May 22, 2024 • 28 mins
On this week’s episode hosts Brittany Spanos and Rob Sheffield break down Jeff Buckley's "Grace" as well as his much-too-short career due to his tragic passing at age 30. The pair are joined by Rolling Stone senior writer David Browne, who penned the 2001 biography about Jeff and his father Tim Buckley titled Dream Brother: The Life and Music of Jeff and Tim Buckley. Browne had been an early fan of the younger Buckley, having been one of the singer's first interviews.
In the early Aughts, Buckley’s heartbreaking cover of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" became a radio staple and minor hit for the singer. Upon the release of his debut album however, Grace performed poorly and received mixed reviews, with Buckley's emotional intensity being a turn-off to some critics and listeners. When Buckley died it felt like a young singer-songwriter's promising, burgeoning career was cut much too short. At the time of his death, Buckley's place in music was still unclear.
No one could have anticipated that three decades on, Buckley would more famous than ever. Thanks to the internet, millennial and now Gen Z fans have emerged as a massive audience for Buckley's music. His sweeping romanticism mixed with the lore surrounding his passing has made him a tragic hero of sorts, on par with Kurt Cobain, Elliott Smith and River Phoenix. Buckley not only showed incredible promise as a songwriter but also as an interpreter of great music, and there was so much more he was working to showcase on his sophomore album, which ended up being released posthumously.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to five hundred Greatest Songs of podcast based on
Rolling Stones. Hugely popular, influential, and sometimes controversialist I'm Britney Spanos.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
And I'm Rob Sheffield were here to shed light on
the greatest songs ever made and discover what makes them
so great. And this week we are talking about Jeff
Buckley Grace.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Grace ranks at three ninety four on the New List
and his cover of Leonard cohen tally Lullia was actually
on the original list at two fifty nine. I'm a
big Jeff Buckley fan. I'm very excited to talk about this.
But do you remember the first time that you heard
the album Grace or encountered who Jeff Buckley was.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Yeah, it took a long time with me though. It
was an album that really and a musician who really
had to create his own audience because he just didn't
fit into anything. He didn't you know, he didn't fit
into any radio format. He didn't fit into any genre. Really,
genres are just funny words like as fiance would say,
and that for Jeff Buckley, there wasn't really an audience
(01:01):
that was ready to hear what he was doing. So Grace,
the song and Grace the album both took years for me. Yeah,
Where's for You? It was very different.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Yeah, I feel like by the time that I was
a teenager, there was so much lore around Jeff Buckley,
so much of this mystery. I mean, he died very
tragically when he was thirty. He drowned in a river
while he was in Memphis about to record a second album,
and you know there's all that kind of just like
this tumblerrification of like his life because he was also
(01:33):
just like super hot, and like all the songs were
about like yearning and longing and love and like, you know,
for teen girls, that's like ultimate musical bait. Here's this
guy who died tragically young and also sings just about
like being so in love. So I feel like by
the time that I was a teenager like that, like
(01:54):
there was already this like legacy built around Jeff Buckley
that was very much on the level on par with
like Elliot Smith, Kurt Kobaning, Like that was you know,
kind of being just like amplified by teenage fans. So well,
I'd heard Hollylujo when I was in middle school, and
then Grace I got into later, and again it was
a big part of just like being on Tumblr and
(02:17):
live journal and all of those kind of sad teen
spaces that were sort of sharing his music. So I
was really obsessed with with Grace.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Then you mentioned live journal and Tumblr. He didn't really
become a star until until later when stuff like that
was invented. But he was one of the last pre
internet rock stars when you know, when he wasn't even
really a star, because I think having those communities online
for people to engage, I think he was one of
(02:46):
the first examples of an artists whose reputation just started
to really soar once people like that could find each other,
because it was just really different when he was like
getting no airplay was when he was around.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Itself is just I think, so brilliant, so well done.
I mean, he's such an incredible singer. Like his there's
a few covers on there, but the original songs as
well are just like absolutely just gorgeous and so poetic
and intense. He's just very intense guy again part of
the appeal. But yeah, like I think, you know, it's
(03:22):
just one of those things where there was so little
of him to listen to, so it's kind of like
piecing together what could have been and who he was
and all of that. You know, it's a similar story
with his father as well. His father is the Folks
singer Tim Buckley, who passed away when he was twenty
eight and so passed away when Jeff was pretty young,
and Jeff was raised by his mother and his stepfather
(03:44):
in California. There are sort of those parallels of like
the father and son kind of tragic young death and
sort of limited kind of output type of happening there.
That's also kind of adds so many more layers to
that story as well. And of course the song Grace
that ended up making the list. That song is a
song that was written with Gary Lucas the guitarist, and
(04:05):
it was based off of an instrumental that Gary Lucas
had written. And the song again is like such a
perfect example of like Jeff Buckley's writing style, which is
it's a very simple premise that is like so over
the top and so intense and so like just like
peak yearning. It's just about him saying goodbye to his
girlfriend at the airport on a rainy day. And I mean,
(04:27):
if you just kind of like listen to the first
the song the first time, You're like, is that it's
just so much deeper and so much more intense. And
you know, it's also, like he said, it's about not
feeling so bad about your own mortality when you have
true love, which like sure man like, but like love
that eat it up, like I'm an intense way of
(04:50):
talking about like a very mundane sort of activity.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Who doesn't chat about that at the airport. It's like,
let me stop at the cinnabuns and let's talk about
mortality love. You mentioned Hallelujah, which is of course his
most famous cover and a cover that blew up before
the original was anywhere near as famous. It really made
the original. But his version of that that leads into
the Smiths I Know It's over. That was a real
(05:14):
turning point for me in terms of learning to hear
what he was doing, because the first time I heard it,
I said, you got to be kidding. You're taking the
song that was already one of the most melodramatic songs
ever recorded for other human beings to listen to, and
nobody ever accused that song of not being histrionic enough,
and he took it to such mind blowingly hyperbolic melodramatic
(05:39):
heights that it really did seem like, Okay, he's overdoing
it so much that he makes it sound like, no,
this is what the song is meant to be when
it goes into that falsetto and completely leaves the song behind,
and it was really kind of a revelation of what
he was doing.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
I will say he has one of my favorite falsettos
in music because there's also really great sort of deep
cut from him that I don't remember what exactly. I
think it's from some just like compilation of like unreleased
music that had been put out posthumously called Everybody Here
Wants You. Great song. His falsetto on that is absolutely stunning.
