"The Arrival of Jeff Buckley," by Bill Flanagan

This interview was originally published in Musician Magazine, February 1994, pp97-101.
"The Arrival of Jeff Buckley: A Talented Young Musician Learns to Navigate the Record Business While Protecting His Music", by Bill Flanagan
Jeff Buckley, 26 years old and halfway through making his first album, takes a break at Bearsville recording studio in Woodstock, New York and talks about the dislocation that comes from having to nail your dreams to a reel of tape, and from becoming part of the Sony Corporation, the multinational that owns Columbia Records, Buckley's new label.
"I'm aware that it's hard," Buckley says. "I'm aware of the past; I know about Columbia and Sony and other big places. I'm not talking about Sire or SST, I'm talking about big fucking Michael Jackson money. I was wary at first that they didn't know how to do anything small, but I'm really determined and I think it will work out for the best." He stops and thinks and then adds, "I know it will. I have to take them at their word that they understand, but you know how people are. Their actions will say exactly what they mean. And sometimes they need a little help. I can't really totally trust anybody in the music business. I've been brought up not to."
Jeff was brought up in southern California by a mother who loved the Beatles and had had a brief teenage marriage to her high school boyfriend, Jeff's father, Tim Buckley. Tim never knew the son he left behind when he headed east to make a career as a singer/songwriter. At 21 Tim was a star. At 25 Tim had been rejected by a music business that deemed him difficult. At 28 Tim was dead of an overdose. Jeff grew up playing Little League, singing along with the car radio and knowing little about his natural father. But he had inherited his father's good looks and he had inherited his father's remarkable voice. He also had inherited strange characters like his father's old manager, who used to check in periodically to see how the kid was progressing, if he was showing any musical tendencies, if he was interested in getting into show biz. When Jeff says he was brought up not to trust anyone in the music industry, he's not kidding.
Which made his situation even more confusing when Jeff's gifts led him through hard rock and reggae bands in California, through an L.A. guitar school, and then to New York City, where for two years he was pursued by A&R men, managers, sidemen and other representatives of the record business he resisted and the music he loved.
Now he's settled on a label and he's living inside the result, the creation of a much-anticipated debut album. Producer Andy Wallace plays back a string overdub for Buckley's scrutiny. Jeff nods along in agreement until a pizzicato section tiptoes up the song's build. He makes a face. "You don't like that at all?" the producer asks.
"It sounds like shopping music," Buckley says, and starts picking out the sequence on his guitar. "White pumps!" Buckley also rejects a bit where the strings echo his taped guitar line. He is being scrupulous in his attention to every aspect of this album. He has to be. His whole life is riding on it.

