"And the rain is falling and I believe my time has come."
August 24, 2024 10:23 AM Subscribe
It's Not Too Late: A Lifetime Measured by Jeff Buckley's "Grace." August 15th, 1994 marked the debut of singer-songwriter Jeff Buckley's only full studio album. 30 years on, Olivia Abercrombie talks of the influence of that album on her life.
Speaking for myself, and only myself, Jeff Buckley's death was my Significant Alternative Music Death. His passing came on the heels of a femicide my sister was involved in and this haunting album is entwined with that incident.
Grace was a beautiful gorgeous messy but perfect record. It still brings me to tears. He will always be missed.
videos from this album
Grace
Last Goodbye
Hallelujah
So Real
Speaking for myself, and only myself, Jeff Buckley's death was my Significant Alternative Music Death. His passing came on the heels of a femicide my sister was involved in and this haunting album is entwined with that incident.
Grace was a beautiful gorgeous messy but perfect record. It still brings me to tears. He will always be missed.
videos from this album
Grace
Last Goodbye
Hallelujah
So Real
Wow, I remember seeing him at a Tower Records in-store performance in Austin, and he was just enormous. They had him and his guitar perched up on a counter overlooking the aisles of CD's, and I've still never heard a voice fill a space like that. What a force of nature.
posted by swift at 10:46 AM on August 24 [8 favorites]
posted by swift at 10:46 AM on August 24 [8 favorites]
I saw him in NYC at Arts at St. Ann's (the predecessor to St. Ann's Warehouse) around the time that Grace was released, and was an instant fan (the same with Richard Thompson when I saw him at the same venue), and saw him a second and last time in Memphis when he moved there to work on his next album; the gig was on Ash Wednesday, and one of his band commented on the ashes on my forehead (I was giving Catholicism another go) when I ran into him in the bathroom in Barrister's. It devastated me when I heard of his drowning. I think that I don't listen to Grace more often than I do because I'm afraid of wearing it out.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:46 AM on August 24 [4 favorites]
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:46 AM on August 24 [4 favorites]
It's really a shame, as many friends as Jeff Buckley had in Memphis, that no one was there to tell him what a dangerous idea it is to try to swim in the Wolf River, which has a vicious undercurrent. The water moving just a few feet below the surface can move two to three times faster.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:17 PM on August 24 [2 favorites]
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:17 PM on August 24 [2 favorites]
After years of coming across folks like Chris Cornell, Robert Plant, and Thom Yorke singing the praises of Grace, I finally picked up a copy two days ago. Nice timing, Kitteh!
The album is quite impressive for its distinctive sound, intensity, and range. I can't really think of any other rock musicians who've managed to be quite so influential despite having released only one proper album.
posted by epimorph at 4:19 PM on August 24 [1 favorite]
The album is quite impressive for its distinctive sound, intensity, and range. I can't really think of any other rock musicians who've managed to be quite so influential despite having released only one proper album.
posted by epimorph at 4:19 PM on August 24 [1 favorite]
Strong Songs podcast has a great episode on “Last Goodbye,” which amazing as it is is maybe #4 on the album
posted by gottabefunky at 5:01 PM on August 24 [1 favorite]
posted by gottabefunky at 5:01 PM on August 24 [1 favorite]
I was so, so I to that album when it came out. It feels like it’s completely burned into this one short, intense period of time for me and can’t exist outside of it. It’s the only album I feel that way about. In October of ‘94 we saw him at Trinity St. Paul churchon Bloor St. here in Toronto, which feels like the absolute best place to have seen him, pretty soon after the album came out.
The day he died in ‘97, we were just coming back to the car after getting the first ultrasound on our first kid and they announced it on CFNY 102.1. And so a new part of our lives started.
We tried listening to the album about 15 years later and couldn’t; not because we didn’t like it anymore but it just didn’t seem to fit into this time somehow…it’s hard to explain.
Don’t think I’ve listened to it since. So odd.
posted by chococat at 6:09 PM on August 24 [4 favorites]
The day he died in ‘97, we were just coming back to the car after getting the first ultrasound on our first kid and they announced it on CFNY 102.1. And so a new part of our lives started.
