Jeff Buckley May Have Said His Last Goodbye but His Life is Eternal

This afternoon I ventured down to the Kendall Square Cinema to take in a screening of the documentary It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley directed by Amy Berg and produced by Brad Pitt.

Buckley would only record one completed studio album in his all-too-brief lifetime. Grace, released in 1994, would prove both a blessing and a burden. Amid recording his sophomore effort in Memphis (which would be posthumously released as Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk in 1999), Buckley would accidentally drown in the Wolf River. Gone at the age of 30.

Complicating matters was the fact that his father Tim Buckley, who recorded 9 albums between 1966 and 1974 but was almost completely absent from his life, had also died young of an accidental drug overdose in 1975 at the age of 28. The younger Buckley, while grudgingly admiring his father's music, did not take kindly to those comparisons. In an interview during the film, Buckley is asked what he inherited from Tim Buckley to which he curtly replies, "People who remember my father. Next question." Indeed, I remember watching the DVD of Jeff Buckley: Live in Chicago. At one point several members of the audience shout "Get on Top of Me Woman" which was one of his father's songs. This would provoke another sharp retort, "Get on top of my coffin!!!"

It's Never Over. Jeff Buckley focuses primarily on the thoughts of three women in his life - his mother Mary Guibert and two of his girlfriends - Rebecca Moore and Joan Wasser (a.k.a. Joan as Police Woman). For them, the mark Jeff Buckley left on their lives will never be over even if was difficult to discuss for them more than a quarter century after his passing.

Jeff Buckley was a musical savant who could not only appreciate but could interpret everyone between Judy Garland and Led Zeppelin, Nina Simone and MC5, Edith Piaf and Bad Brains, Nusrat Fatah Ali Khan and Soundgarden. For Buckley, it only scratched the surface. 

At the outset of the film Buckley utters, " I want to do things I've never heard of." But as Wasser once told him, 'I have to tell you something about me. I'm not gonna last that long.' When asked in an undated interview where he saw himself in 10 years, Buckley paused and replied, "I'll be a void."

In that sense, perhaps it was fitting that Buckley called the people who meant the most to him in the final weeks of his life. His mother still tears up when she plays his last voicemail to her.

Following the film, the audience was treated to video of Buckley performing solo at the Middle East here in Cambridge on February 19, 1994, shortly before the release of Grace. The set included "Eternal Life", "Last Goodbye", the folk standard "Dink's Song" and "Lover, You Should Have Come Over".

The final song was shot from the point of view of the largely white, male crowd which might have been more accustomed to Nirvana, Stone Temple Pilots or Pearl Jam. But it was clear this audience was moved by Buckley's voice and guitar playing. They found their way to be in tune with Buckley's grace.

Jeff Buckley may have said his last goodbye nearly 30 years ago, but the life he sang about is eternal.