*****
Very few young musicians have arrived on the New York scene with the impact of Jeff Buckley. His first major New York appearance was at an April 1991 Tribute to Tim Buckley concert at St. Ann's (a Brooklyn church known for hosting hip musical events, from the workshop premiere of Lou Reed and John Cale's "Songs for Drella" to a solo recital by Garth Hudson). Organized by record producer and underground catalyst Hal Wilner, the concert consisted of musicians from the downtown/Knitting Factory scene performing Tim Buckley songs. It was not the best show St. Ann's ever saw; too many of the beatniks on stage seemed to have little connection to Buckley's work, and were deconstructing the songs with a musical abandon that aspired to Ornette Coleman, but ended up closer to Moe Howard.
The audience had come to hear Tim Buckley music, not to hear Buckley songs used as launch pads for orbits around individual egos, and halfway through the congregation was fidgeting in the pews. The stage--the church's altar--went dark while one musician shuffled off and another shuffled on. It stayed dark while the figure in shadows adjusted his mike and guitar and then let loose with a loud strum and Tim Buckley's haunted voice. Jeff Buckley stole the show. In the vestry afterwards he was almost trampled by people who know his father and wanted to weep on his shoulder, and record-biz monkeys handing him business cards and promising to make him famous.
"They found out I sang and they asked me to come," Jeff says now of the tribute concert. "I realized I probably wouldn't ever have another chance to pay my respects, no matter what kind of twisted feelings I have about Tim, no matter what kind of pain or anger I have against him--whatever I haven't come to terms with. The fact that I never got to go to his funeral always bothered me. And I thought, I can sink down with this or I can get off it, and then whatever sort of development I've gone through, at least I've done that."
Asked to go back and do one more song at the end of the tribute show, Jeff reluctantly went out and sang Tim's "Once I Was." "It was the first song my mother ever played me by Tim," he explains. "After she left my stepfather, I guess she wanted to get me into who my father was and she played me 'Once I Was.' So I learned it. It was hard to learn it. I couldn't do a really full version of it at home without crying. I almost cried onstage. I broke a string onstage at the end of that song. They were brand new strings. I was really pissed. I felt embarrassed about the whole thing. I just felt really open and vulnerable. There's such a ravenous cult around Tim and you know how people are. I mean, if people learned they could recreate Jim Morrison from his ancient bone marrow they'd fucking do it."
A little shook by his welcome to the New York music world, Jeff made the wise choice of avoiding (a) the uptown businessmen who didn't let knowing nothing about Jeff's own music stop them from saying they loved it, and (b) the '60s types who missed Tim and wanted Jeff to replace the father he never knew. He instead fell in with (c) the downtown hipsters, the progressive musicians in that Knitting Factory/Golden Palominos/St. Ann's orbit.
Jeff eventually joined Gods & Monsters, a band centered around ex-Captain Beefheart guitar wizard Gary Lucas, and supplemented during Jeff's tenure with session aces Tony Maimone on bass and Anton Fier on drums. The rhythm section was just coming off Bob Mould's house-burning "Workbook" tour. Gods & Monsters looked like an underground supergroup.
But the band always sounded better in theory than it did in nightclubs, mostly because it never was a real band. It was a merger of several talented individuals looking for a big break. Gods & Monsters might have been to Gary Lucas what Led Zeppelin was to session ace Jimmy Page: a ticket to mainstream success. But Gods & Monsters remained a great idea for a band, rather than a great band. About a year after the Tim Buckley tribute, on March 13, 1992, Gods & Monsters had a big showcase concert at St. Ann's during which the sound was bad and each fine musician onstage seemed to be listening only to himself. After that performance Jeff told Lucas he was quitting; he would play the rest of the gigs they had booked that week and that was it.
Jeff Buckley's final show with Gods & Monsters, to a small audience at the Knitting Factory the following weekend, was filled with tension and barely contained recriminations. One song into the set Buckley told the soundman, "Let's hear Jeff's guitar," and proceeded to hijack Lucas' band for the remainder of the night. As Jeff led the group, Lucas filled in piercing guitar leads and counterpoint. Jeff let loose howling, primal vocals that were, ironically, like the young Robert Plant while Lucas--relieved of leading the group-- played with disciplined abandon, raising the stakes at every hand. It was an amazing set, everything that the St. Ann's showcase had failed to be. It took the grim relief of failure and the anger of a breakup to show what the musical prototype for Lucas to Buckley should have been--not Page to Plant, but James Honeyman-Scott to Chrissie Hynde.
One scene-maker leaned over during the set and said, "If all the A&R people who'd been at St. Ann's were here tonight, these guys would be going home with a record deal." When the last Gods & Monsters song ended, Maimone, Fier and Lucas walked offstage but Buckley hesitated. He then surprised everyone--including himself--by staying onstage and continuing to sing alone. It was a bravura, egotistical move, a violation of all band etiquette, and exactly the right thing to do to establish that he had the guts and the ambition to build his own vision, and that he was not going to be tied to anyone else on his way.
When he finished singing, Jeff walked off the stage and across the room to his girlfriend Rebecca. They locked into an embrace in the middle of the club, his head buried in her shoulder, not speaking and oblivious to the people who came up to tell him what a great finale it had been.
"It was after that night," Jeff says of quitting Gods & Monsters, "that I knew I needed to invoke the real essence of my voice. I didn't know what it tasted like at all. I knew I had to get down to work and that anything else would be a distraction. In that band there were conflicts. It was really crazy, a desperate situation. I just didn't need things to be desperate. I needed them to be natural."

