Line #3 Music/JeffBuckley


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/jeffbuckley.jpg]]
2
3	->''"I don't write my music for Sony. I write it for the people who are screaming down the road crying to a full-blast stereo."''
4
5	Jeffrey Scott "Jeff" Buckley (also known as Scott Moorhead, November 17, 1966 – May 29, 1997) was an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. [[ShortLivedBigImpact Despite passing away at only 30, with only one studio album and a handful of EPs to his name, he is fondly remembered as one of the most inspired and influential singer/songwriters of the 1990s.]]
6
7	The son of Music/TimBuckley, his first public exposure was in UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity singing and playing guitar with the loosely knit supergroup Gods and Monsters. After that, he worked in UsefulNotes/LosAngeles, singing mostly cover songs until he garnered the interest of Creator/ColumbiaRecords, which led to the creation of his first and only studio album, ''Music/{{Grace}}'', released in 1994. Working on that album was RecordProducer Andy Wallace, who previously made a name for himself mixing Music/{{Nirvana}}'s ''Music/{{Nevermind\|Album}}.''
8
9	Buckley spent much of the next two years promoting ''Grace''. Sales of the album were mostly lackluster, and the songs received little play on the radio. Despite that, he was a critical darling and received almost entirely positive reviews. His cover of "[[Music/LeonardCohen Hallelujah]]" was noted as one of his best efforts and among the greatest songs of all time. [[Music/LedZeppelin Jimmy Page]] even called ''Grace'' his "favorite album of all time", high praise from the man Buckley counted as one of his chief influences.
10
11	In early 1997, Buckley moved to Memphis to begin work on his second album, recording 4-track demos at his house in preparation for a recording session with Wallace, while also playing gigs at Barristers', a small club in downtown Memphis underneath a car park. But then tragedy struck.
12
13	On May 29, 1997, he disappeared while going for an evening swim in Wolf River Harbor, a channel of the Mississippi river; having waded out into the river, fully dressed, while shouting the lyrics to "[[Music/LedZeppelin Whole Lotta Love]]", he was swept away while a friend was moving their belongings away from the incoming tide. His body wasn't found until June 4. After an autopsy, it was confirmed that Buckley had taken no illegal drugs or alcohol, and his death was entirely accidental.
14
15	After his death, it was decided by Buckley's mother to release an incomplete version of Jeff's second album, ''My Sweetheart the Drunk''. Due to the album's unfinished nature, it was retitled ''Music/{{Sketches For My Sweetheart the Drunk}}''. The album itself is even less known than its predecessor, but among serious fans it has the status of being just as good, [[EvenBetterSequel if not better]], than ''Grace''. That being said, the album is obviously unfinished, with many songs suffering from poor audio quality and general oddities in terms of songwriting.
16
17	In the years since, Buckley's popularity has grown. "Hallelujah" eventually became the number 1 single on iTunes for a time, and several of his demos were released posthumously.
18
19	Two movies based on his life have been made: ''Greetings from Tim Buckley'', played there by Creator/PennBadgley, and ''Mystery White Boy'' (a nickname Jeff often went under whilst touring), played there by Creator/ReeveCarney.
20
21	----
22	!!Studio and Live Discography:
23
24	* 1993 - ''Live at Sin-é EP''
25	* 1994 - ''Music/{{Grace}}''
26	* 1998 - ''Music/{{Sketches For My Sweetheart the Drunk}}''
27
28	----
29	!!His work provides examples of
30
31	* BreakUpSong: "Last Goodbye", "Forget Her" and "Lover You Should've Come Over"
32	* CallingTheOldManOut:
33	** "Dream Brother", in a roundabout way. The song itself is warning to a friend who was self-destructing, but Buckley makes reference to his own father (who walked out on Jeff and his mother when she was still pregnant and died of a drug overdose when Jeff was 8). He met him only once and the lyric "don't be like the one who made me so old" is a subtle but clear TakeThat. During at least one live performance of this song, he adds an additional few lines just before one of the verses, one of which is "you're just like him" several times.
34	** "What Will You Say" was mainly written by Jeff's friend Chris Dowd, and Jeff only helped with some parts of the song. Nevertheless, one can imagine that Jeff felt the song hit pretty close to home, regardless of who wrote the words. In some performances, Jeff changed the lyrics from "Father, do you hear me? [...] Do you even care?" to "''Did'' you even care", suggesting that he was addressing his own father, who was dead.
35	%%* TheCoverChangesTheGender: Averted.
36	* CloudCuckoolander: One of the defining traits of Buckley's live shows was his tendency to interact with the audience by spoofing his favorite artists. A lot of the interviews conducted with him also feature him going off on tangents. This aspect of his personality is especially prominent on the ''Live at Sin-é'' EP.
37	--> '''Jeff:''' Boy, I hope I can pull this into some sense now!\
38	'''Interviewer:''' You can do it. Come on, focus!
39	* CoverAlbum: ''You And I'' is one, minus a version of "Grace" and an unreleased song "Dream Of You And I".
40	* CoverVersion: He had quite a few... "Lilac Wine", "Corpus Christi Carol", "Yard of Blonde Girls", [[Music/{{Genesis\|Band}} "Back in N.Y.C."]] and "Satisfied Mind", for starters. Not to mention "Hallelujah", which is arguably the song he's most widely known for.