We tried listening to the album about 15 years later and couldn’t; not because we didn’t like it anymore but it just didn’t seem to fit into this time somehow…it’s hard to explain.
Don’t think I’ve listened to it since. So odd.
posted by chococat at 6:09 PM on August 24 [4 favorites]
I love this album beyond measure. I tried to write a review of it once, but bogged down trying to find the words.
An interesting point- it’s a guitar-laden rock album with no guitar solos.
posted by Devils Rancher at 8:57 PM on August 24 [3 favorites]
An interesting point- it’s a guitar-laden rock album with no guitar solos.
posted by Devils Rancher at 8:57 PM on August 24 [3 favorites]
Two mentions of JB as a rock musician. He was considered adult contemporary iirc. He wasn’t opening for Creed.
posted by badbobbycase at 3:30 AM on August 25
posted by badbobbycase at 3:30 AM on August 25
He was considered adult contemporary iirc.
I mean... you do not. He played Glastonbury and the Roskilde Festival. He was featured on 120 Minutes. He was played heavily on alternative radio. He played alternative music venues, opening for or being opened for by alternative bands. When he died, more than a dozen alternative music acts wrote tribute songs.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:55 AM on August 25 [5 favorites]
I mean... you do not. He played Glastonbury and the Roskilde Festival. He was featured on 120 Minutes. He was played heavily on alternative radio. He played alternative music venues, opening for or being opened for by alternative bands. When he died, more than a dozen alternative music acts wrote tribute songs.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:55 AM on August 25 [5 favorites]
Some of his more mellow tunes leaked onto adult contemporary radio, just as some songs by REM did. But it's not like that made Michael Stipe into Sade or anything and it didn't for Buckley either.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:01 AM on August 25 [2 favorites]
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:01 AM on August 25 [2 favorites]
He wasn’t opening for Creed.Not least because he died just a few weeks after Creed’s first album debuted. Buckley was opening for Soundgarden and Juliana Hatfield while Creed was still playing at TGI Fridays.
posted by mbrubeck at 8:54 AM on August 25 [3 favorites]
Loved the stuff he did with Gary Lucas in Gods and Monsters, especially Cruel...
posted by AJaffe at 10:33 AM on August 25
posted by AJaffe at 10:33 AM on August 25
I mean, he routinely covered "Kick Out the Jams". Notwithstanding the softer corners of his repertoire, he did not shy away from punk.
posted by fingers_of_fire at 11:08 AM on August 25 [1 favorite]
posted by fingers_of_fire at 11:08 AM on August 25 [1 favorite]
Apropos of almost nothing, but I just walked into Starbucks to give my daughter in law a ride home from work, and they were playing Last Goodbye on the Muzak.
This one was a slow burn for me. Someone gave me a copy that I didn’t listen to but once or twice over a couple of years. Then it kind of crept up, I realized I liked it, listened to it a few more times, then the switch flipped and I got stuck on it for like a month. I put it on the headphones every night, and when I got to Lover… I found myself
Repeating it 2, 3, 4 times. It is now burned in pretty well, but I will still have the occasional bout of it getting stuck on repeat for a day or two. David Bowie didn’t refer to it as the perfect album for no good reason.
posted by Devils Rancher at 5:22 PM on August 25 [2 favorites]
This one was a slow burn for me. Someone gave me a copy that I didn’t listen to but once or twice over a couple of years. Then it kind of crept up, I realized I liked it, listened to it a few more times, then the switch flipped and I got stuck on it for like a month. I put it on the headphones every night, and when I got to Lover… I found myself
Repeating it 2, 3, 4 times. It is now burned in pretty well, but I will still have the occasional bout of it getting stuck on repeat for a day or two. David Bowie didn’t refer to it as the perfect album for no good reason.
posted by Devils Rancher at 5:22 PM on August 25 [2 favorites]
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The Grifters were on tour when Jeff was last in Memphis, and were looking forward to jamming with him when they got home. They got word just before they went on stage and didn't think about their set list.
The ended up on stage playing "Fireflies" the chorus of which is "You know how to swim/but you can't keep from drowning." I can't imagine how that felt.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:41 AM on August 24 [12 favorites]