Jeff Buckley by Shoshana Berger
Guilt and Pleasure, Fall 2007
I first saw Jeff Buckley perform at McCabe’s Guitar Shop on Pico Blvd. in Santa Monica. It was a sold-out show. I got in as the guest of the editors of Bikini magazine — a sort of proto-Maxim. David, a friend from childhood, and his pal Steve, a photographer, were acting as co-editors. In their late twenties with thick heads of hair and a whiff of immortality, they were the kind of bon vivants who took full advantage of their position on the masthead of a skin magazine, frequenting rock shows, calling in free swag, and scoring with models as often as possible.
I was twenty-three, and I had just left grad school to pursue a career as a freelance writer. I had never published anything outside of school journals and small literary reviews. David and Steve were my way in.
They had been playing me this Jeff Buckley record since I had arrived in Los Angeles. He was the son of the famed folk singer Tim Buckley, who died of a drug overdose when he was twenty-eight.
Jeff walked onto the stage with the lights still dimmed. In silhouette he had the look of a street urchin: wiry with a shock of wild hair. He held the microphone against his mouth and took a few audible breaths. Then, it began — the humming prelude to his song “So Real.” It was the saddest, most ravishing sound I had ever heard. He sang as if his life depended on it. From that moment on, I was transfixed.
The next day, David had an interview scheduled with Buckley, but David woke up a wreck. Over morning coffee, he asked if I would write the story instead. Steve would take the pictures while I interviewed.
We picked Jeff up a few hours later from a hotel in Hollywood. He hopped in the car with mussed hair, a black T-shirt and jeans, and an impish grin. If James Dean and Edith Piaf had done it, Jeff would have been their love child. The night before, he had created an operatic drama on stage, but in the daylight he was just a goof who knew his own charm. He did Elvis Presley impersonations. He ran off at the mouth. He gave off a phosphorescent heat.
Steve took us to his friend Kim’s apartment, which he thought would have nice light for photos. When she answered the door, I sank: she was iconic and blond, the kind of L.A. girl the rest of the world sees only on posters. I retreated to a windowsill and peered into the courtyard while she made us tea. Steve came up to me and said under his breath, “What are you waiting for? Start asking him questions.”
I had never done an interview before and had no idea where to begin. That morning, I’d feverishly jotted down a few ideas — questions that, after fourteen years of writing for magazines, I now know to be ridiculous.
Jeff sat across from me at the window. He had found a finger piano and was playing me a little tune. One question I remember asking him was more like an involuted analysis of his lyrics. I said it seemed he had had his heart broken, but was coming back for more. He looked up at me, eyes flashing, and said, “No, that’s you.”
Steve fired off a few more shots, and then it was over. The sky was on fire with sunset. We’d spent the whole day at that window, asking and answering.
Back at the hotel, Steve and I walked Jeff into the lobby and said goodbye. He and Steve pushed each other around the way cool guys do. Then Jeff put his arms around me and, holding tight, whispered something in my ear.
That summer I became Steve’s girlfriend. He drove a Mustang convertible, and we’d drive down the Pacific Coast Highway with our hair flying everywhere, belting Jeff Buckley songs. I remember thinking that Jeff’s cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” was like undressing in front of someone you love for the first time.
I saw Jeff two more times before he died. After his concerts, I’d go backstage to say hi. One night, about a year after we’d first met, he was sitting on a couch, surrounded by a lot of great-looking people, and called me over. His album Grace had come out and catapulted him into stardom, and it felt pretty great being the girl he asked to sit next to him, but as we talked I could tell that he had changed. No more rascally rabbit. No more easy smile.
A few years later, in 1997, my father brought me a newspaper clipping. Jeff’s body had been found washed up on the banks of the Mississippi River. He had been recording a new album in Memphis and, after a long day in the studio, had stopped with a friend to take a dip. They were playing music, and Jeff, in his old prankster way, had waded into the water fully clothed; he was pulled under by the swell of a passing barge. He was thirty — two years older than his father had been at the time of his death.
In “So Real,” Jeff’s voice recedes, then rises like a tidal wave. “I couldn’t escape from the nightmare that sucked me in and pulled me under, pulled me under. Oh, that was so real. Oh, that was so real.”
I can’t tell you what Jeff told me that day in the hotel lobby. Anyone who has fallen hard for a musician and his music will understand. It’s like hearing a secret language whispered in your ear.
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