It's like kind of like a it's like so unlike
(06:16):
most of Grace where it's just like this like sort
of like groovy, sexy R and B song, like a
little bit more restrained musically than some of like the
kind of like bigger rock moments on Grace. But his
false seto on that is so perfect, Like I love
and I just like love his voice and it's very
clear like how much how many male singers have really
tried to evoke and like channel the Jeff Buckley musical
(06:41):
spirit in the decade since seems very very obvious how
how much of that influence has existed.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
God, you are so right about that. It's so funny that.
I mean, it's striking for me because personally, I don't
remember singers going for that kind of falsetto before. He did,
certainly not like in that you know, rock kind of context. Yeah.
Every time I hear, especially like a young male singer
with an acoustic guitar do that kind of falsetto, I
(07:07):
just think this is something really Jeff Bucket kind of invented.
It isn't just something that he demonstrated to the world,
but that kind of singing, he took it so far
over the top compared to anybody who did that kind
of thing before.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Yeah, I feel like I hear a lot of him
in Hosier right now. I feel like that. I got
really into Hosier last year and I was like, I
was like, why do I like Hoser so much? And
I was like, oh, yeah, because he reminded me so
much of Jeff Buckley, and I feel like I hear
a lot of that. I guess maybe that's also kind
of where I'm seeing like a lot of the crossover too,
and like the Jeff Buckley sort of continuing popularity in
(07:44):
his music is like a lot of these sort of
male singer songwriters like Hoser, like a Lewis Capaldi or
even thinking of like Nile Horn's like I guess with
more So I was like first album and sort of
totally you know, those kind of more guitar driven. I
think a lot of those A lot of times people
want to put them more closely to like John Mayer,
(08:05):
who is also very Jeff Buckley influenced, but it is
very clearly seems to go back to like Jeff more
so than even that, Like it seems like to go
back to that sort of like genre bending, soulful kind
of like pop rock sound of his.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Yeah to me, no as well like another like you know,
hitting those high notes and doing that in a totally
unconventional sort of style.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Yeah. And I feel like we're like constantly in waves
of like irony and earnestness and like pop culture of
like it's like either a really like ironic era or
like a very earnest era. And I feel like we're
in that sort of like earnest moment again. And we
could hear that in like the music that's really popular
right now, we can hear that, and like you know,
the artists are blowing up, and I feel like the
(08:49):
music that's also we're nostalgic for. And I think Jeff
Buckley being sort of like this kind of perfect emblem
of earnestness kind of is always sort of a moment
for him to kind of come back or for people
to discover him or rediscover him in some way. So
I feel like he's kind of that's maybe why there's
(09:11):
kind of a new wave of fans coming in.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
That's so fascinating. So an age of earnestness is an
age that's open to Jeff Buckley.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
They're more ready than ever for Jeff.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Buy if I'm hearing you correctly, Jeff Buckley is bigger
now than he's ever been, which I think it's fair
to say. I mean, yeah, just gets more and more.
He hits deeper with people every time.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Yeah, I think especially because it's so it's less so
about Hallelujah right now, Like obviously that's sure the like
Hallelujah sort of I guess it would it could be
called revival in the two thousands or like the Hallelujah
like popularity that was happening in the two thousands was
I mean, such a massive, massive moment. But I think
(09:55):
right now it does seem like, you know, I've been
hearing a lot of Jeff Buckley and like television and
movies and like high fidelity of the show. Also like
had Jeff Buckley featured prey pop, Yeah, and a Jeff
Buckley inspired character on there, yes, which like was great.
I love that show. And yeah, I mean just like
I feel like it's like happening a little bit. Maybe
maybe I'm also just like I'm paying closer attention to
(10:16):
the Jeff Buckley vibes that are being thrown my way
than most people. But there's a lot, So there's there's
a lot of a lot of Jeff Buckley, you know.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
There's a lot out there, and that he just gets more.
They reach a point where it seems like, well, this
music from this era is more popular now than anybody
could have imagined, and yet just keeps getting more and
more popular every year.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Yeah. Next, we'll be joined by Rolling Stone senior writer
David Brown. We are joined now by Rolling Stone senior
writer David Brown, who also is the author of the
book Dream Brother, The Lives and Music of Jeff and
Tim Buckley. Thank you so much, David for being here today.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
I'm thrilled with you guys.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
Yeah, thanks David, And I'm curious what prompted your exploration
into Jeff and Tim Buckley's lives originally.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
Well, I was really fortunate to catch Jeff Buckley live
very early in his career, when he was playing at
this complete kind of hole in the wall coffee house
called Shane on the Lower East Side, when there was
just a lot of buzz about him in the early nineties.
It was funny. I kept hearing like from people I
worked with at another outlet, like have you had Tim
(11:30):
Buckley's son is playing in this bar and you should
change He's amazing, you should check him out. And I
thought Tim Buckley had a son. I had no idea
and anyway, so I was lucky to see him a
couple of times there and interview him early on for
another rival outlet at the time. It was probably one
of his first interviews, and he was just a fascinating
(11:51):
combination of someone who was both kind of intense and
almost mythopoetic in his way and also just totally like
goofy and funny. The year later, Grace came out and
I you know, kind of lived up to those expectations
of what we thought he could bring. And so yeah,
that's basically what brought me all into it.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
And what was I mean, I know, there was so
much of that buzz happening with those shows and everything
that even leading up to there was record execs trying
to sign him and just you know, what was it
like to watch him live? What was that experience of
what his live shows were lated at that time?
Speaker 3 (12:25):
It was kind of amazing because Shane was probably about
the size of this room. It was an incredibly small space,
didn't even have a sign out front, you know. He
would just sit there against this brick wall with his
white electric guitar, didn't have a band or anything. And
what was kind of amazing was he didn't really have
a whole lot of original songs at that point. He
(12:45):
was never a super prolific songwriter, but he only had
a few songs. So he dipped into his own knowledge
of music, whether it was the stuff he grew up with,
the records he grew up with in his house and
his mother's or stepfather's record collections, and it was kind
of his way of trying to find out who he was.
So you might hear one of his own songs. Then
you'd hear like an Edith paf song or some obscure
(13:08):
Elton John song or a Bad Brains song or Led
Zepplin's Night Flight, or they'd be like, where's this coming from?
You know. We had this incredible sense of history about him.
