#304 - Jeff Buckley - Grace (1994)

MUSIC HISTORY COMPILED BY ADAM BERNARD:

BACKGROUND – JEFF BUCKLEY

Jeffrey Scott Buckley, originally Scott Moorhead, was born in Anaheim, CA in 1966. His father Tim was a jazz/folk singer in the late 1960s and 1970s, but it is believed Jeff only met him once when he was 8 years old. Tim died of a heroin overdose at the age of 28 in 1975, and Jeff decided to change his last name to his dad's. He grew up in a musical home - his mom was a classically trained pianist and cellist, and Jeff started learning the guitar at the age of 5, and decided he wanted to be a professional musician at the age of 12. He got his first electric guitar (a Les Paul) one year later, and when he got to high school he joined the jazz band. When he graduated, he spent 6 years working a day job at a hotel, and playing local clubs around the Hollywood area at night. After struggling in various jazz, reggae, and heavy metal bands, he moved to New York City in 1990. Shortly after, he was contacted by his dad's former manager, Herb Cohen to offer help in recording a demo. At a tribute concert for his dad in Brooklyn in 1991, Buckley met guitarist Gary Lucas when they performed together. Buckley's performance at the concert was counterintuitive to his desire to distance himself musically from his father. but he later explained his reasoning  "It wasn't my work, it wasn't my life. But it bothered me that I hadn't been to his funeral, that I'd never been able to tell him anything. I used that show to pay my last respects." After going back and forth between the coasts for a bit, he started performing with Lucas' band "Gods and Monsters", playing clubs around NYC. The exposure got him noticed, and he signed with Columbia Records. That leads us to today's album. 

Buckley spent a lot of time touring in 1995 and 1996. Tensions had risen among the group, and by the end of 1996, drummer Matt Johnson split with the band. Jeff also had started work at the end of the year on his next album, "My Sweetheart The Drunk". He had become interesting in recording at a studio in Memphis at the suggestion of a friend, and moved there for a few months in 1997 to record the album. He also spent some time playing local clubs.

The rest of Buckley's band was scheduled to come back to Memphis to do more work on the album at the end of May, but it never happened. On May 29, 1997, the same day the band landed in Tennessee, Buckley went swimming fully dressed in a slack water channel of the Mississippi River, singing the chorus of "Whole Lotta Love" by Led Zeppelin. Keith Foti, a roadie in Buckley's band, remained on shore. After moving a radio and guitar out of reach of the wake from a passing tugboat, Foti looked up to see that Buckley had vanished. The wake of the tugboat had swept him away from shore and under water. A rescue effort that night and the morning after by scuba teams and police failed to discover him. Five days later, passengers on a riverboat spotted his body in the Wolf River caught in some branches. Buckley's autopsy showed no signs of drugs or alcohol in his system, and the death was ruled an accidental drowning. 

The first album Buckley ever owned was Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti. Other influences include Queen, The Who, Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Rush, Genesis, Yes, and Kiss.

ALBUM BACKGROUND – GRACE

This is the only studio album by Buckley. It was released in 1994 on Columbia Records, and recorded at the Bearsville studios in Woodstock, NY. Work began on it in 1993 with producer Andy Wallace. They spent 6 weeks recording the tracks. Gary Lucas also played on a few of the tracks. 

The album had poor sales initially and didn't get certified gold until 2002, 9 years after it was released. It was very well received critically in the US and just about everywhere on the globe. It was very popular in Australia as it's been certified platinum 7 times there and is considered one of the greatest albums of all-time down under.