Jeff Buckley

I first heard and met Jeff Buckley in 1995. He and his band played outdoors for free on Sproul plaza at UC Berkeley one Spring day at noon.

Since then, I have come to love him and his music quite a lot. Yet not only his tragic accidental death, but my regrets over missed opportunities with him, weigh on the joy he brings. Though I have cherished a number of other great musicians who died along the road before and since, none inspire so deep a sense of loss.

He and I were having a friendly banter after his set. At one point he asked where I had gone because he wanted to argue some more. "Where's that old guy?"
I was only 43. Although I was wearing a tie and a tweed sport coat, and hounds-tooth pants with cuffs. I was going onto San Francisco to mix business and pleasure that day.

Jeff had gotten a little attitude when I said I had also seen his father play outdoors. It was on my sixteenth birthday with a date at an afternoon concert at the Newport Folk Festival.
He said "Lucky you," and signed the booklet for Live at Sine CD, "From the Live One, Jeff Buckley." That signature became shockingly ironic only a few years later.

He was somewhat high-strung, maybe a little petulant, but incredibly warm at the same time, and he was beautiful--just like his voice. He played the previous night and here he was up early for a noon-time show. Who could fault him if he found it annoying that someone brought up Tim Buckley in his moment of triumph. After all, he had himself never seen his father perform.

I told him that I thought his voice was even more beautiful than Tim's. This from me was extremely high praise. I did blunder into over-praising Tim's songs. I asked if Romanticism was it now, and no more.
I certainly had hold of the wrong end of the stick that day. I also tried to say the band should play harder. I didn't realize that this had been their "unplugged" outdoor set.
"You gotta kick out the jams a little," I boldly went on.
"You don't know what you're talkin' about! We even play "Kick out the Jams" every night! You gotta come see the show!
Just then a young female admirer broke in for her autograph and said,
"I think that you are great no matter what he says!" She indicated me with an accusing look.
"What?!" I said," I just told him that his voice was more beautiful than Tim Buckey's! And honest criticism is better than fatuous praise."
"Yeah! Ya hear that, all you fatuous people!" Jeff said to his assembled mob of fans in a slightly demagogic fashion.

My big friend Tim who worked for Jeff's label was around--wisely keeping clear. Another friend had in fact slipped me the booklet to get Jeff's signature. He said he'd give me the CD later.
When I saw him later, I said that as usual I had put my foot in it. He said, "You really got his attention, though."

Later that same day, I was walking in North Beach, the old Italian section of San Francisco made notorious by the Beat generation, and I noticed Jeff's bassist Mick Grondahl walking past me on his own. We stopped and talked. I told him that I had irritated Jeff. He said forget about it. Chatting away I mentioned PJ Harvey had experienced a nervous breakdown after her first record. He replied, "We've all had nervous breakdowns, Jeff especially."
We were well met and he insisted I come to their show at the Great American Music Hall that night. I felt odd about taking Jeff up earlier when he insisted that I come to the show, but this was clearly Fate working at this point.

Some time afterward, I bumped into Mick again at City Lights Bookstore. We hung out there discussing Paul Bowles, kif tales, and the trance music of the Sufi-like groups of Berber musicians in Morocco. Mick was tall, 20s, longish curly hair, bright and eager to learn more. It helped matters that I was a Bowles scholar. I urged him to try Bowles' translation of Mohamed Mrabet's kif tales in M'Hashish. He was buying Bowles' little book A Hundred Camels in the Courtyard. He said maybe he would get it another time. So, after he left, I got the book to give to him at the show.

Then we split and I made my way to the club that night. Mick left me an all-access pass at the ticket window and I saw him again back stage. We smoked some herbs and he was knocked-out that I brought him the book. Then he wanted me to go over and talk to Jeff but I was too stoned and shy at that moment. Jeff was about to play and I didn't want to make us both nervous. Especially with my track record for faux pas with him earlier in the day. He noticed me there though. I tried to lean back into the margins of the back stage scene before I went back out to the big dark room full of people to more-or-less suffer through the opening band.

After a break there followed Jeff and the band's great full-blown show, so rich in beauty, emotion, and kicking out the jams. I have thought of it often over the years. Weary coming in, I mainly sat and listened at a table on the sidelines. I could only see Jeff's face from there, that angelic face emitting that angelic voice. But I did wade out onto the main floor of this former Wild West bordello for the encore, try to kick them out a little myself. What a memory it remains, to have witnessed Jeff's genius and that powerful and intuitive band in performance twice in one day, an experience never to be repeated.

At the end, I was too tired and too far from home to go to the after-party. Looking back I should have been willing to wait for BART to resume service in the morning before I decided not to stay for it. It might have been a chance to say that I was mistaken and to make friends with him. But, of course, regrets make no sense.

Otherwise a another regret I suppose I'd have, was that in 1994 a friend told me that Tim Buckley's son was playing at the Starry Plow, asking if I wanted to go.
If only he had played me his music, I would have gone. I lived only three blocks away. There was only ever so few opportunities to see him play.

Anyway I started hearing unreleased tapes of his music in addition to his two CDs and I was a very avid Jeff Buckley follower two years later when the news came of his disappearance, followed by the confirmation of his death. I'm still sad over it. It is rare that I can hear his music without its touching a broken-heart.