And what was fascinating too was again in the context
of the early nineties alternative rock scene, which he wasn't
really part of, but that's what it was. There was
nothing cheeky or ironic about his covers. It wasn't like
(13:31):
someone doing a cover of who was it that did?
I'm Easy with that faith no More? You know, or
they would do a cover yeah line of Witchi's and
you think, well, is this done with a little wink like?
You know, that wasn't the case. No matter what Jeff
was doing. He was intensely invested in that song, Hank
Williams song, Billie Holiday song, you know, whatever it was.
(13:53):
He just was fully invested in it. And it actually
turned some people off back things because they people would
say it seems kind of corny. He was like, he
was so like earnest and sincere, and that wasn't cool
back then, but that's that's kind of what made him
great and made him stand out.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
At the time, it was wild to see that sort
of mystique that he built. At the time you wrote
your book, that hadn't really come together yet because that
was so soon after this story. I think the book
was like a big part of building that posthumous mystique.
But really, like while he was alive, it was very
different in terms of, like you said, people had very
(14:31):
strongly mixed feelings about him. Also because what he did
was so musically unique and so emotionally intense that, like
you said, it was a real almost visceral turnoff for
a lot of people.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
It kind of was. But you know, even then, I
remember interviewing someone, a photographer and good friend of his
name Mary Sear, who took the cover of the Grace album,
and she said, even when, you know, when she knew him,
there were there were always two Jeffs with her. There
was regular Jeff, who was this kind of cut up
class clown. He was a brilliant mimic. He could in
between songs at Shane or even at his own concerts
(15:04):
later he might suddenly do like a version of Kashmir
sped up to forty five, you know, you know, and
just not the whole thing. Just so he had that
jokey side of him. And then there was what she
called the mythological Jeff, and that was the guy who
was obsessed with feelings of mortality and legacy and family
burden and the record company, you know, record industry pressure,
(15:27):
and you know, this kind of like darkness and not
darkness but more of a heaviness. And he kind of
went back and forth between him, so that mythic side
was there already, you know, and I think he cultivated
it in a way, you know. And romantis and that's
a great word, it's the perfect word, because he really,
he really had that in his He had this this view,
this kind of very spiritual, intense view of music as
(15:50):
this holy ritual. And now that sounds so corny just
to say that, but he really did. He saw it
as this calling, and not just because his father was
Tim Buckley. He kind of saw it as his souvation
or something and all that. How did you hear his music?
Speaker 1 (16:03):
It was the Hollylijah cover. That was a song that
was played on radio a lot. It was played on
alternative radio a lot. Was that song, wow, the first
song that ever made me like actively start sobbing, Like
it was just like his performance was so emotional. I'd
heard Halleluiah before because of Shrek, obviously famously going back
(16:23):
to the roots, but I just never heard a song
performed like that before, and it was that was the
first song, And I probably heard it in middle school,
and I think then later got more into grace and
sort of that. I think just listening to a lot
of like I was very into twenty seven club or
and like that is, you know, very high school thing
(16:44):
to become very infatuated with.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
And it's one of the only, if you guys agree
with me, one of the only covers of a Leonard
Cohen song that's better than Leonard Cohen's cover.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
It's definitely any unique one in terms of the history
of that song. Like it's really weird to even contemplate
how obscure that song was before Jeff Buckley saying it
that this song was just sitting there and nobody had
any idea that it was a classic. Allen Light's book
about that whole history of that song is so fascinating.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
And he only heard it through the Lender Cone tribute album.
It was John Cale right, the John Kyle version. That's
how Jeff heard it. He didn't even I'm not sure
he even knew a Lender Cohen version right away.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Yeah, but I knew when he died it was so striking.
It was May ninety seven, and it seemed like his
story was just beginning. So it seemed really because like
Grace was an album that I don't know if you
remember it this way, but for a lot of people,
they thought of it as very promising album that it
like that it wasn't his masterpiece. It was, you know,
(17:42):
a statement from somebody who was about to develop and
go different places.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
Right.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
It didn't seem like one of those tortured artists eyes
young kind of stories. It seemed like very wrong for
his history and his potential.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
I mean, it was shocking as it should be.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
I think what you're getting at in a way was
that what was so fascinating about Jeff was his incredible
range of influences. And you hear it on Grace where
he does these sort of kind of mystical almost Indian
music things. Then he'll do a Nina Simone song, and
he'll do Eternal Life, which was the closest thing to
alternative rock on that album, and all those influences that
(18:18):
we talked about earlier. He seemed like, right from the beginning,
one of those legacy artists, and that's what I think
intrigued him at Columbia Records to sign him. But he
seemed like one of these rare people who would come
along and would have a career, like a Bob Dylan
or a Van Morrison or some of these other people
(18:40):
he worshiped too, or Elvis Costello. These are all heroes
of his who had these long careers that had hills
and valleys commercially, but they would just kind of follow
their muse and like, I'll make a record like this,
maybe a record like that. And this record he was making,
the second record that never finished. You know, it was
(19:01):
part of that process. They weren't quite sure what it
was they recorded with Tom Verlaine that didn't quite work out,
and he was gonna do more of an indie ish
kind of record, and it was part of that whole
exploration we and it was exciting. You were like, where's
this guy going to go? It didn't seem like he
wasn't a one note artist, and so that was really
added to the tragedy, like, oh man, this is someone
(19:22):
we could we could have been listening to for decades
like some of those other people, and they haven't cut
short like that.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
And of course Grace the album made five hundred Greatest
Album's list and Grace's song makes the five hundre Gras
Songs list. It actually replaced Hallylia, which was on the
original list. I'm curious what your reaction was to seeing
that song from the album make the list.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
I was a little surprised that Grace would have been
the one, but then again, I mean there are first
of there are so many great ones. I would have
almost thought last Goodbye because it was kind of the
hit closest he had to a hit. I'm glad though,
that it's Grace because it's one of his own original
it's an original song. It's not just a cover, not
just a cover. But it's great to see a song
(20:07):
he co wrote with Gary Lucas the great guitar player
on the list. And I think there's something about Grace
the more. I thought about it on my way to
this podcast that it's a great perfect song for him
to be on this because it does it has that
all in quality to it in the vocal, the way
his voice soars up and down. It's quote unquote rock,
(20:29):
but it's not really kind of traditional rock in a way.