*****
By the time he left Gods & Monsters in early '92 Jeff Buckley had some notion of where he wanted to go, but he didn't have an idea of how to get there. He had no band, and general good will aside, he had no real prospects. Rather than start his own group immediately, he determined to learn to be a performer the hard way, by playing solo around Greenwich Village. He also wanted to understand how the best songwriters did what they did, so he began a self-imposed course of study. One night he came into an East Village restaurant carrying a new CD of Van Morrison's Astral Weeks. He had heard the song "Sweet Thing" on the Best of Van Morrison album and wanted to follow that trail back to its source. Within a couple of weeks he was adding Astral Weeks material to his solo sets, along with Edith Piaf, Mutabaruka and Bob Dylan songs.
Looking back on that period of study now he says, "Before I left for New York for the last time all I was obsessing about in my notebooks was that there's this...this place I want to get to. And I was remarking to myself that there are no teachers. There was nobody to show me. Well, actually there were, but they weren't alive or else they weren't...I'm not going to be able to walk up to Ray Charles and be his protege.
"I went into those cafes because I also really felt I had to go to an impossibly intimate setting where there's no escape, where there's no hiding yourself. If you suck you need work and if you don't then you have to work on making magic and if you make magic then everybody has this great transformative experience. Or at least a good experience.
"And it wasn't easy at first. I mean, when I first walked into Sin-é or the Cornelia Street Cafe, people talked their asses off. They didn't want to hear it. And that was a problem and it made me frustrated. Until I made the audience a part of the music. Until I made those sounds part of the music like they were samples on a record. They were actually an interactive part of what I was playing and was going to sing. And then all of a sudden I just fell into a rhythm and I learned about what it means when the audience is responsible partly for the experience. I'm determined to start from that space again with a band. I want to get the band ready to go into these intimate places and learn how to make big magic in little areas. Things that you just can't forget."

