Jeff Buckley

God, he was gorgeous and gifted guitar player and with a true voice of an angel. Gone way too soon. Just like his dad.

I never got him...

I bought "Grace" because I heard raves about his voice, and that the jacket he wore in the cover photo previously belonged to Judy Garland. I was very underwhelmed and have been confounded by all the praise for nearly 30 years.

He's no Josh Groban.

Oh good God. I hope R2 is parody. Or at least a mug-cradling frau. Josh Groban??

OP, damn, I'd never heard this clip before. Just gorgeous. It's hard not to get terribly sad about his untimely death every time I hear one of his extraordinary recordings. We'll never know what would have happened had he lived. Undoubtedly, his tragic death contributed to the the mystique around him and his work during his resurgence in the 2000s.

Perhaps I'm being overly literal here, but what do you mean by next-level sexual ambiguity? As far as I know, he was straight and had pretty intense relationships with several women.

Or are you referring to his vocal styling and influences? I do think it's wonderful that, vocally, he seemed to be equally influenced by male and female singers.

Sorry for the double-post, but I was so moved by this recording that I instantly started looking up more about it and came across the Elvis Costello quote about the performance. Amazing stuff. Thanks again, OP!

[quote]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 realized 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.

[quote]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.

[quote]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.

[quote]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."

[quote] (taken from the August 1997 issue of MOJO)

[QUOTE](note: Elvis Costello was the director of the 1995 edition of Meltdown Festival)