It's a great showcase for his voice. And of course
it has like these references to drowning and all these
things that came up that you will think back on
now and are kind of wild. He has several songs
that mentioned Nightmares by the Sea, and we're not intentional,
but I think there's something about this about Grace that
(20:51):
the song that actually does kind of encapsulate a lot
of what he does. I think one of the things
about the Grace record, and I'd like, curious hear you
talk about this Rob too, it just even though it
came out in ninety four, it doesn't feel like a
nineties album. He's like one of those people, like like
a Nick Drake or something where it's sort of timeless,
and I think maybe that's part of the reason people
(21:13):
still come back to it.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
Yeah, Well, as you pointed out earlier, it was very
out of step with its times in terms of the
attitude toward music. It really was a kind of album
that people, I think people especially in the rock world, felt,
haven't we just escaped this era? Where like it was
all focused on the artist's you know, sincerity and really
(21:37):
meaning it as a you know, smokescreen for really inadequate skills, right,
which is, you know, rightly wrong with the cliche people
had about about a lot of eras that had preceded
that end. Like you said, there was something corny about
what he did. So it's really weird that his image
and his audience in his lifetime was so different from
what it became in the two thousands. He hated to
(21:57):
use a cliche like ahead of his time, but there
was no audience that existed. He had to really conjure
an audience into existence with his music just because there
wasn't really an audience for what he did. That there
was no radio format you could play any of those songs.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
On, no live journal yet.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
Yeah, there was no live journal yet. Yes, And the
genre of the slightly overwrought type of Jeff Buckley fan
like did not exist yet. He had to conjure that
there's nobody you could put him on a double bill
with Right. There's no festival where you could put him
on between two other people. What he did for better
for worse was very much unique and it didn't fit
into any format. He didn't have a strong music critic
(22:38):
following if I remember correctly. He had music critics obviously,
you who were strongly in his camp, but there was
an awful lot of you know, people heard pomposity and
corniness in his music, which had a lot to do
with the times.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
Right if he freaked out when his first EP came
out live at Shane and it was reviewed in a
newspaper I think it was New News Day, along with
a Michael Bolton record, and like he was I think
at work at the Grace album at the time. They
had to actually stop working for the day because it
was so upsetting to him that and they were lumped
in with you know, basically like pretend white soul singers,
(23:17):
and he was just like, oh my god. But there
were people, you're right, I mean, there are people thought
that he was he was too over the top vocally,
which he could be, you know, in his way, because
he had that skill like Freddie Mercury. Comparisons or whatever.
But you know, you're right, I mean there really wasn't.
I mean, Grace only sold when by the time he
passed away, it only sold about one hundred and eighty
(23:38):
thousand copies, which in the CD era, now that's a lot.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
He sold one hundred and eight thousand in nineteen ninety
seven issue. That wasn't a lot. It was it was
a middling commercial success. But those one hundred and eighty
thousand people or the bulk of them, just like loved
that record, you know. I mean, I've been so many
people like that was a life changing record. It kind
of spoke to him and even the way it was
(24:05):
made and recorded, I mean his voice was so well
recorded and just like so clear and you could hear everything,
and it just spoke to people a lot, and and
you know, yeah, as you say, Rob, there really wasn't.
There really wasn't a format for it at the time.
You know, it's funny to see him if you can
go on YouTube and you see like video interviews he
did at the time with these like alternative local alternative
(24:28):
stations and he's it's kind of funny.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
I remember seeing about one hundred and twenty minutes and
I was like, why is this guy even on one
hundred and three minutes. He didn't fit with anything they
were talking about. He didn't have any of that sort
of sense of humor or sensibility. It was just awkward
and wrong, and it really felt like, you know, the
record company really wanted him somewhere on MTV and there
(24:51):
was literally no place to put him. VH one wasn't
taking him, and you know they had to. They're like, sure,
we'll put you on one hundred and twenty minutes. It
was that kind of misfit sort of thing that he's
now so universal in a very real sense, but he
had to create that audience that would be his because
that audience didn't. I think of that as a record
(25:13):
where musicians being so much more into it than anybody else.
And you know that there wasn't an airplay support for
that album, There wasn't a press support, there wasn't really
an industry support. But actual musicians could hear what he
was doing and they're really the only ones.
Speaker 3 (25:31):
And you see that in the impact that the people
have come since him who evoke him on more or another,
whether it's Coldplay or Muse or you can make a
whole list of like Jeff Buckley ish kind of singers.
That kind of speaks to his legacy as well, that
he was so highly regarded. I remember interviewing Chris Martin
from Coldplay right after, not long after he died, and
(25:52):
Chris actually like, like the second album Sketches, that's just
from My Sweetheart the Drunk better than Grace. He was like,
which I thought it was interesting. He was really into him,
but he thought that record was better. But I think
you see his Jeff's legacy in that way. It's it's
not not necessarily measured commercially, but in the way he's
endured as kind of an influence and his sort of
(26:13):
mythical romantic figure. Was he the last mythical romantic rock act?
To throw that out there, maybe, yeah, I don't know
Jack White, I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
Who there's a Roman, but it's but it's very different
part of it. I mean something about Jeff Bucke, he
was not like, he did not aspire to ordinary dudeness,
like in a way that male rock stars, especially if
that era, were supposed to be very like, but that
he had that cultivated that kind of mystical or you know,
(26:47):
to detract her pseudomistical sort of or like.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
A male cabaret star, yeah, cabaret singer in a way.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
He was remote and mysterious emotionally in a way that
was very dramatic.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Yes, yes, I mean obvious. Like the song Grace itself,
it's just so it's just about leaving a girl in
an air like, you know, like an airport.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
You would not It's like and the pain I leave
behind and I'm drowning, and it's just like, you know,
that was the mythical jest kicking in completely. It's like,
you know, the kind of the torture, teen, angsty side
of him that I think, you know, people also relate to.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
It blows my mind that that was the first song
that made you cry on the radio. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
No, I literally was sobby in my mom's car. I
was just like, this is so much. My mom was
looking over at me like I was like eleven or twelve,
and I was just like, this is intense.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
And also, Hallelujah had a whole life after nine to eleven?