*****
During the summer of '92 Buckley's one-man gigs grew in confidence and reputation. He played all over town, but his main venue became Cafe Sin-é, a tiny Irish club on St. Mark's Place in the East Village that presents original music nightly, and had become the site of surprise sets by visitors such as Hothouse Flowers, Sinead O'Connor and the Waterboys. The Sin-é gigs began as a way for Jeff to learn his craft out of the spotlight, but the spotlight found him there.
Over the course of that summer Jeff generated a buzz that reached all the way up to the midtown offices of the major record labels. His weekly shows at Sin-é became an A&R magnet, and pretty soon long black limousines were squeezing down St. Mark's Place and executives with hundred-dollar haircuts were trying to maneuver between the bohemians without getting their suits wrinkled. Regulars got a kick out of watching the bigshots smiling and waving at each other and then scrutinizing each other' reactions. One ritual was absolute: A&R man A did not leave until A&R men B-Z left.
Pretty soon the label presidents were showing up at Sin-é, too. At a meeting set up by Arista A&R, Buckley had the balls to tell label president Clive Davis that he would not be interested in signing to Arista when Davis had not even seen him play. So Clive came to Sin-é. "He said, 'What are you looking for in a record company?'" Jeff recalls of Clive. "I said, 'Well, basically, three things. Integrity,' which was, you know, a fantasy but I just thought I'd throw it out. A record company's integrity is to make money, to move units. I understand that. The next thing I said was 'patience,' because I didn't know at that time what anybody's threshold for interesting music was. Number three: 'Hands off.'"
It was not a partnership meant to be. Jeff was taken aback when Davis brought him into his office and showed him a video presentation about...Clive Davis. "He had an eight-minute video all about him," Jeff recounts with amazement. "Him with Donovan, him with Janis Joplin, him with Sly Stone, and him donating all this money to charity. 'My life in the music business!'"
By the end of the summer Jeff Buckley was a big topic of conversation whenever record executives got together. Some felt that Jeff's lawyer (he had no manager) wanted too much money for an unknown, unproven talent. Others said that while the kid had a great voice and undeniable charisma, the songs weren't commercial. (Buckley's original material tended toward moody, elastic forms, not a million miles from Astral Weeks.)
One of the fascinating aspects of Jeff's attraction for A&R men was that precisely because he was playing without a band and because he was doing a wide range of cover songs, they could imagine him being whatever they wanted him to be. The general impression was of a young Van Morrison/early REM style, but brilliant Sire A&R man Joe McEwen heard in Buckley a soul singer, and imagined him in Memphis recording R&B with producer Jim Dickinson.
The same lack of clear direction that frightened some labels away made Buckley attractive to others. Talent scouts saw a very handsome kid with a fantastic voice--and from that they projected everything from a younger Michael Stipe to a hipper Michael Bolton.
How hard was it for Jeff to turn down offers of record contracts and money at a time when he was living hand-to-mouth?
"Very," he answers. "It was really hard. I always knew that my natural place was to make my life making music. The whole reason I was so wary of automatic things is because I suspected that my lineage had everything to do with it. I didn't get the feeling that anybody really heard me.
"Or I didn't know, I had no way of knowing. Because of my father people assumed things about me that weren't true: that I was well taken care of, that I lived in Beverly Hills, that I was a brat. My father chose a whole other family. I mean, it was just me and my mom and my little brother. And my stepfather for a couple of years. I didn't even meet my father until I was eight, and then just for one week, an Easter vacation. Two months later he died.
"Actually my stepfather and my mother had everything to do with my musical roots. My stepfather couldn't carry a tune, but he had a passion for great music. He bought me my first rock 'n' roll album, Physical Graffiti, when I was about nine years old. I was into the Who, Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd and all these weird things kids would never know about, like Booker T. and the MG's. I began listening to Edith Piaf when I was about 16. Later I found Bad Brains and Robert Johnson and idolized them simultaneously. There exists a common thread through all that stuff. My music has to be a culmination of everything I've ever loved. It's how I learned my alphabet. But I learned, probably in my Miles Davis phase, that in order to really pay tribute to things you love you must become yourself."
Buckley signed with Columbia at the end of 1992 due in large part, he says, to his personal connection with A&R man Steve Berkowitz, a longhaired hipster whose shank of chin hair makes him look like an Egyptian pharaoh and whose love of blues and R&B manifested itself in his weekend gigs as guitarist "T. Blade." Berkowitz advised a slow build for Buckley, doing everything possible to avoid hype. They rejected offers of interviews with fashion magazines and photos for the Gap, and determined to take the pressure off the first album by preceding it with an EP recorded live and solo at Cafe Sin-é.
The four-song EP was recorded in a marathon set at Sin-é last August. Andy Wallace, who had mixed Soul Asylum, Guns N' Roses and Nirvana was brought in to produce. The recording gear was set up in a small pub two doors down. During Jeff's set the Sin-é regulars were joined by top brass from Columbia/Sony. Jeff, who seemed to be in an exceptionally light-hearted mood, played just about every song in his eclectic repertoire.
The three hour-plus set provided plenty of examples of the lessons Jeff had learned about including the audience in his show. A couple of hours along, a bag lady wandered in and stood staring at Jeff, who began singing to her (to the tune of the old Hollies hit, "Long Cool Woman"), "She was a short black woman." She took offense and started squawking at him. Jeff noted that her squawks sounded like Howlin' Wolf and sang Wolf licks back at her in a bizarre Howlin'/hecklin' duet. When a waitress quieted her down, someone else yelled out a request for something by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. If it was a dare, they picked the wrong boy. Buckley is a big fan of the Pakistani singer and launched into a monologue about his hero, as well as a generous sampling of Nusrat's music. At this point a few of the Sony execs began peeling the labels off their beer bottles and staring at their watches, but there was a good hour left to go. During that night's version of Astral Weeks' "The Way Young Lovers Do," Jeff surprised everyone by launching into a scat-solo. He'd never done it before, but the tape caught it and the song made the final EP selection. (Buckley was relieved when it proved too eccentrically played and sung to be edited down.)
Jeff played and played, the tapes next door rolled and rolled. Perhaps aware that some of the record execs were there because they had to be, Buckley began strumming "The End" by the Doors and reciting, "'Jeff?' 'Yes, Sony?''We want to fffff-fgggg you!' 'Wo! Ugh!'" The Sony bigwigs smiled. By the end of the night Buckley, Berkowitz and Wallace knew they had plenty of good material from which to pull four songs. Everyone felt great, although when one bystander joked to Buckley that he had just given Sony a couple of boxed sets worth of music to stick in their vaults, Berkowitz stopped smiling long enough to warn the big-mouth, "Don't tell him that."

