{"id":70046,"date":"2025-08-09T13:06:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-09T13:06:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/70046\/"},"modified":"2025-08-09T13:06:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-09T13:06:10","slug":"new-jeff-buckley-doc-honors-gone-too-soon-prodigy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/70046\/","title":{"rendered":"New Jeff Buckley Doc Honors Gone-Too-Soon Prodigy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jeff Buckley<\/a>, the quintessential \u201calternative\u201d singer-songwriter of the 1990s, is more popular now than ever, if my college freshman niece\u2019s Instagram stories are to be believed. <\/p>\n

The unpredictable performer with Catholic influences, James Dean looks, a Mariana Trench-sized vocal range and a vaudevillian\u2019s sense of stage patter died in a freak accident at the age of 30, with only one studio recording, Grace, under his belt. <\/p>\n

Though certainly celebrated by those with taste in his lifetime, the too-soon-gone tragedy of his early passing makes a perfect fit for his heart-on-its-sleeve musical style. As a longtime fan I\u2019d give anything for him to have survived and made more music for decades, but I understand the allure the beautiful corpse legend has for new fans. <\/p>\n

It is, of course, something of an inherited legend. Jeff\u2019s father, Tim, was a similarly genre-breaking singer who died at age 28, of a heroin overdose. The 8-year-old Jeff barely knew his father at the time of his death, but the documentary It\u2019s Never Over, Jeff Buckley, in theaters Friday, August 8, suggests an inherited, congenital, all-encompassing musicality. <\/p>\n

\"JeffJeff Buckley and Mary Guibert. Magnolia Pictures <\/p>\n

Amy Berg<\/a>\u2019s film, which is chock-a-block with tremendous footage, seems at times to be arguing a court case more than telling a story. Young Jeff, equally obsessed with Judy Garland<\/a>, Al Di Meola, and Led Zeppelin, vibrated on a frequency unheard by mere mortals, you see. Berg seems weirdly driven to convince anyone who comes within a ten mile radius of this film that Buckley was a genius, and anyone who doesn\u2019t agree is an idiot.<\/p>\n

This strange lack of chill is mixed with a gaudy overuse of visual clutter. There\u2019s a tacky reliance on printed lyrics on the screen, as well as some of Jeff\u2019s doodles that quickly become overbearing. The recent documentary Moonage Daydream<\/a> took a collage approach to express the appeal and importance of David Bowie<\/a>. Passages of Berg\u2019s film make a similar attempt, but it is far less successful.<\/p>\n

Luckily, though, this is still a movie about Jeff Buckley, so the music is terrific, and the time capsule aspect of his early 1990s life in New York\u2019s East Village will surely delight many. (Allow me to brag that I didn\u2019t just see him perform at Cafe Sin-\u00e9 back in the day, I saw him make coffee!) The film is loaded with striking anecdotes \u2014ike how he would regularly go to Tower Records, buy the Tim Buckley catalogue, listen to it, then throw it in the trash, and how receiving a compliment from his idol Robert Plant sent him into such a state of mania he disappeared for a few days. <\/p>\n

Interview subjects include Buckley\u2019s mother, who has been cautiously guiding his successful posthumous career, touring bandmates and ex-girlfriends. We hear his old elaborate outgoing answering machine messages (Spinach the Cat!), watch him in the van on the Grace tour, and see the moment he got to meet Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. (Unable to communicate via language, Buckley sang scales at the legendary qawwali singer, apparently causing a bit of a fuss backstage at New York\u2019s Town Hall.) <\/p>\n

\"JeffJeff Buckley. Magnolia Pictures <\/p>\n

The film explores how fame and pressure to follow-up Grace drove him to the brink of madness, and how, during his retreat to Memphis, he became convinced he did not have much longer to live. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s Never Over is thorough when it comes to many aspects of Jeff\u2019s life, but there are some curious absences. Strangely, there\u2019s only a blink-and-you-miss-it photo of Gary Lucas, but no mention of his early New York musical mentor who co-wrote two of Buckley\u2019s most lasting songs and who employed him in his first band. <\/p>\n

\"JeffJeff Buckley and Mary Guibert. Magnolia Pictures <\/p>\n

Similarly nothing about Tom Verlaine, who was hired to produce Buckley\u2019s second album, which the performer intended to ashcan and rerecord. Sadly, the very day his group landed in Memphis, Jeff decided, somewhat euphorically, to take a swim in the Wolf River. While singing Led Zeppelin he was caught in a ship\u2019s wake and drowned. <\/p>\n

The Jeff (and Tim) Buckley story is a true tragedy of what could have been, but at least we have the music. My favorite song is probably \u201cLast Goodbye.\u201d What\u2019s yours? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jeff Buckley, the quintessential \u201calternative\u201d singer-songwriter of the 1990s, is more popular now than ever, if my college…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70047,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[16420,88,206,216],"class_list":["post-70046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-documentary-film","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70046","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=70046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70046\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}