Was this was this? It might have been.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
It was definitely post nine eleven.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
Okay, because there were there were people were making home
who were making videos of that site, and well, YouTube
didn't exist yet. I don't know where I saw them,
but people would make videos of rescue workers and put
that music to it and put it up somewhere. And
that was really the beginning of the Jeff hal Lujah
version really kicking in. Because it wasn't a big hit
(28:05):
or anything when he was alive. It wasn't a single
or anything, but it was a slow build thing. And
I remember, I remember that post nine to eleven, and
it was it was chillingly perfect, you know, for that
for that footage.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
Thank you so much for joining us today, David.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
Great to be here, guys, Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
A real pleasure to talk this music with you.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
It was a blast with both of you.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
Get we really wrote the book. Thanks.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Thanks so much for listening to Rolling Stone's five hundred
Greatest Songs. This podcast is brought to you by Rolling
Stone and iHeartMedia. Written hosted by Me.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
Britney spanos In, Me Rob Sheffield.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
Executive produced by Gus Winner, Jason Fine, Alex Dale, and
Christian Horne, and produced by Jesse Cannon, with music supervision
by Eric Seiler. Thanks for watching, Thanks for listening.
Welcome to five hundred Greatest Songs of podcast based on
Rolling Stones. Hugely popular, influential, and sometimes controversialist I'm Britney Spanos.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
And I'm Rob Sheffield were here to shed light on
the greatest songs ever made and discover what makes them
so great. And this week we are talking about Jeff
Buckley Grace.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Grace ranks at three ninety four on the New List
and his cover of Leonard cohen tally Lullia was actually
on the original list at two fifty nine. I'm a
big Jeff Buckley fan. I'm very excited to talk about this.
But do you remember the first time that you heard
the album Grace or encountered who Jeff Buckley was.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Yeah, it took a long time with me though. It
was an album that really and a musician who really
had to create his own audience because he just didn't
fit into anything. He didn't you know, he didn't fit
into any radio format. He didn't fit into any genre. Really,
genres are just funny words like as fiance would say,
and that for Jeff Buckley, there wasn't really an audience
(01:01):
that was ready to hear what he was doing. So Grace,
the song and Grace the album both took years for me. Yeah,
Where's for You? It was very different.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Yeah, I feel like by the time that I was
a teenager, there was so much lore around Jeff Buckley,
so much of this mystery. I mean, he died very
tragically when he was thirty. He drowned in a river
while he was in Memphis about to record a second album,
and you know there's all that kind of just like
this tumblerrification of like his life because he was also
(01:33):
just like super hot, and like all the songs were
about like yearning and longing and love and like, you know,
for teen girls, that's like ultimate musical bait. Here's this
guy who died tragically young and also sings just about
like being so in love. So I feel like by
the time that I was a teenager like that, like
(01:54):
there was already this like legacy built around Jeff Buckley
that was very much on the level on par with
like Elliot Smith, Kurt Kobaning, Like that was you know,
kind of being just like amplified by teenage fans. So well,
I'd heard Hollylujo when I was in middle school, and
then Grace I got into later, and again it was
a big part of just like being on Tumblr and
(02:17):
live journal and all of those kind of sad teen
spaces that were sort of sharing his music. So I
was really obsessed with with Grace.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Then you mentioned live journal and Tumblr. He didn't really
become a star until until later when stuff like that
was invented. But he was one of the last pre
internet rock stars when you know, when he wasn't even
really a star, because I think having those communities online
for people to engage, I think he was one of
(02:46):
the first examples of an artists whose reputation just started
to really soar once people like that could find each other,
because it was just really different when he was like
getting no airplay was when he was around.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Itself is just I think, so brilliant, so well done.
I mean, he's such an incredible singer. Like his there's
a few covers on there, but the original songs as
well are just like absolutely just gorgeous and so poetic
and intense. He's just very intense guy again part of
the appeal. But yeah, like I think, you know, it's
(03:22):
just one of those things where there was so little
of him to listen to, so it's kind of like
piecing together what could have been and who he was
and all of that. You know, it's a similar story
with his father as well. His father is the Folks
singer Tim Buckley, who passed away when he was twenty
eight and so passed away when Jeff was pretty young,
and Jeff was raised by his mother and his stepfather
(03:44):
in California. There are sort of those parallels of like
the father and son kind of tragic young death and
sort of limited kind of output type of happening there.
That's also kind of adds so many more layers to
that story as well. And of course the song Grace
that ended up making the list. That song is a
song that was written with Gary Lucas the guitarist, and
(04:05):
it was based off of an instrumental that Gary Lucas
had written. And the song again is like such a
perfect example of like Jeff Buckley's writing style, which is
it's a very simple premise that is like so over
the top and so intense and so like just like
peak yearning. It's just about him saying goodbye to his
girlfriend at the airport on a rainy day. And I mean,
(04:27):
if you just kind of like listen to the first
the song the first time, You're like, is that it's
just so much deeper and so much more intense. And
you know, it's also, like he said, it's about not
feeling so bad about your own mortality when you have
true love, which like sure man like, but like love
that eat it up, like I'm an intense way of
(04:50):
talking about like a very mundane sort of activity.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Who doesn't chat about that at the airport. It's like,
let me stop at the cinnabuns and let's talk about
mortality love. You mentioned Hallelujah, which is of course his
most famous cover and a cover that blew up before
the original was anywhere near as famous. It really made
the original. But his version of that that leads into
the Smiths I Know It's over. That was a real
(05:14):
turning point for me in terms of learning to hear
what he was doing, because the first time I heard it,
I said, you got to be kidding. You're taking the
song that was already one of the most melodramatic songs
ever recorded for other human beings to listen to, and
nobody ever accused that song of not being histrionic enough,
and he took it to such mind blowingly hyperbolic melodramatic
(05:39):
heights that it really did seem like, Okay, he's overdoing
it so much that he makes it sound like, no,
this is what the song is meant to be when
it goes into that falsetto and completely leaves the song behind,
and it was really kind of a revelation of what
he was doing.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
I will say he has one of my favorite falsettos
in music because there's also really great sort of deep
cut from him that I don't remember what exactly. I
think it's from some just like compilation of like unreleased
music that had been put out posthumously called Everybody Here
Wants You. Great song. His falsetto on that is absolutely stunning.
It's like kind of like a it's like so unlike
(06:16):
most of Grace where it's just like this like sort
of like groovy, sexy R and B song, like a
little bit more restrained musically than some of like the
kind of like bigger rock moments on Grace. But his
false seto on that is so perfect, Like I love
and I just like love his voice and it's very
clear like how much how many male singers have really
tried to evoke and like channel the Jeff Buckley musical
(06:41):
spirit in the decade since seems very very obvious how
how much of that influence has existed.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
God, you are so right about that. It's so funny that.
I mean, it's striking for me because personally, I don't
remember singers going for that kind of falsetto before. He did,
certainly not like in that you know, rock kind of context. Yeah.
