A Tribute to Jeff Buckley

Technical ability in the music world can only take you to a certain point before something unexplainable from outside the four walls of a practice room, or perhaps from deep within the musician occupying the room, has to take over and lead you the rest of the way. You can call it “soul” or “spirit”, or maybe it’s something otherworldly that inspires the artist. Whatever it might be, this force coupled with outstanding technique is what truly great musicians are made of. This force guides the fingers across the fretboard, tugs at the vocal cords, and controls every musical step of the artist. Jeff Buckley, I believe, is unquestionably one of those artists who was in complete control of this force.

Going forward, I don’t feel totally confident that I possess the writing ability necessary to do justice to this man, his music, and how he has affected me. As someone who thinks too much and feels too little, I’ll have a tough time talking about how I feel about this man, but here I am having started writing, so I’ll give it a shot.

Few artists have unabashedly bared their souls to me like Jeff. Every sustained, warbling note he uttered was something delivered to me from the heart. His voice was all that was needed to fall in love with his music; even using a lyric sheet to understand and contemplate what he was saying was unnecessary for becoming enamored with him. I, personally, have never even read a single lyric from his one and only album Grace, and I honestly don’t have much of an interest to. I’ve gained enough fulfillment from his voice and guitar playing alone to render his lyricism an afterthought. He wasn’t a virtuoso guitarist, but on tracks like the beautiful “Corpus Christi Carol” or “Hallelujah” (his best known song) his chimey guitar touches you in a way that most virtuoso shredders cannot do. Where so many singer/guitarists have failed to make an emotional connection to the listener, Buckley succeeds in flying colors.

But it’s his voice that makes Buckley truly special and praiseworthy. While he isn’t the first singer in rock to possess a 3 ½ to 4 octave range, it’s the breadth of emotional expression he uses to coat each and every note of every octave that he can sing that takes him to a level of artistic genius. He consistently made himself vulnerable when he hit his signature falsetto and disarmed the room when he shed instrumentation, bringing things down to his unbeatable a-capella vocal runs. He could effortlessly go from a sweet whisper then burst into a scream, and he could hold a note for two weeks if he needed to. As I mentioned before, technique can only get you so far, and when Jeff sang it was the perfect union of skill and soul, a union only a select few singers in popular music history have attained.

When it comes to fame and recognition during his lifetime and widespread influence, will Jeff Buckley go down as one of the most important artists of his generation along with contemporaries like Kurt Cobain? Maybe not, considering that he only released one album before he tragically passed away and didn’t garner much fame during his brief career. But will he go down as one of the most talented artists of his generation? You better believe it. I think the music world is truly blessed to have had the privilege of hearing Jeff’s voice and the small body of recorded material it appeared on, and his passing succeeded in making people realize that. In the words of Judas Priest: “Why do you have to die to be a hero?/It’s a shame a legend begins at his end./Why do you have to die to be a hero?/When there’s still so many things to say unsaid?”