*****
In the autumn Jeff headed up to Woodstock to begin work on his first album. He had found a bassist named Mick Grondahl and a drummer named Matt Johnson, both downtown Manhattan players who hooked in with Jeff emotionally as well as musically. The burden of actually beginning to make a debut album after two and a half years of circling around it was exacerbated by a series of personal misfortunes that befell the musicians, including the sudden death of Jeff's girlfriend Rebecca's father, to whom Jeff had grown very close (the album will bear a dedication to him).
The assumption almost every one of the music-biz kibitzers had made about Jeff Buckley was that he was an artist who needed time to grow, that he would expand his talent and his popularity over four or five albums (like REM) rather than explode out of the box. Which is probably true, but not necessarily. The side of the road is littered with the bodies of talented young musicians who got discarded when the popular momentum turned against them, or the person who signed them moved to another label, or they didn't perform up to corporate expectations.
But listening to the first tracks from Jeff Buckley's first album, another possibility emerges. Wallace and Buckley finish adding eerie, almost eastern strings to Buckley's moody lament "Mojo Pin," which Grondahl and Johnson have anchored to earth with throbbing bass and drums. Bringing out these colors makes the song less akin to "Astral Weeks" and more to Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir." It is almost a shock to hear that transformation while seeing Jeff, leaning against the studio glass strumming his Rickenbacker, looking like James Dean crucified on his shot-gun in "Giant." For the first time it seems possible that Jeff Buckley won't have to wait long to become famous. Whether that would be a blessing or a curse is a separate discussion.
In the Bearsville studio dining room a little while later, Jeff is asked what he hopes to get out of his Sony recording contract. "Just to make things I never heard before," he says quietly, "that say things that I can't say otherwise. Not so much go as far as I can, but to go as deep as I can."
Grace Notes:
Jeff Buckley plays a Gibson L1, a borrowed Fender Telecaster and a Rickenbacker 12-string. He's using a Fender vibro-verb amp and, today, D'Addario strings. He just bought an old steel dobro and a Bina harmonium from Pakistan. Buckley uses Jim Dunlop slides. After experimenting with several microphones for Jeff's vocals, producer Andy Wallace settled on a Neumann U-87. Mick Grondahl plays a Fender Jazz bass through an Ampeg bass amp. Matt Johnson plays Slingerland drums and Zildjian cymbals.