Every time I hear, especially like a young male singer
with an acoustic guitar do that kind of falsetto, I
(07:07):
just think this is something really Jeff Bucket kind of invented.
It isn't just something that he demonstrated to the world,
but that kind of singing, he took it so far
over the top compared to anybody who did that kind
of thing before.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Yeah, I feel like I hear a lot of him
in Hosier right now. I feel like that. I got
really into Hosier last year and I was like, I
was like, why do I like Hoser so much? And
I was like, oh, yeah, because he reminded me so
much of Jeff Buckley, and I feel like I hear
a lot of that. I guess maybe that's also kind
of where I'm seeing like a lot of the crossover too,
and like the Jeff Buckley sort of continuing popularity in
(07:44):
his music is like a lot of these sort of
male singer songwriters like Hoser, like a Lewis Capaldi or
even thinking of like Nile Horn's like I guess with
more So I was like first album and sort of
totally you know, those kind of more guitar driven. I
think a lot of those A lot of times people
want to put them more closely to like John Mayer,
(08:05):
who is also very Jeff Buckley influenced, but it is
very clearly seems to go back to like Jeff more
so than even that, Like it seems like to go
back to that sort of like genre bending, soulful kind
of like pop rock sound of his.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Yeah to me, no as well like another like you know,
hitting those high notes and doing that in a totally
unconventional sort of style.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Yeah. And I feel like we're like constantly in waves
of like irony and earnestness and like pop culture of
like it's like either a really like ironic era or
like a very earnest era. And I feel like we're
in that sort of like earnest moment again. And we
could hear that in like the music that's really popular
right now, we can hear that, and like you know,
the artists are blowing up, and I feel like the
(08:49):
music that's also we're nostalgic for. And I think Jeff
Buckley being sort of like this kind of perfect emblem
of earnestness kind of is always sort of a moment
for him to kind of come back or for people
to discover him or rediscover him in some way. So
I feel like he's kind of that's maybe why there's
(09:11):
kind of a new wave of fans coming in.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
That's so fascinating. So an age of earnestness is an
age that's open to Jeff Buckley.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
They're more ready than ever for Jeff.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Buy if I'm hearing you correctly, Jeff Buckley is bigger
now than he's ever been, which I think it's fair
to say. I mean, yeah, just gets more and more.
He hits deeper with people every time.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Yeah, I think especially because it's so it's less so
about Hallelujah right now, Like obviously that's sure the like
Hallelujah sort of I guess it would it could be
called revival in the two thousands or like the Hallelujah
like popularity that was happening in the two thousands was
I mean, such a massive, massive moment. But I think
(09:55):
right now it does seem like, you know, I've been
hearing a lot of Jeff Buckley and like television and
movies and like high fidelity of the show. Also like
had Jeff Buckley featured prey pop, Yeah, and a Jeff
Buckley inspired character on there, yes, which like was great.
I love that show. And yeah, I mean just like
I feel like it's like happening a little bit. Maybe
maybe I'm also just like I'm paying closer attention to
(10:16):
the Jeff Buckley vibes that are being thrown my way
than most people. But there's a lot, So there's there's
a lot of a lot of Jeff Buckley, you know.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
There's a lot out there, and that he just gets more.
They reach a point where it seems like, well, this
music from this era is more popular now than anybody
could have imagined, and yet just keeps getting more and
more popular every year.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Yeah. Next, we'll be joined by Rolling Stone senior writer
David Brown. We are joined now by Rolling Stone senior
writer David Brown, who also is the author of the
book Dream Brother, The Lives and Music of Jeff and
Tim Buckley. Thank you so much, David for being here today.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
I'm thrilled with you guys.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
Yeah, thanks David, And I'm curious what prompted your exploration
into Jeff and Tim Buckley's lives originally.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
Well, I was really fortunate to catch Jeff Buckley live
very early in his career, when he was playing at
this complete kind of hole in the wall coffee house
called Shane on the Lower East Side, when there was
just a lot of buzz about him in the early nineties.
It was funny. I kept hearing like from people I
worked with at another outlet, like have you had Tim
(11:30):
Buckley's son is playing in this bar and you should
change He's amazing, you should check him out. And I
thought Tim Buckley had a son. I had no idea
and anyway, so I was lucky to see him a
couple of times there and interview him early on for
another rival outlet at the time. It was probably one
of his first interviews, and he was just a fascinating
(11:51):
combination of someone who was both kind of intense and
almost mythopoetic in his way and also just totally like
goofy and funny. The year later, Grace came out and
I you know, kind of lived up to those expectations
of what we thought he could bring. And so yeah,
that's basically what brought me all into it.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
And what was I mean, I know, there was so
much of that buzz happening with those shows and everything
that even leading up to there was record execs trying
to sign him and just you know, what was it
like to watch him live? What was that experience of
what his live shows were lated at that time?
Speaker 3 (12:25):
It was kind of amazing because Shane was probably about
the size of this room. It was an incredibly small space,
didn't even have a sign out front, you know. He
would just sit there against this brick wall with his
white electric guitar, didn't have a band or anything. And
what was kind of amazing was he didn't really have
a whole lot of original songs at that point. He
(12:45):
was never a super prolific songwriter, but he only had
a few songs. So he dipped into his own knowledge
of music, whether it was the stuff he grew up with,
the records he grew up with in his house and
his mother's or stepfather's record collections, and it was kind
of his way of trying to find out who he was.
So you might hear one of his own songs. Then
you'd hear like an Edith paf song or some obscure
(13:08):
Elton John song or a Bad Brains song or Led
Zepplin's Night Flight, or they'd be like, where's this coming from?
You know. We had this incredible sense of history about him.
And what was fascinating too was again in the context
of the early nineties alternative rock scene, which he wasn't
really part of, but that's what it was. There was
nothing cheeky or ironic about his covers. It wasn't like
(13:31):
someone doing a cover of who was it that did?
I'm Easy with that faith no More? You know, or
they would do a cover yeah line of Witchi's and
you think, well, is this done with a little wink like?
You know, that wasn't the case. No matter what Jeff
was doing. He was intensely invested in that song, Hank
Williams song, Billie Holiday song, you know, whatever it was.
(13:53):
He just was fully invested in it. And it actually
turned some people off back things because they people would
say it seems kind of corny. He was like, he
was so like earnest and sincere, and that wasn't cool
back then, but that's that's kind of what made him
great and made him stand out.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
At the time, it was wild to see that sort
of mystique that he built. At the time you wrote
your book, that hadn't really come together yet because that
was so soon after this story. I think the book
was like a big part of building that posthumous mystique.