41	** He also covered a whole lot more in concert, ranging from [[Music/{{TheSmiths}} "I Know It's Over"]] to [[Music/{{BigStar}} "Kanga Roo"]] to [[Music/{{VanMorrison}} "The Way Young Lovers Do"]], and that's just scratching the surface.
42	* EpicRocking:
43	** There exists a 26 minute version of "Kanga Roo" that pretty much plays this to the letter.
44	** Also, Buckley's cover of "Back in N.Y.C.", originally written by Music/{{Genesis\|Band}}.
45	** Jeff had a couple of songs with special live remixes called "Chocolate" versions. The most famous of these are "Mojo Pin" and "Kanga Roo". The former can easily be found on Website/YouTube. The latter not so much.
46	** He also stretched out "The Way Young Lovers Do" by Music/{{Van Morrison}} to 12 minutes in concert.
47	* EverythingSoundsSexierInFrench: Jeff's cover of "Je N'en Connais Pas La Fin", originally written by Music/EdithPiaf.
48	* GenerationXerox: Whilst Jeff's music was more conventional than Tim's, there are some at times, eerie similarities. On occasion, Tim would use falsetto screams in his music that sound extremely similar to Jeff's. Both of them mixed softer folk music with avant-garde heavier forms of music . The open tunings and use of 12 strings made them stand out. They also owed a lot of their popularity to their looks which attracted female fans. Of course, the similarities do end with the fact that Jeff had a significant influence from punk and grunge, genres that didn't exist in Tim's day.
49	* GenreRoulette: Jeff started off making punk and hard rock (heard on his Babylon Dungeon demo tape), went on to experimental folk and rock music with Gary Lucas (with Gods And Monsters and on the retrospective Songs To No One) and then became an acoustic covers artist (heard on ''Live At Sin-E''). When he made ''Grace'', it featured material from all these periods, plus "So Real", which had been newly written. My Sweetheart The Drunk would have continued in this vein but also took on some ambient and trip hop influences (which are particularly noticeable on its only single, "Everybody Here Wants You").
50	* GreatestHitsAlbum: ''So Real - Songs From Jeff Buckley'', which was released to capitalise on the popularity of Hallelujah. It has two tracks of interest to fans, a previously unreleased live rendition of The Smiths' "I Know It's Over" plus a previously promo-only acoustic version of "So Real". Despite this, it's largely regarded as a pointless release due to it only collecting from two proper albums and some live material.
51	* GriefSong:
52	** "Hallelujah", "Forget Her", "Opened Once" and "Lover, You Should Have Come Over." "What Will You Say", may also count, as the lyrics must surely have made Jeff think of the relationship he never got to have with his father. Jeff admitted in an interview that he had great admiration for Tim as a musician, despite what he thought of his parenting skills.
53	** Many of his songs off of ''Sketches'', with "I Know We Could Be So Happy Baby (If We Wanted To Be)" particularly standing out.
54	** "Forget Her", which Buckley wrote after breaking up with his girlfriend. As a result, the song brought up such painful memories that he refused to include it on his first album (It was eventually released on the Legacy Edition of "Grace", however).
55	* IncrediblyLongNote: Several astonishing ones in "Mojo Pin". Also, one note in "Hallelujah" lasts 23 seconds.
56	* IntercourseWithYou: Not often, but "Your Flesh is So Nice" absolutely reeks of this. It's about two lesbians having sex (with Jeff being one of them somehow).
57	%%* LyricalDissonance: "Last Goodbye"
58	* MessyHair: Jeff liked playing with his hair, and in some pictures he sports a hairstyle not unlike Giorgio Tsoukalos from ''Series/AncientAliens''. After he was voted #12 on ''People Magazine'''s list of "50 most beautiful people" in 1994, he started dyeing it black and let it get greasy, in an attempt to shake off the pretty-boy image.
59	* OlderThanTheyLook: He's between 26 and 30 in most pictures. People who met him were often assuming that he was in his early 20s.
60	%%* OneWomanSong: "Grace".
61	* RearrangeTheSong: Numerous examples:
62	** Eternal Life was recorded as the Road Version, which was more hard-rocking and released as a single.
63	** The version of "I Know We Could Be So Happy (If We Wanted To Be)" on ''Sketches For My Sweetheart The Drunk'' is a reworked, four track version of a song he recorded with a full band a year earlier (which leaked). It was chosen over the full band version despite its rawness because it was the last version he recorded, and thus reflected the version he would have recorded had he decided to include it on the final album.
64	* {{Reconstruction}}: While his music was undeniably indebted to the indie rock of his age, he completely averted the PerishingAltRockVoice and re-introduced the sweeping falsetto tenor from classic rock into alternative music.
65	* SurprisinglyGentleSong: Picture this: You're listening to ''Music/SketchesForMySweetheartTheDrunk'', which is full of NightmareFuel. Finally, you get to the penultimate song on the album, "Jewel Box", which is one of the prettiest love songs Jeff ever wrote. It's jarring, to say the least.
66	* TitleOnlyChorus: "Hallelujah"
67	* ThreeChordsAndTheTruth: Averted, his songs made frequent use of jazz chords and adventurous modulation.

Context Music / JeffBuckley