By Ruby Day — Senior Culture Editor
Last August marked the 30th anniversary of Jeff Buckley’s Grace.
Defined by haunting vocals of unfiltered yearning and timeless instrumentation, the album has captivated the hearts and souls of most that have ever come across it. Since his debut at Sin-é in 1993, Jeff Buckley himself has become a mythological figure in the music industry. In large part because of Grace, the indisputable work of art precursing a stellar career that never was. Throughout the 1990s and beyond, certified music legends have had nothing but praise for Grace. David Bowie credited the album as one that would keep him company on a desert island. Leonard Cohen admired Buckley for reimbuing his track Hallelujah with melancholic vitality. Bob Dylan and Jimmy Page both considered his songwriting as unparalleled for the decade. Contemporary musicians were also impacted by Grace, like Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, whose performance on Fake Plastic Trees was inspired by Buckley’s distinctive vocals.
I admit to being a relatively new devotee of Grace, caught up in the ‘renaissance’ of Jeff Buckley’s music that has played out recently. Around three years ago, I heard Last Goodbye on a Spotify generated playlist—and became instantly, and totally, borderline obsessive. I was 16. Last Goodbye was the only thing I wanted to listen to. I’d never experienced the love Buckley laments so beautifully, and still haven’t. The song itself is a paradox; the lyrics speak so honestly about the end of an obviously personal relationship, yet the listener feels every emotion as if it was their own. Buckley’s talent lies in making his experiences universal, channelling the hopeless romantic in anyone who cares to listen. Grace as a whole covers so many events and ideas and genres, from obsessive love to absent fathers and, strangely, 16th century Middle English hymns. An album for the ages that was, until recently, relatively obscure. When I first began my love affair withJeff Buckley, getting your hands on a physical copy of his only complete album was difficult. Now, his face stares back at me whenever I walk into HMV. Buckley was, retrospectively, on the edge of the great 1990s alternative scene, so why is it that modern musos are revisiting a 30-year-old album with such admiration?
The answer may lie in the music itself. In 1999, the French TV movie ‘Jeff Buckley: Fall in Light’ included archival footage of his own words on what Grace was all about. In the footage, Buckley states that “Grace is what matters, in anything, especially life, especially growth, tragedy, pain, love, death; about people, that’s what matters.” The whole album grew out of his admiration of grace as a quality people inherently possess, a quality that “sort of keeps you alive; and [keeps] you open for more understanding”. Perhaps what drew Buckley to the concept of grace is what draws us, current listeners, to his interpretation of it. This idea of carrying yourself through your experiences, however difficult or mundane, with ‘grace’. Each track on the album is curated to the tune of this quality, a theme that weaves through every story Buckley chooses to tell. His thematic approach to music is what makes Grace so enduring and continually relevant in the modern world.
Whilst technically Buckley has all the elements of traditional 90s alt-rock, he manages to transcend the constraints of musical pigeon-holing. With the release and popularity of Grace in August 1994, Buckley’s position within the alternative scene at the time was questioned by critics and listeners alike; to which he replied: “I guess I’m not the frat boy’s alternative music of choice. But I don’t know. People show up who want to hear the music.” As a result, the music in question is utterly authentic. Buckley offered himself, his ideals, his experiences, up to scrutiny in the form of an album. By exposing his own humanity, listeners over the past three decades have been able to vicariously resonate with him, as an individual, time and time again. The hallmarks of alt-rock (diversity, non-conformity, experimentation, etc.) are all present in Grace. Yet the music is not dated; it manages to exist in its own context. The album is incredibly freeing as a modern listener, neither weighed down by nostalgia nor impenetrably cutting edge. Its no wonder that by the 2010s Grace had reached sales of 2 million, and went certified platinum in America.
Grace may have eventually achieved commercial success in the eyes of heavyweight record label Colombia Records, but conflict over ‘reductive’ promotional jargon and Buckley’s indie sensibilities was inherent in the mid to late 90s. Colombia guaranteed significant media exposure right off the bat for Buckley’s first, and only complete, album. But Grace was always an exercise in soul-bearing. Seeking mainstream publicity whilst coveting the freedoms of an indie label characterised much of Buckley’s relationship with his record company, even after his death.
If I’m honest, maybe the music in isolation isn’t the only reason we are obsessed with Grace.
It’s been twenty-seven years since Jeff Buckley died in May 1997. He was last seen floating in the Wolf River, singing Led Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love under the Memphis Suspension Railway. Buckley’s sound is irreplaceable and unique, possibly due to his death. His mythic status as one of the many dead in their prime lends a morbid importance to his works. The quality of his music sounds pre-emptively melancholic, as if the universe knew it would be his last complete work of art.
In 1998, Colombia Records posthumously released Sketches for My Sweetheart The Drunk, a compilation album of unfulfilled potential. Buckley and his band were in the process of recording when tragedy struck; consequently, the album was never truly finished how Buckley himself would have wanted it. In many ways, Sketches is the perfect title. A collection of songs and covers, roughed out, not fully formed. When the executives at Colombia Records were working on Sketches for My Sweetheart The Drunk to be released, the people close to Buckley were conscious of his life and death being exploited. Buckley’s mother, Mary Guibert, compiled the material she knew her son would deem worth using into a full double album. The label were not allowed to alter, smooth out, or edit anything. Guibert stated in a 2021 interview with Eamonn Forde that “if this was his body here and we were preparing it for his funeral, we would not put him in a suit. We would put him in a flower shirt and some black jeans and his Doc Martens and leave his hair all messed up.” This aching sentiment serves as a reminder that Grace is the only complete album of Buckley’s, the only album that was utterly his, given to us in its entirety.
The heartbreak of Jeff Buckley permeates every interaction with his music, and keeps us revisiting again and again. Buckley’s brilliance was tragically finite, giving reverence to Grace and Sketches for My Sweetheart The Drunk and every strange demo and live performance in between.
Grace stands distinct in music history. The point at which Jeff Buckley became more than the estranged son of a cult songwriter, and more to every 16-year-old girl who longed for a love beautiful enough to merit a Last Goodbye.
Illustration: Lucy Griffiths