But really, like while he was alive, it was very
different in terms of, like you said, people had very
(14:31):
strongly mixed feelings about him. Also because what he did
was so musically unique and so emotionally intense that, like
you said, it was a real almost visceral turnoff for
a lot of people.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
It kind of was. But you know, even then, I
remember interviewing someone, a photographer and good friend of his
name Mary Sear, who took the cover of the Grace album,
and she said, even when, you know, when she knew him,
there were there were always two Jeffs with her. There
was regular Jeff, who was this kind of cut up
class clown. He was a brilliant mimic. He could in
between songs at Shane or even at his own concerts
(15:04):
later he might suddenly do like a version of Kashmir
sped up to forty five, you know, you know, and
just not the whole thing. Just so he had that
jokey side of him. And then there was what she
called the mythological Jeff, and that was the guy who
was obsessed with feelings of mortality and legacy and family
burden and the record company, you know, record industry pressure,
(15:27):
and you know, this kind of like darkness and not
darkness but more of a heaviness. And he kind of
went back and forth between him, so that mythic side
was there already, you know, and I think he cultivated
it in a way, you know. And romantis and that's
a great word, it's the perfect word, because he really,
he really had that in his He had this this view,
this kind of very spiritual, intense view of music as
(15:50):
this holy ritual. And now that sounds so corny just
to say that, but he really did. He saw it
as this calling, and not just because his father was
Tim Buckley. He kind of saw it as his souvation
or something and all that. How did you hear his music?
Speaker 1 (16:03):
It was the Hollylijah cover. That was a song that
was played on radio a lot. It was played on
alternative radio a lot. Was that song, wow, the first
song that ever made me like actively start sobbing, Like
it was just like his performance was so emotional. I'd
heard Halleluiah before because of Shrek, obviously famously going back
(16:23):
to the roots, but I just never heard a song
performed like that before, and it was that was the
first song, And I probably heard it in middle school,
and I think then later got more into grace and
sort of that. I think just listening to a lot
of like I was very into twenty seven club or
and like that is, you know, very high school thing
(16:44):
to become very infatuated with.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
And it's one of the only, if you guys agree
with me, one of the only covers of a Leonard
Cohen song that's better than Leonard Cohen's cover.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
It's definitely any unique one in terms of the history
of that song. Like it's really weird to even contemplate
how obscure that song was before Jeff Buckley saying it
that this song was just sitting there and nobody had
any idea that it was a classic. Allen Light's book
about that whole history of that song is so fascinating.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
And he only heard it through the Lender Cone tribute album.
It was John Cale right, the John Kyle version. That's
how Jeff heard it. He didn't even I'm not sure
he even knew a Lender Cohen version right away.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Yeah, but I knew when he died it was so striking.
It was May ninety seven, and it seemed like his
story was just beginning. So it seemed really because like
Grace was an album that I don't know if you
remember it this way, but for a lot of people,
they thought of it as very promising album that it
like that it wasn't his masterpiece. It was, you know,
(17:42):
a statement from somebody who was about to develop and
go different places.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
Right.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
It didn't seem like one of those tortured artists eyes
young kind of stories. It seemed like very wrong for
his history and his potential.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
I mean, it was shocking as it should be.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
I think what you're getting at in a way was
that what was so fascinating about Jeff was his incredible
range of influences. And you hear it on Grace where
he does these sort of kind of mystical almost Indian
music things. Then he'll do a Nina Simone song, and
he'll do Eternal Life, which was the closest thing to
alternative rock on that album, and all those influences that
(18:18):
we talked about earlier. He seemed like, right from the beginning,
one of those legacy artists, and that's what I think
intrigued him at Columbia Records to sign him. But he
seemed like one of these rare people who would come
along and would have a career, like a Bob Dylan
or a Van Morrison or some of these other people
(18:40):
he worshiped too, or Elvis Costello. These are all heroes
of his who had these long careers that had hills
and valleys commercially, but they would just kind of follow
their muse and like, I'll make a record like this,
maybe a record like that. And this record he was making,
the second record that never finished. You know, it was
(19:01):
part of that process. They weren't quite sure what it
was they recorded with Tom Verlaine that didn't quite work out,
and he was gonna do more of an indie ish
kind of record, and it was part of that whole
exploration we and it was exciting. You were like, where's
this guy going to go? It didn't seem like he
wasn't a one note artist, and so that was really
added to the tragedy, like, oh man, this is someone
(19:22):
we could we could have been listening to for decades
like some of those other people, and they haven't cut
short like that.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
And of course Grace the album made five hundred Greatest
Album's list and Grace's song makes the five hundre Gras
Songs list. It actually replaced Hallylia, which was on the
original list. I'm curious what your reaction was to seeing
that song from the album make the list.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
I was a little surprised that Grace would have been
the one, but then again, I mean there are first
of there are so many great ones. I would have
almost thought last Goodbye because it was kind of the
hit closest he had to a hit. I'm glad though,
that it's Grace because it's one of his own original
it's an original song. It's not just a cover, not
just a cover. But it's great to see a song
(20:07):
he co wrote with Gary Lucas the great guitar player
on the list. And I think there's something about Grace
the more. I thought about it on my way to
this podcast that it's a great perfect song for him
to be on this because it does it has that
all in quality to it in the vocal, the way
his voice soars up and down. It's quote unquote rock,
(20:29):
but it's not really kind of traditional rock in a way.
