Jeff Buckley’s musical coming-out party occurred on April 6, 1991 at the St. Ann Holy Trinity Church in Brooklyn. He made his first public musical performance at a tribute for his father, 1960s folk troubadour Tim Buckley. Buckley’s relationship with his father was estranged. They met only once, when Buckley was eight. A year later in 1975, the elder Buckley died of a heroin overdose at 28. Jeff played four of his father’s songs at the event including “I Never Asked to Be Your Mountain,” a song Tim wrote about his infant son.
When Buckley was five, he discovered his grandmother’s acoustic guitar in a closet. He took it everywhere. His mother Mary Guibert played him his father’s songs. “There was a song ‘Once I Was’ that my mother played when my stepfather was out of the house,” Buckley told Rolling Stone. “I covered this song at the tribute concert. I broke a string at the end and had to finish it a cappella… I didn’t play it very well.”
Comparisons to his father began right away. They looked and sang alike, and both had a magnetic, poetic aura. During the early-1990s, Buckley played small clubs in New York such as the Knitting Factory and Fez Cafe. In 1992, he began a Monday night residency at an Irish cafe called Sin-é. His early sets included covers from his favorite performers like Led Zeppelin, Nina Simone and Van Morrison. He performed the song “I Know It’s Over” by the Smiths. The song begins with haunting lyrics about imminent death:
… Oh mother, I can feel
The soil falling over my head
And as I climb into an empty bed
Oh well, enough said
… I know it’s over, still I cling
I don’t know where else I can go.
Buckley was cat-sitting at a friend’s Park Slope apartment when he came upon a copy of the Leonard Cohen tribute album I’m Your Fan. He was attracted to the John Cale cover of “Hallelujah” and began including it in his performances. It became the song most associated with Buckley’s oeuvre.
In 1991, Buckley moved briefly to Los Angeles where his father’s former manager Herb Cohen offered to help him get signed. He recorded a four-song demo produced by Gary Lucas (of Captain Beefheart). The recording included the original songs “Eternal Life” and “Last Goodbye.” Both songs referenced death and dying. “Eternal Life” kicks off with the lyrics:
Eternal life is now on my trail
Got my red glitter coffin, man, just need one last nail.
“Last Goodbye” echoes lyrics from The Smiths “I Know It’s Over.”
And the memories offer signs that it’s over, oh-oh
It’s over.
Buckley didn’t want people linking him to his father as if he were a nepo baby. He moved back to New York and resumed performing at small clubs. Record label executives (including Clive Davis) attended his shows. In October 1992, Buckley signed a three-album deal with Columbia Records. He assembled a band and began recording a year later. His only studio album Grace was released in August 1994. It includes seven original songs and three covers. The opening song “Mojo Pin” begins with the lyrics:
I’m lying in my bed
The blanket is warm
This body will never be safe from harm.
Buckley’s imagery references danger and the pain of romantic loss. One line of verse is telling:
Well it’s you I’ve waited my life to see
It’s you I’ve searched so hard for.
Is he speaking of an old girlfriend? Or his father? Buckley provides a coded answer with the line:
Oh, precious, precious silver and gold
And pearls in oyster’s flesh.
This is an unmistakable allusion to his father’s most famous ballad “Song to the Siren” that includes the lyrics:
I’m as puzzled as the oyster
I’m as troubled at the tide.
Tim Buckley’s “Song to the Siren” told of oceanic sirens luring sailors to their watery deaths. The song ends with a tantalizing promise of love after death.
Hear me sing
Swim to me
Swim to me, let me enfold you.
Oh my heart, oh my heart
Is waiting to hold you.
Buckley missed his father. After the 1991 tribute concert he said, “It bothered me that I hadn’t been to his funeral, that I’d never been able to tell him anything.” Jeff Buckley feared he’d die young like his dad. In 1994, he told his girlfriend musician Joan Wasser (aka Joan the Policewoman), “You know I’m going to die young.” He often dreamed of his death and shared the fears with friends and band mates. He channeled these anxieties through his music. His songs are filled with references to death and drowning:
Dream Brother: “Asleep in the sand with the ocean washing over.”
