It’s never over: Jeff Buckley – film review

Genre: Documentary

Director: Amy Berg

Monday afternoon. Packed screening. Some of the crowd old enough to remember the 1990s. Others, clearly, children of the naughties. Mostly white, a few black, a few south Asians. All sitting in reverent silence for the one hour 46 minute long film.

At various points during the film, the man next to me sighed. A deep exhalation of sadness and reflections on what might have been.

It was one of the most moving cinema experiences I’ve had – like being at a concert, surrounded by people who feel the same way about the artist on stage as you do. You know that they, too, know all the lyrics, know the story and that in whichever direction you turn, you’ll be able to talk to a stranger and know them like your best friend because of that artist or band on the stage. 

It was fitting, perhaps, that before the film started, one of the trailers was for Baz Luhrmann‘s new film EPIC: Elvis Presley In Concert. Another icon for whom fans still sit in awed silence.

Not a bad response to a documentary about a man who only released one completed studio album.

I’d heard the name Jeff Buckley.  It was usually said in reverent tones, with that slight inflection in the voice that suggested some terrible tragedy. 

Mostly, I’d heard it said that his version of Leonard Cohen‘s hallelujah was arguably the greatest cover of any song ever. 

But I wasn’t familiar with his music or his story. I didn’t even know if he was still alive.

So, I decided to find out what all the fuss was about. I searched YouTube for hallelujah by him. It’s a dark, moody, sepia tinted video. My first thought was that he was extremely good-looking and so young. For some reason I wasn’t expecting that.

Then, after tuning his guitar, he began to sing. I was mesmerised. I was transported to that magical somewhere that great music and an incredible voice can take you.

After that I began to do a little research and like many before me, I soon became fascinated with finding out more about Jeffrey Scott Buckley, who I discovered, had died in 1997. He drowned in the Mississippi River, while going for an evening swim, fully clothed and in his boots. 

There was clearly a story there but even without it there was something so compelling about this young man that I wanted to know more. 

What I discovered was a phenomenal, unearthly, heart grabbing voice, awe inspiring guitar playing and a very funny man who appeared to have been a truly unique presence in the lives of those around him. 

I also discovered that his fans included -just look at this roll-call – : David Bowie, Paul McCartney, Radiohead, Adele, John Legend, Chris Cornell, Bob Dylan, Lana Del Rey, Suede, Brad Pitt, Boy George, Jennifer Aniston, U2, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin, Bon Jovi, Guy Pearce, Alanis Morisette, Jacob Elordi, and many more!

I saw that, having recorded just one studio album, the magnificent Grace and an EP, he was listed high up in the top 100 greatest rock vocalists of all time.

His short performance at Glastonbury is also listed in the all-time greatest top 50 performances there.

Hollywood has been trying to make a biopic about him for decades, with any number of Oscar-winning actors keen to play him and there are numerous books and documentaries about his short life.

Brad Pitt admitted that he was obsessed with the guy. . The film is executive produced by him. At one point Pitt wanted to star in a biopic about the singer. To his great disappointment, it is said, the did not come to fruition due to a difference in the vision for it between him and Jeff‘s mother.
It’s clear that there are many, many more people who are equally passionate about this man who burned so brightly but for such a short time. 

Buckley was also a great champion of Pakistani qawwali legend Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. I was astonished, in my search for his music, to find a live rendition by him of a Nusrat classic, sung in Urdu. So, this young American, not only took on a song by a master (a bit like deciding to do a cover of Pavarotti) but he performed it in a language he didn’t know, in front of a demanding hipster audience. How could you not want to know more about an artist like this?

Director Amy Berg provides the most intimate documentary, to date, of the man and the musician. 

Anchored by three important women in his life, his mother Mary Guibert, who gave up her dreams of becoming an actress or concert pianist to raise Jeff, after his father, singer Tim Buckley, left her when she was 5 months pregnant, Rebecca Moore, the girlfriend who inspired several of the songs on Grace and musician Joan Wasser, with whom he found love after a period of being emotionally lost, the film gives as complete a picture of the person and his music as its possible with someone who was notoriously hard to pin down.
Other contributors include his band mates, Michael Tighe, Matt Johnson and Parker Kindred, as well as executives from his label Columbia, plus footage of friends such as Chris Cornell from Soundgarden and Audioslave. There are photos of him meeting Paul McCartney, who was known for rarely attending concerts by other artists but who made an exception for Jeff, alongside his then wife, Linda McCartney, who had been friends with Jeff’s father. An interesting aside, which is not in the film, Jeff was also friends with McCartney‘s daughter, designer Stella McCartney.
Jeff’s friend, musician, Ben Harper, recalls an amusing occasionwhen Jeff got to see his idols Robert Plant and Jimmy Page play at a festival in Europe. He climbed the scaffolding around the stage and hung from it during the show so that the music reverberated throughout his body, just as a child he had lain across the speakers of his stepfather‘s stereo while it was blasting out Led Zeppelin.

Amy Berg brings the Buckleys, father and son, together in poignant footage overlaps of their respective lives and careers, without judgment. It’s also good to hear Jeff’s narration of some aspects of the troubled relationship he had with a man he only really spent a week with but with whom he was constantly compared and asked about.

Perhaps the most poignant quote in the film comes from Michael Tighe who calls  Jeff one of the greatest vocalist of all time, before sadly noting “I didn’t know how dope he was until after his death.”
“ It was a classic case of youth being wasted on the young, ” he adds.

Amy Berg has made a deeply moving  film of an artist who was a once in a generation talent. As a Columbia executive says, he was meant to join the pan of names like his idols, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Bruce Springsteen.
The last few minutes of the film are especially hauntingly beautiful and touching. I could have happily watched another hour and 46 minutes.

I highly recommend this film whether you know of Jeff Buckley or not.