It's a great showcase for his voice. And of course
it has like these references to drowning and all these
things that came up that you will think back on
now and are kind of wild. He has several songs
that mentioned Nightmares by the Sea, and we're not intentional,
but I think there's something about this about Grace that
(20:51):
the song that actually does kind of encapsulate a lot
of what he does. I think one of the things
about the Grace record, and I'd like, curious hear you
talk about this Rob too, it just even though it
came out in ninety four, it doesn't feel like a
nineties album. He's like one of those people, like like
a Nick Drake or something where it's sort of timeless,
and I think maybe that's part of the reason people
(21:13):
still come back to it.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
Yeah, Well, as you pointed out earlier, it was very
out of step with its times in terms of the
attitude toward music. It really was a kind of album
that people, I think people especially in the rock world, felt,
haven't we just escaped this era? Where like it was
all focused on the artist's you know, sincerity and really
(21:37):
meaning it as a you know, smokescreen for really inadequate skills, right,
which is, you know, rightly wrong with the cliche people
had about about a lot of eras that had preceded
that end. Like you said, there was something corny about
what he did. So it's really weird that his image
and his audience in his lifetime was so different from
what it became in the two thousands. He hated to
(21:57):
use a cliche like ahead of his time, but there
was no audience that existed. He had to really conjure
an audience into existence with his music just because there
wasn't really an audience for what he did. That there
was no radio format you could play any of those songs.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
On, no live journal yet.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
Yeah, there was no live journal yet. Yes, And the
genre of the slightly overwrought type of Jeff Buckley fan
like did not exist yet. He had to conjure that
there's nobody you could put him on a double bill
with Right. There's no festival where you could put him
on between two other people. What he did for better
for worse was very much unique and it didn't fit
into any format. He didn't have a strong music critic
(22:38):
following if I remember correctly. He had music critics obviously,
you who were strongly in his camp, but there was
an awful lot of you know, people heard pomposity and
corniness in his music, which had a lot to do
with the times.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
Right if he freaked out when his first EP came
out live at Shane and it was reviewed in a
newspaper I think it was New News Day, along with
a Michael Bolton record, and like he was I think
at work at the Grace album at the time. They
had to actually stop working for the day because it
was so upsetting to him that and they were lumped
in with you know, basically like pretend white soul singers,
(23:17):
and he was just like, oh my god. But there
were people, you're right, I mean, there are people thought
that he was he was too over the top vocally,
which he could be, you know, in his way, because
he had that skill like Freddie Mercury. Comparisons or whatever.
But you know, you're right, I mean there really wasn't.
I mean, Grace only sold when by the time he
passed away, it only sold about one hundred and eighty
(23:38):
thousand copies, which in the CD era, now that's a lot.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
He sold one hundred and eight thousand in nineteen ninety
seven issue. That wasn't a lot. It was it was
a middling commercial success. But those one hundred and eighty
thousand people or the bulk of them, just like loved
that record, you know. I mean, I've been so many
people like that was a life changing record. It kind
of spoke to him and even the way it was
(24:05):
made and recorded, I mean his voice was so well
recorded and just like so clear and you could hear everything,
and it just spoke to people a lot, and and
you know, yeah, as you say, Rob, there really wasn't.
There really wasn't a format for it at the time.
You know, it's funny to see him if you can
go on YouTube and you see like video interviews he
did at the time with these like alternative local alternative
(24:28):
stations and he's it's kind of funny.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
I remember seeing about one hundred and twenty minutes and
I was like, why is this guy even on one
hundred and three minutes. He didn't fit with anything they
were talking about. He didn't have any of that sort
of sense of humor or sensibility. It was just awkward
and wrong, and it really felt like, you know, the
record company really wanted him somewhere on MTV and there
(24:51):
was literally no place to put him. VH one wasn't
taking him, and you know they had to. They're like, sure,
we'll put you on one hundred and twenty minutes. It
was that kind of misfit sort of thing that he's
now so universal in a very real sense, but he
had to create that audience that would be his because
that audience didn't. I think of that as a record
(25:13):
where musicians being so much more into it than anybody else.
And you know that there wasn't an airplay support for
that album, There wasn't a press support, there wasn't really
an industry support. But actual musicians could hear what he
was doing and they're really the only ones.
Speaker 3 (25:31):
And you see that in the impact that the people
have come since him who evoke him on more or another,
whether it's Coldplay or Muse or you can make a
whole list of like Jeff Buckley ish kind of singers.
That kind of speaks to his legacy as well, that
he was so highly regarded. I remember interviewing Chris Martin
from Coldplay right after, not long after he died, and
(25:52):
Chris actually like, like the second album Sketches, that's just
from My Sweetheart the Drunk better than Grace. He was like,
which I thought it was interesting. He was really into him,
but he thought that record was better. But I think
you see his Jeff's legacy in that way. It's it's
not not necessarily measured commercially, but in the way he's
endured as kind of an influence and his sort of
(26:13):
mythical romantic figure. Was he the last mythical romantic rock act?
To throw that out there, maybe, yeah, I don't know
Jack White, I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
Who there's a Roman, but it's but it's very different
part of it. I mean something about Jeff Bucke, he
was not like, he did not aspire to ordinary dudeness,
like in a way that male rock stars, especially if
that era, were supposed to be very like, but that
he had that cultivated that kind of mystical or you know,
(26:47):
to detract her pseudomistical sort of or like.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
A male cabaret star, yeah, cabaret singer in a way.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
He was remote and mysterious emotionally in a way that
was very dramatic.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Yes, yes, I mean obvious. Like the song Grace itself,
it's just so it's just about leaving a girl in
an air like, you know, like an airport.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
You would not It's like and the pain I leave
behind and I'm drowning, and it's just like, you know,
that was the mythical jest kicking in completely. It's like,
you know, the kind of the torture, teen, angsty side
of him that I think, you know, people also relate to.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
It blows my mind that that was the first song
that made you cry on the radio. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
No, I literally was sobby in my mom's car. I
was just like, this is so much. My mom was
looking over at me like I was like eleven or twelve,
and I was just like, this is intense.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
And also, Hallelujah had a whole life after nine to eleven?
Was this was this? It might have been.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
It was definitely post nine eleven.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
Okay, because there were there were people were making home
who were making videos of that site, and well, YouTube
didn't exist yet. I don't know where I saw them,
but people would make videos of rescue workers and put
that music to it and put it up somewhere. And
that was really the beginning of the Jeff hal Lujah
version really kicking in. Because it wasn't a big hit
(28:05):
or anything when he was alive. It wasn't a single
or anything, but it was a slow build thing. And
I remember, I remember that post nine to eleven, and
it was it was chillingly perfect, you know, for that
for that footage.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
Thank you so much for joining us today, David.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
Great to be here, guys, Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
A real pleasure to talk this music with you.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
It was a blast with both of you.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
Get we really wrote the book. Thanks.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Thanks so much for listening to Rolling Stone's five hundred
Greatest Songs. This podcast is brought to you by Rolling
Stone and iHeartMedia. Written hosted by Me.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
Britney spanos In, Me Rob Sheffield.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
Executive produced by Gus Winner, Jason Fine, Alex Dale, and
Christian Horne, and produced by Jesse Cannon, with music supervision
by Eric Seiler. Thanks for watching, Thanks for listening.
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