bottle-strewn muddy bank and hang out.

The rest of the band were flying in later that evening and he wanted to enjoy one final foray.

Buckley, still fully clothed, then entered the water alone, his voice soon echoing the seductive wail of Robert Plant emanating from the boombox the pair had brought with them and which was now perched somewhat precariously on the riverbank:

You need cooooolin'

Honey, I'm not fooooolin'

I'm gonna send ya, back to schooolin...

Seemingly out of nowhere, a single, long tugboat passed by close to where Buckley was swimming. Foti became concerned the speakers would be submerged by the wash.

After taking a moment to move them, he turned back to discover Buckley had completely disappeared.

Repeated calls were met with an eerie silence, as the surface returned to calm.

Running counter to the well-entrenched myth of the doomed romantic singer-poet Buckley had widely been painted as, a little known fact was that he was at times an impulsive prankster, regularly playing tricks and practical jokes on those he loved.

A pervasive thought at the time had been that of an elaborate hoax.

But five days later, Buckley's body was spotted floating at the foot of Beale Street, the spiritual home of the blues, and the place where myth and reality had now ominously merged.

How Scottie Moorhead became a star

Scott Moorhead was born 30 years earlier, the only son of classical pianist Mary Guibert and famous folk-rock singer, Tim Buckley.

'Scottie' was raised by his mother and stepfather, Ron Moorhead, before officially changing his name to Jeff Buckley in the wake of the early drug overdose death of Tim, at just 27.

Ron raised Buckley on a steady, primarily hard-rock diet of the usual suspects: Hendrix, The Who, Pink Floyd, and of course, Led Zeppelin.

But once Buckley began to master the guitar, his musical palette soon became even more extensive and eclectic, incorporating jazz giants — the Mingus, Ellington, and Davis variety — as well as being heavily influenced by French Chanteuse Edith Piaf and the likes of Billie Holiday, Judy Garland and Nina Simone.

Curiously, Buckley supplied only backing vocals to the many bands he found himself in, having little idea at the time of the full, four-octave tenor vocal shockwave lurking under the hood.

A visit to New York in early 1990s soon became a fully fledged move, after Jeff attended a tribute concert for the father he barely knew, singing Tim's I Never Asked to be Your Mountain and wowing the small crowd.

The fact Buckley had deliberately chosen a song his late father had written largely about being an absent husband and parent, was an irony not lost on Tim's old manager, Hal Wilner, also in attendance.

Invariably one thing led to another, culminating in a record deal with Sony, after an extended stint playing solo shows — as well as occasionally serving coffee — at a cafe in the village, called Sin-e.

A work of grace

In August 1994, with the release of Grace, Buckley was vividly captured as a dynamic artist in full flight and the results were wholly astonishing.

Buckley had arrived, seemingly fully formed, effortlessly moving from the decidedly muscular to the slyly feminine, often within the space of a single song and with emotionally devastating, yet oddly transcendent results.

As it did in the early cafe days, the shatteringly expansive octave range of Tim clearly shone through.

But in this — his big reveal — Buckley managed to successfully incorporate his father's essence into a seamless amalgam of complementary spirits, and in doing so forged his own path.

Grace was his moment and he took it, seemingly shedding his father's ghost in the process, but the inevitable comparisons lingered.

Critically, Buckley had become an artist who intuitively knew when to show restraint and when to unleash, turning what could easily have been a suite of well-crafted rock songs into a series of, at times, free-form, jazz-rock opuses, interspersed with a smattering of covers that more often than not took the original and blasted it into orbit.

Grace is still largely known most for its well-documented cover of Leonard Cohen's majestic, surreptitiously amusing Hallelujah, turning it into more of a gospel song, whose scope reached to the heavens, solely through Buckley's sublime, haunting vocal.

The rest of the album is no slouch, either.

From the sweet, melodic, soulful resignation of first single Last Goodbye, to the portrait of deliciously bitter, alchemic transcendence in the Simone cover, Lilac Wine, to an exquisite interpretation of the Benjamin Britten hymn, Corpus Christi Carol, the sheer scope of Jeff's talent seemed utterly limitless.

To these ears, the dark, majestic and emotionally eviscerating coda, Dream Brother, is the purest distillation of artistic intent, addressing the elephant in the room as it were, veiled as it is in the form of a dire cautionary tale to a close friend at one of life's many critical crossroads:

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...

The stuff of legend in Australia

Grace resonated most curiously in both France and Australia, where it heralded the arrival of a once-in-a-lifetime talent.

Accordingly, a short promotional tour of Australia in September, 1995 has become the stuff of legend, as tiny clubs soon became more akin to a series of spiritual masses on a holy road.

The interim years since its release have not diminished the album's power one iota, nor the impact of what we all lost that night in the Wolf River exactly 20 years ago: a beautiful, rare, complicated bird, singing until the end.

Alistair Clout is a freelance writer and itinerant administrative officer, known to work within both the academia and film industries. He also dreams of writing and directing his first feature film.