{"id":465995,"date":"2026-02-13T09:39:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T09:39:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/465995\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T09:39:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T09:39:11","slug":"jeff-buckley-was-more-than-just-a-rocknroll-tragedy-now-a-documentary-does-him-justice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/465995\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeff Buckley was more than just a rock\u2019n\u2019roll tragedy \u2013 now, a documentary does him justice"},"content":{"rendered":"

Though his 1993 debut Grace enraptured critics on its release, Jeff Buckley<\/a> didn\u2019t score his first hit single until a decade after his death. His cover of Leonard Cohen\u2019s \u201cHallelujah\u201d began its curious afterlife scoring The West Wing\u2019s momentous 2002 season finale, becoming a standard sung by buskers and TV talent-show hopefuls alike, before eventually being released as a single in 2017. \u201cHallelujah\u201d saw Buckley embraced by a new, more mainstream audience who imagined him simply as some swoonsome moody crooner who\u2019d died too young. But, as Amy Berg\u2019s new documentary It\u2019s Never Over, Jeff Buckley explores<\/a>, he was much more than just another handsome rock\u2019n\u2019roll tragedy.<\/p>\n

\u201cJeff was a glorious weirdo,\u201d says Berg, whose movie dives beneath the heartthrob surface to deliver a powerfully intimate portrait of the late troubadour. \u201cI didn\u2019t want Jeff to feel as if he walked on water. I wanted him to feel real and human and flawed, and some of the people in his life revered him in such a way that it was hard to see that. But I was able to peel those layers back and find this quirky guy that loved to make jokes, and make people laugh, and find his way through a crowd with humour and performances.\u201d<\/p>\n

In early 1992, shortly after relocating to New York from his native California, Buckley began a regular Monday night residency at an East Village caf\u00e9 named Sin-\u00e9. \u201cI\u2019m a ridiculous person,\u201d he\u2019d confess to the patrons, during solo performances that detoured through Buckley originals and covers of songs by artists as diverse as Nina Simone, Led Zeppelin and qawwali master Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. And perhaps Buckley was ridiculous, but through these performances he attracted squadrons of thirsty A&R execs. The one who signed him, Columbia\u2019s Steve Berkowitz, saw Buckley in the lineage of the label\u2019s roster of legends: \u201cDylan… Springsteen… Buckley.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Buckley wasn\u2019t interested in being anyone but himself. At Sin-\u00e9, he referenced rock\u2019s canon only to reinvent it, stretching Van Morrison\u2019s \u201cThe Way That Young Lovers Do\u201d into 10 unhinged minutes of locomotive rhythm, jazz vocalese and combustible horniness. He was just as likely to lend his quicksilver vocal to Billie Holliday\u2019s lynching requiem \u201cStrange Fruit\u201d, summon the gospel anguish of Ray Charles\u2019s \u201cDrown in My Own Tears\u201d, or locate the spectral magic within the theme from Eighties arthouse movie Bagdad Caf\u00e9. He was bold, fearless and joyful in everything he did.<\/p>\n

\"Amy<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/p>\n

Amy Berg: \u2018Jeff\u2019s mother, Mary, trusted me. She gave me everything I needed\u2019 (Retna USA\/Shutterstock)<\/p>\n

And he\u2019d ensured he could be his complete, genius self on his debut album, Grace. \u201cThe word on the street was, Jeff had got the best record deal going at that time,\u201d says Berg, who worked in the music business at that time. The money was nice, but, Berg underlines, \u201cwhat made it so good was Jeff had complete creative control\u201d.<\/p>\n

Even so, Buckley would endure a bumpy ride through fame. He\u2019d already bristled at the focus on his looks during early media coverage of the Sin-\u00e9 shows, griping drily to the faithful one night, \u201cI don\u2019t look like Matt Dillon, do I? I\u2019m sick of that s***.\u201d He particularly hated comparisons to his late father, folk maverick Tim Buckley. \u201cI can’t help it if I sound like him,\u201d he told Puncture magazine in 1994. \u201cMy voice has been handed down through the men in my family for generations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Buckley met his father only once, when he was seven, in 1975; a fortnight later, Tim was dead of an overdose. Jeff wasn\u2019t invited to the funeral, but 16 years on he accepted producer Hal Wilner\u2019s request to perform at a 1991 Tim Buckley tribute concert in Brooklyn. He\u2019d previously refused to cover any of his father\u2019s material, but that night he sang \u201cI Never Asked to Be Your Mountain\u201d, which Tim had written about leaving Jeff and his mother. Jeff was the hit of the show, though his relationship with his father\u2019s legacy remained complex. \u201cI\u2019m convinced part of the reason I got signed is because of who I am, and it makes me sad,\u201d he told The New York Times in 1993.<\/p>\n