"The Unmade Star," by David Browne

This interview was originally published in The New York Times, October 24, 1993.
Jeff Buckley has a compelling voice and a cult following, as did his father. But he's not sure he wants to be famous.
Strange things happen when Jeff Buckley opens his mouth to sing. One moment he's a white bluesman with a sound straight out of the Mississippi Delta; the next, a jazz singer whose acrobatic voice swoops and glides through a haze of cigarettes and pained memories. The last thing he sounds like is his age -- only 26.
Even odder, his singing makes otherwise jaded clubgoers and music-business executives rave with none of their usual cynicism. They will talk of catching Mr. Buckley at East Village hangouts like Sin-é and the FEZ, where they have heard him sing anything from "I Loves You Porgy" to a Sufi chant, an obscure Elton John oldie or one of Mr. Buckley's own unconventional songs. And they will talk about his new contract with Sony Records and how Buckley is a name to watch.
The one person who doesn't care for the talk is the source of it all. "The music business is the most childish business in the world," Mr. Buckley said one morning last month at a downtown bistro, "Nobody knows what they're selling or why, but they sell it if it works."
Mr. Buckley, whose hair is cut in a short, modestly spikey buzz, pauses and shoots an intense stare out the window. "There was a woman outside who was talking to someone, and I was trying to guess from her eyes what she sounded like," he said softly. "You can tell everything from the eyes."
You can tell a lot from Mr. Buckley's eyes, too. He's the son of the late Tim Buckley, who helped disassemble the barriers between folk, jazz and improvisational music before a fatal overdose of heroin, morphine and alcohol in 1975. Not only does Jeff Buckley have the same winding, sensual, octave-stretching voice as his father, but his waiflike looks recall the face on the covers of Tim Buckley albums like Goodbye and Hello, a cult classic from 1967.
Jeffrey Scott Buckley was born in 1966, the same year his father released his first album and also parted ways with his first wife, Mary Guibert. "I never knew him," Jeff Buckley said flatly. "I met him once, when I was 8. We went to visit him, and he was working in his room, so I didn't even get to talk to him. And that was it."
Mr. Buckley grew up with his mother and stepfather, mostly in Southern California, and learned about his father from old friends. "His life was hell." his son said.
Curiously, it was his father's music that made people notice Jeff Buckley. In 1991, he flew to New York to appear at a Tim Buckley tribute concert. "Everyone was there to celebrate the music of Tim Buckley, and here was someone who looked like him, sounded like him and had the same vocal range," said Nicholas Hill, who was at the concert and has since presented Mr. Buckley on his live music show on WFMU-FM. "It was very spooky, but impressive. The buzz was pretty immediate after that.
Mr. Buckley played briefly in a rock band, Gods and Monsters, but departed in the spring of 1992. As his main solo base, Mr. Buckley chose Sin-é (Gaelic for "that's it"; pronounced shin-AY), a coffeehouse where the occasional baby mouse scurries across the wooden floor. The stage, such as it is, is a cleared-away area against a wall.
"I figured if I played in the no-man's land of intimacy, I would learn to be a performer," Mr. Buckley said. Gradually, he did; he also paid the rent on his East Village apartment with money he'd collect from the plastic pitchers passed around at Sin-é.
Shane Doyle, Sin-é's owner, said : "He'll stop by to sing at 2 in the morning, and it doesn't matter if only a handful of people are there. He's definitely unusual in that way." Mr. Buckley often helps wash the dishes, too.
Mr. Buckley's apprenticeship didn't last long. Even though he has no manager -- just a lawyer -- word spread through the music business about the raw talent downtown. Soon, record executives like Clive Davis of Arista were spotted wedged behind Sin-é's chessboard-sized tables. Late last year, Mr. Buckley was signed by Sony, which will release an EP, Live at Sin-é in mid-November, followed by a full album next year.
With any luck, that EP, recorded this past summer, will make listeners feel as if they're in that 50-person space during one of Mr. Buckley's eccentric shows. Dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, he often starts by casually telling a story about, say, attending a heavy-metal festival, complete with all the mimicry and timing of a standup comic. Then, accompanied by his own electric guitar, he starts singing, and suddenly the pale, thin, wise-cracking kid is transformed into a kid possessed.
Singing an a cappella version of the traditional gospel/blues song "Be Your Husband," he dips and gyrates, slapping his palm against his chest for a beat. Even his guitar playing is unpredictable, swerving from a metal riff with clear links to Led Zeppelin to complex, jazz-influenced chord changes, sometimes during the same song.
Tim Buckley had only a cult following and bounced from label to label. Not surprisingly, his son is apprehensive about entering the big-time music business. "I'm convinced part of the reason I got signed is because of who I am," he said with a sigh. "And it makes me sad."
Sony executives declined to comment, saying it was "too early" to discuss Mr. Buckley. But Mr. Doyle said : "He gets nervous when the record company limos pull up outside. Those are never his best gigs.
When asked which musicians have influenced his work, Mr. Buckley cites figures that predate his father. Billie Holiday, Bob Dylan, Louis Armstrong and Judy Garland records taught him about phrasing, for example. And "there was a time when I wanted to be Miles Davis," he said.
"A lot of time I feel like I don't belong here" he added, quickly turning forlorn. "Here" meaning where? "Here," he replied, as if the question was downright silly.
One moment Mr. Buckley will gush about a Led Zeppelin bootleg or will cockily say, "There are no precedents for what I'm doing,." Then he will turn near-suicidal : "I'm sick of the world. I'm trying to stay alive."
Although Mr. Hill has booked Mr. Buckley on his WFMU show several times, he still doesn't know what to make of him. "He's very enigmatic and mysterious," he said. "It adds to his mystique."
What no one doubts, it seems, is Mr. Buckley's charisma. Just before he left, for Woodstock, N.Y,, last month to record his first album, Mr. Buckley gave one more show at Sin-é. It was near midnight on a Sunday night; yet, the crowd spilled out onto the sidewalk. Afterward, a dark-haired woman approached him. "You are like a sieve for music," she gushed. "Your soul is beautiful."
Mr. Buckley thanked her and began stuffing his guitar into its canvas case. "I'll never stop playing places like this," he said after she left. "You know when someone puts out an album, and then they start only playing big places? I hope I never end up like that. I love it here."