Grace: “I feel them drown my name.” “Drink a bit of wine we both might go tomorrow.” “It’s my time coming, I’m not afraid to die.”
Lover, You Should’ve Come Over: “I see the rain fall upon the funeral mourners parading in a wake of sad relations as their shoes fill up with water.”
You and I: “The calm below that poisoned river wide.”
So Real: “I couldn’t awake from the nightmare that sucked me in and pulled me under.”
Nightmares by the Sea: “I’ve loved so many times and I’ve drowned them all. From their coral graves they rise up when darkness falls,” “Stay with me under these waves tonight.”
Grace made Buckley a rising star. He was feted by critics and musical peers such as Chrissie Hynde, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, Chris Cornell and Thom Yorke. David Bowie called Grace a desert island album. Brad Pitt (who wanted to play Buckley in a biopic) said, “There’s something going on underneath his truth. I find his stuff absolutely haunting. It just… it’s under my skin.”
In May 1997, Buckley flew to Memphis to record his second studio album. On May 29 while waiting for the arrival of his band, Buckley and a roadie named Keith Foti walked to Wolf River Harbor, a channel connected to the Mississippi River. Buckley sang Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” at the top of his lungs. He spontaneously went swimming in the river fully clothed wearing boots. A passing tugboat created a wake. Foti turned away for a moment. When he looked back, Buckley was gone. He’d been swept underwater by the current.
Foti called for help. A search and rescue team scoured the river but found no signs of the singer. The next morning police and scuba teams launched a miles-wide search. He was nowhere to be found. A week later on June 4, two locals caught sight of Buckley’s bloated body caught in river branches. An autopsy detected no drugs or alcohol in his system. His death was ruled an accidental drowning.
Friends and fans mourned Buckley’s passing. According to his ex-girlfriend Rebecca Moore, Jeff was “dreaming about his death and knew something was up. He felt it.” Buckley’s friend Tammy Shouse said a few days before his passing he told her, “I’ll see you on the other side.” Two days before he drowned, Buckley asked Joan Wasser to marry him. In German, wasser means water.
The day Buckley died was Corpus Christi Day, a day honoring the Eucharist. One of the covers on Grace was “Corpus Christi Carol.” It was an English hymn written in the 1500s that Buckley sang in high school. Fans speculated on internet message boards about Buckley’s myriad lyrics on death and drowning. Did he know he was going to die? Did his words create a self-fulfilling prophecy?
One of his songs was called “River of Dope.” It’s an a cappella song accompanied by a ticking clock. The lyrics are plaintive and powerful.
The door’s no longer open, for my name on their breath
So long I’ve waited, for the coming of death.
Will I be united with my innocence gone
Or will I burn to cinders as the river rolls on.
Hmmm…river, we sleep in your mud
You give us poison, when we drink your blood.
I watched your mother abandon her hope
And she watched you drowning by the river of dope.
That I flow with the river, and I’m a slave to his song
And I will drown forever where so many have gone.
Goodbye you people who have abandoned your hope
Parade in early morning to the river of dope
Hmm, yeah the river of dope.
On September 18, 1997, a memorial was held for Buckley at the St. Ann Holy Trinity Church in Brooklyn. It was the same location where he performed at his father’s tribute concert. Kazoos were given to attendees as they entered. Buckley’s cousin led mourners in a kazoo version of “You Are My Sunshine.” His mother Mary Guibert asked everyone to “commit random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty” in tribute to her son.
Guibert was reluctant to believe her son was prescient about his passing. “He’s always been attracted to poetry and literature that’s big on symbolism, and water and death has always been a subject that he brings together. Whether that was clairvoyance, who can say.”