Jeff Buckley

Everything I ever projected New York to be, it was—even the stinky, ratty, vomity part of it. Everybody has to do the subway. Everybody has to smell the same smells. And people get mad all the time. When people don’t like something, like ‘Get out of my way you blah, blah, blah.’ But [in L.A.] it’s like, ‘How ya doing? Let’s do lunch! I love you!’

The only goal is in the process. The process is the thing…with little flashes of light here and there. Those are the gigs, those are the live shows. But it’s the life in between—that’s all I got.

He quite clearly had his feet on the ground and his head and his imagination was flying way, way out there, beyond, beyond.

New York Newsday said I was stealing from the black man, and I was failing at it whereas Michael Bolton was succeeding. So fuck 'em.

I don't hear that many current records that really change my life... I've found it in Jeff Buckley, and I find it in Björk on occasion.

You ever heard of a guy named Jeff Buckley? He's one of the best singers I've ever heard.

Interviewer: "So Jeff, what are your main musical influences?" Jeff (after a long pause): "Love, anger, depression, joy and dreams. ...And Zeppelin. Totally."

You mentioned two spectacular vocalists there (Jeff Buckley and Freddie Mercury) I mean, both of whom had much better chops than me. I mean real great, great singers. Jeff Buckley's voice. I was playing with Jimmy in the mid 90s when we were working with an Egyptian ensemble and we played a festival in Switzerland and Jeff Buckley was playing and we went to see him and it was mind altering, his voice. Spectacular singing and so much conviction.

He was just really spontaneous and it was just exciting. I was having a hard time in the band I was in and so to meet Jeffrey was just like being given a set of paints. Do you know what I mean? It was just like I had all this color in my life again. I mean he idolized me before he met me. It's kind of creepy and I, I was like that with him. This is embarrassing but it's the truth. I just couldn't help falling in love with him. He was adorable. I read his diaries, he read mine, you know we'd just swap, we'd literally just hand over this very personal stuff and I've never done that with anybody else. I don't know if he has. So in some ways it was very, there was a great deal of intimacy but then there'd be times when I'd just think "oh no, I'm just not penetrating this Jeff Buckley boy at all. I just felt like a groupie or something sometimes. It wasn't like being his partner at all. He just had something you wanted, it didn't matter who you were.

My singing used to be awful," admits Folds. "I don't have Jeff Buckley's voice. I don't write songs as an excuse to hear myself sing. It's the other way around: I sing so I can hear my songs. It can be kind of scary. You're on the radio next to -- well, on the shelf next to Jeff Buckley. We're in the B's. People can flip through and pick up his record instead and hear a lot better singer. He has that knack. I've had to really work at it. Of course, he probably doesn't play piano as well as me. I'm not going to get all competitive with the guy because obviously he's not doing so well these days.

And what do I want people to get from the music? Whatever they want. Whatever you like. Somebody asked me what I wanted to do. I just said I wanted to…just to give back to it what it’s given me. And to meet all the other people that are doing it…just to be in the world, really.

I hope that people who liked him resist the temptation to turn his life and death into some dumb romantic fantasy--he was so much better than that. Not everyone can get up and sing something they take a liking to and make it their own, sing true to their heart and be curious about all different strains of music. Corpus Christi Carol was a completely conceived interpretation. I'd never heard the piece before and when I heard the original I realised what Jeff had done was even more amazing. He'd taken it into his own world. That's something my favorite classical musicians can do, be themselves but use all that expertise to make the music more beautiful. Jeff did that naturally. Only a handful of people are capable of that. I was amazed when he did meltdown. I asked him what he wanted to sing and he said he'd like to do one of Mahler's Kindertotenlieder in the original German! Absolutely fucking fearless. He was convinced he could sing it without rehearsal, just because he liked it. In the end he did a Purcell song, Dido's Lament, which is in danger of sounding incredibly poignant in retrospect: 'Remember me but forget my fate'. But he also sang Boy With the Thorn In His Side because he liked it, and Grace to show something of himself. When he started singing Dido's Lament at the rehearsal, there were all these classical musicians who could not believe it. Here's a guy shuffling up on-stage and singing a piece of music normally thought to be the property of certain types of specifically developed voice, and he's just singing, not doing it like a party piece, but doing something with it. My last memory of him was at the little party in the green room afterwards. There were all these people sitting round Jeff who'd never met before - Fretwork, the viol group, a classical pianist and some jazz player --all talking and laughing about music. He'd charmed everybody. I'd much rather remember that than anything.

I think he had one of the best voices I've ever heard.

We were talking earlier about lyrics and beautiful lyrics. That particular period that we've been dwelling upon this evening, partly and in fact definitely was a time for prolific writing. Recently, not too long ago we lost one of the better, most beautiful caucasian singers, Jeff Buckley, sadly, way, way out to lose such a talent and such a heart.

GAP: Who is your favorite musical artist?
Brandon Boyd: Jeff Buckley

This beautiful-looking guy with a fur coat and mad, curly hair walked in. He went to the bar and got a pint of Guinness, then plugged in his Fender and began to sing. Everybody was completely blown away. Who was it? It was Jeff Buckley.

His voice is an incredible instrument, angelic and powerful and mean at the same time. Tortured. He has been a huge inspiration and influence to me over the last two years. This tune is just unreal.

Jeff Buckley was a pure drop in an ocean of noise.