It was his mother, Mary Guibert, who was Jeff\u2019s true guiding light. Guibert is perhaps It\u2019s Never Over\u2019s most compelling character. She never paints herself as the perfect mother, but it\u2019s clear she gave it her very best, even as she\u2019s threatened with arrest for sparking up a joint in the parking lot before one of her son\u2019s landmark shows. Her belief in her son\u2019s talent, and his decency, is abundant; her pride in his achievements \u2013 and her enduring grief over his death \u2013 clear in scenes where she plays back treasured voicemail messages he left her. <\/p>\n

That radical, rebellious impulse within Buckley, which ensured he\u2019d be the kind of maverick who never coloured inside the lines, clearly derives from Mary, not Tim. During her interview segments, she\u2019s wearing a \u201cSuck Fony\u201d T-shirt, a spoonerific thumbing of the nose at the record label she\u2019s previously fought as part of her mission to protect Jeff\u2019s legacy.<\/p>\n

\"Amy<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/p>\n

Amy Berg and Mary Guibert at the \u2018It\u2019s Never Over, Jeff Buckley\u2019 premiere at Sundance Film Festival (Getty)<\/p>\n

\u201cMary trusted me,\u201d says Berg, explaining the remarkable interviews Guibert gives throughout the movie. \u201cShe gave me everything I needed. And it weighs heavily on her, for sure.\u201d Guibert\u2019s presence is one reason It\u2019s Never Over delivers such an intimate portrait of Buckley: Berg wasn\u2019t interested in chasing the usual talking heads that populate rockumentaries. Instead, she pursued the people who really knew Buckley. That includes the musicians he worked with (guitarist Michael Tighe and drummer Parker Kindred). More importantly, it includes the women he loved: Rebecca Moore, the artist who was his girlfriend as his career took off, and Joan Wasser, AKA musician Joan As Policewoman, his partner in the three years before his death.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause I felt that Jeff was a feminist, I wanted to see how he was identified by the three primary feminists in his life,\u201d Berg says. \u201cRebecca and Mary were the only ones that knew Jeff before he was famous, and they were the most worried about him.\u201d They knew Buckley was a pure element entering a corrupting sphere, and worried how his unguarded personality would withstand fame. \u201cMary and I discussed this a lot,\u201d Berg continues. \u201cJeff just didn\u2019t have a lot of life experience before moving to New York. And when Jeff and Rebecca broke up, she felt he wasn\u2019t going to be safe, he needed protection from the industry, just because she had grown up around it and had some experience with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Buckley began work on Grace in autumn 1993, with the band he had assembled just five weeks earlier. His challenge was to distil the unstable magic displayed at Sin-\u00e9 into a coherent artistic statement. The studio environment and the pressure threatened his wild creative temperament. When it all got too much, he\u2019d jump in his car and drive, blasting his cassettes of pioneering Rastafarian thrash-punks Bad Brains and lunatic ska-funkateers Fishbone, to remind himself who his people really were: the freaks, the weirdos, like him.<\/p>\n

Music was always Buckley\u2019s refuge. The first album he ever owned was Led Zeppelin\u2019s Physical Graffiti. Until recently, you could virtually flip through his old record collection on jeffbuckley.com: it included The Beatles and The Birthday Party, chanson singer Edith Piaf and fart-obsessed pop-punks the Descendents. Buckley\u2019s voracious musical appetite made his own music come out in unexpected, volatile ways. And Grace found space for many of the different modes and moods Buckley loved, in his own material and in unexpected covers, like Benjamin Britten\u2019s arrangement of the funeral lament \u201cCorpus Christie Carol\u201d, and \u201cLilac Wine\u201d, a jazz standard performed by his hero, Nina Simone (\u201cI want to be Nina Simone,\u201d Buckley says in the movie, \u201calthough she would advise against it, I\u2019m sure.\u201d).<\/p>\n

\"\u2018There<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/p>\n

\u2018There was a very boundary-less, liquid feeling to him… a quality that felt very tidal wave-y\u2019 (Redferns\/Getty)<\/p>\n