Threshold Recording Hosts Mary Guibert, Reeve Carney & Director Jake Scott

NYC studio Threshold Recording has been hosting friend-of-the-studio Mary Guibert (Jeff Buckley Music) and director Jake Scott in casting sessions for the upcoming authorized Jeff Buckley biopic – including sessions with Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark star Reeve Carney, who has been cast in the leading role.

Quotes from Jeff (official site)

“Above all do not give yourself airs. Breaking the moment of past habits is the challenge here: In the life of the spirit you are always at the beginning.”
“If you feel blocked, do not turn to others, but look inside, in silence, for the enemy of your progress.”
“Close your eyes and fly”
“Fate is gonna find you in your glass of champagne.”
“Fight despite the crowds of the walking dead”
“Haven't you heard ?”
“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.”
“If you want to get somewhere in this life, learn to draw beautiful women.”
“I need you like the tiger in the public cage does crave to live outside again.”
“In love we are all brothers and sisters”
“One man is not everyman”
“Your soul can fly outward stringed to your ribcage like a shimmering kite
in the shape of an open hand.”
“Time takes care of its own”
“Time to write and sing, to laugh, to listen, to discover, to cry,
to love music.”
“Be my valentine and I'll return, your hungry cat”
“We are born to live, we are born to understand, we are born to carry a cursed pattern and be transformed by pain”
“And though the meaning fits, there's no relief in this. I miss my beautiful friend.”
“Emblems of marriage, the touch of her tongue on the roof of the mouth is
enough of a seal.”
“I am a man enclosed in quotation marks, ever since I took a drink of you.”
“There's still a boy who loves you Some other love becomes you or whatever else
it comes to. I know we could be so happy baby if we wanted to be.”
“Knowing you I can't believe that true friendship is just a dream
and nobody can tell me that loving you is just my weakness.”
But the devil has my address and he knows where I live. He sends me money and
fancy postcards and the poems he leaves are so charming. They say
"You ........ Are in Big Trouble."
“My skin is tight underneath the tear, dried upon my cheeks the night I cried.
When I smiled Good Morning to you, my crow's feet let you know that I lied.
Please let me give these gifts of mine to the woman who eyes shined on my back
as I slept. I left you because I loved you.”
“Turn your head away from the screen, my friend. It will tell you nothing more.”

An artist isn't separate from a person who isn't or doesn't feel they're an artist. There's artistry in human beings; it's just a human function. I find answers from music all the time. But because I most identify with music as a way of expressing myself, I just find most of my answers there. Other people find it through painting or art or teaching or murder.

"I daydream too much. I'm not the greatest songwriter, yet; I daydream thinking about great songwriters. I was brought up with all these different influences - Nina Simone, Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn, Patti Smith - people who showed me music should be free, should be penetrating, should carry you."-JB♥

Quotes

“
‘You know, it’s like we’ve got this weather system trapped inside us - in the pit of the stomach, the clouds are always forming and waiting to rise. Even when everything’s sunny, the clouds are always there, brewing. And every now and again they rise up and it pours for days, sometimes weeks; then it dies away, the sun comes out and the whole thing starts again. We’re stuck with it, the clouds within.’ — J.B.
…’But…that means we can never be happy?!’— I.M.
‘Yeah, that’s right, people like us can never be happy.’ — J.B.
”