As the roar of acclaim rose, Buckley tried to maintain, but when David Bowie himself tells you your debut is \u201cthe best album ever made\u201d, that\u2019s going to be tough. And Buckley no longer had the stabilising influence of Moore. In one of the movie\u2019s more striking interviews, singer Aimee Mann talks of encountering Buckley as his buzz reached its peak. Buckley suggested they have sex, but Mann refused, sensing \u201cthere was a very boundary-less, liquid feeling to him… A quality that felt very tidal wave-y.\u201d <\/p>\n

His final partner, Wasser, describes Buckley as \u201ca really staunch defender of women\u201d. Berg says he wrestled with his guilt over splitting with Moore as his star became ascendent. \u201cHe had a tremendous amount of guilt for what he felt he wasn\u2019t able to protect, like when he broke up with Rebecca. There were experiences that weighed heavily on him.\u201d<\/p>\n

He had a tremendous amount of guilt for what he felt he wasn\u2019t able to protect<\/p>\n

Amy Berg<\/p>\n

Grace was a masterpiece, but it didn\u2019t sell like one, and the record company worked Buckley hard. You can see him in It\u2019s Never Over, exhausted from the promotional treadmill, the constant touring, already sensing the pressure to follow up on his debut. \u201cTouring is not easy, doing publicity is not easy,\u201d adds Berg. <\/p>\n

Buckley grew increasingly alienated by the constant focus on his sex appeal. People magazine named him one of the world\u2019s \u201c50 most beautiful people\u201d; in the movie, Mary speaks about waking at dawn to buy every copy in the area so he wouldn\u2019t see it. The brilliant photographer Steve Gullick shot Buckley in 1995, at the height of his ambivalence towards the media\u2019s gaze: \u201cI said, \u2018I bet you\u2019re sick of being made out to be this beautiful man, so let\u2019s do an \u201cugly\u201d session.\u2019 He was well up for it.\u201d For Gullick\u2019s lens, Buckley pulled dumb faces, stuck jellybeans onto his teeth, and hung himself from a coat-hanger, liberating himself from that pretty-boy image. His grin suggests that it felt good.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe loved the attention, at certain times,\u201d says Berg. \u201cBut he also struggled with it. When he hired Parker Kindred to be his drummer, he said something to the effect of it would take the pressure off him, because Parker was so good-looking. That was part of his decision-making.\u201d<\/p>\n

Buckley hated being on a pedestal, even though he\u2019d placed himself there by recording the kind of debut LP that would prove a trial to follow. \u201cJeff had such fear around this record,\u201d Kindred says, of the sessions to record his second album. \u201cHe wasn\u2019t ready.\u201d Berg agrees: \u201cThe sophomore slump is not an easy thing to manage.\u201d The original sessions for that second album, with Television singer\/guitarist Tom Verlaine as producer, were shelved. But a series of unannounced solo shows across the east coast, where Buckley performed under ludicrous pseudonyms, seemed to recharge the singer\u2019s batteries and reacquaint him with the freedom and creativity of his earlier days. <\/p>\n

He recalled his bandmates to Memphis to begin the new record afresh. The day they were due to arrive, Buckley went swimming in the Mississippi, was swept underwater by the wake of a tugboat, and drowned. He was 30.<\/p>\n

\"Buckley<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/p>\n

Buckley wasn\u2019t interested in being anyone but himself (Merri Cyr\/Sundance Institute)<\/p>\n

Even if you already shed your tears over Jeff when he died almost three decades ago, the final scenes of Berg\u2019s movie are powerfully impactful. It\u2019s Never Over is a testament to Buckley the immeasurable talent, but moreover a compelling portrait of Buckley the man. You will feel the loss of both keenly.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt very responsible over how Jeff was portrayed,\u201d says Berg. \u201cI had a real affinity for Jeff in the Nineties; his music connected me to some emotional highs and lows in my life. Certain music and songs just get us through [difficult] moments. That\u2019s what Jeff was, and continues to be, to me. And so I wanted people who weren\u2019t around in the Nineties to experience him firsthand, to have an authentic introduction to Jeff\u2019s music. I wanted the super-fans to feel satisfied. And I chose intimacy as the root to telling the story, because when you get that close, it will always move you in some way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018It\u2019s Never Over, Jeff Buckley\u2019 is released to UK cinemas on Friday 13 February<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Though his 1993 debut Grace enraptured critics on its release, Jeff Buckley didn\u2019t score his first hit single…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":465996,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[88,206],"class_list":{"0":"post-465995","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-movies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=465995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465995\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/465996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}