Jeff Buckley - Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk

Pitchfork 80

Jeff Buckley would be 50 years old this year, and it’s hard not to think about what he’d be up to right now. As an adopted son of New York City’s downtown art scene in the 1990s, he could be wailing truth to power, like Patti Smith. As someone who hated how the early internet infringed on his privacy, he could have turned into an elusive icon, like Fiona Apple. A virtuoso guitarist with perfect pitch and a keen ear for improvisation, he may have leaned into Los Angeles’ embrace of modern jazz, jamming with Thundercat and Kamasi Washington. As a punk purist who was drawn to severe sounds and radical ideas toward the end of his life, maybe he would have turned into an anti-establishment musical figurehead, like Steve Albini. He could have coupled electronics with progressive politics and the voice of a fallen angel, like ANOHNI. Or, as an acolyte of George Carlin and David Letterman who was known for his outlandishly comical stage banter, maybe he would have given up music altogether and tried his luck at biting comedy. Would he have been excited by the way his version of “Hallelujah” became such a ubiquitous hymn, or repulsed by its overuse? Then again, without his tragic story as ballast, would “Hallelujah” have ever seen a resurgence at all?

Such what-ifs are inevitable when an artist dies too soon, but fruitless daydreaming is especially tantalizing when it comes to Buckley. His talents were so limitless, his range so vast, and his explorations of them so inchoate. In his 30 years, he lived a head-spinning number of musical lives, as chronicled in David Browne’s essential biography, Dream Brother. Growing up in Orange County in the ’70s, Buckley was obsessed with the prog theatrics of Styx, Yes, and Genesis. In his early days as a professional musician, he played with reggae and hair metal bands. During that time, he paid the bills as a guitarist and songwriter for hire, creating hacky tracks for a variety of L.A. up-and-comers, from R&B crooners to precious singer-songwriters. He made a proper name for himself in tiny Manhattan clubs through ecstatic solo covers of everyone from Nina Simone to Van Morrison to Pakistani qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Such fluidity would be unique in any era, but especially in the early ’90s, when the internet had yet to fully flatten barriers between styles, Buckley’s musical interests were freakishly broad. At a 1993 show, he mimicked Khan’s chanting vocals over the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” riff as a delightfully bemused audience tried to take it all in. Following the impromptu mashup, he quipped: “I’m a ridiculous person.”

This ridiculousness miraculously came together on 1994’s Grace, an album that combined psychedelia, Led Zeppelin-style hard rock, shimmering pop, torch balladry, and a hymn originally written in the 16th century. Released in the middle of grunge mania, it was an ethereal tonic. Grace was not an instant hit by any means—the record sold 2,000 copies in its opening week and only went platinum at the beginning of this year. But Buckley’s label, the Sony-owned Columbia, home to legends like Dylan and Springsteen, put a ton of money into the project nonetheless, sending the singer around the globe with his band on tour to help kick off what they hoped to be a decades-long career. Though he was signed to a major label, Buckley was forever mindful of upholding the sacredness of his music and avoiding the evils of commercialism—necessary objectives at a time when alternative culture was being streamlined by corporations at a breakneck pace. His artsier tendencies sometimes clashed with Columbia’s bottom line, but in general he was given the room—and cash—to make his own choices, with the label figuring they’d eventually recoup on their investment later on.

Buckley was in a privileged position, and he undoubtedly enjoyed the runway he was being offered, but being associated with a global conglomerate weighed on him. He was a punk at heart, after all. He admired the way Kurt Cobain was able to navigate the industry before he killed himself, and hung a photo of the Nirvana frontman in his bus while touring behind Grace. And there was another artist whose battles with commerce were always in the back of Buckley’s mind: his father Tim. Buckley barely knew his dad, but he was well aware of Tim’s legacy as a risk-taking singer-songwriter in the ’60s and ’70s who was chewed up by the business before he died of a heroin overdose in 1975 at age 28. The son was adamant not to follow his father’s path, going so far as to poke fun at such tragic rock‘n’roll mythologies onstage. In this way, Buckley wanted his art to capture all the romantic wonders of ’60s pop while maintaining the knowing cynicism of his own era—a tough balance even without a genealogy filled with alcoholism, mental instability, and dire misfortune.

So under increased pressure from his label, Buckley began nursing a contrarian streak and attempted to trade in Grace’s gorgeous softness for something spikier and confrontational with his second album. There were troubles from the start. The initial rehearsal sessions with his band at the end of 1995 didn’t go anywhere. Soon after, his drummer quit. Columbia started throwing around potential producers to try to get the album on track, radio-friendly names like Butch Vig, Brendan O’Brien, Steve Lillywhite, or even Brian Eno. Buckley had a different idea: erstwhile Television frontman Tom Verlaine. This was years before the Strokes would put Verlaine’s band—and its scuzzy postpunk lineage—back in the spotlight, and the producer was about as far as you could get from a typical hitmaker. Which is exactly what Buckley wanted.

In the summer of 1996, Buckley and his band—including an inexperienced new drummer—recorded their first session with Verlaine in New York. Nobody was happy with the results and, that October, Buckley wrote in his journal: “I’m going to lay off the band.” Instead, he replaced one new drummer with another and continued to work on his in-progress songs, trying to nail down the more lo-fi sound in his head, something like the blunt force of contemporary underground acts such as the Grifters, Polvo, and the Jesus Lizard. He was over the pristine untouchability of “Hallelujah.” Feeling boxed in by Manhattan, Buckley decided to follow his friends in the Grifters to Memphis, where he regrouped with his band and Verlaine for another recording session in February 1997. Once again, the experience didn’t live up to Buckley’s high standards, as he was constantly rearranging songs and tweaking lyrics in search of the right sound and feel. He was a perfectionist with an encyclopedic knowledge of rock history and a masterful musical talent; he had so many choices, and whereas that dexterity once served as a stunning resume, it was now stymying him.

After the February session, Buckley realized Verlaine was not the man to bring his album to fruition, and it was decided that Grace producer Andy Wallace would sit in the control booth when the time was right. The band went back to New York, and Buckley stayed in Memphis, in an empty shotgun shack on a nondescript block with only the house’s jumping fleas to keep him company. He continued writing, taping ideas onto his four-track recorder. Away from the stress of New York, he loosened up, playing weekly gigs at a dive bar to small crowds. His musical brain started to flow and, by the spring, he felt like he had finally figured out what his album should be. He sent demo tapes to each of the three members of his band, summoning them down to Memphis once again on May 29, 1997. But around the same time they were touching down at the airport, Buckley decided to take a spontaneous dip into the nearby Wolf River in black boots and an “Altamont” T-shirt, singing Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” while doing the backstroke. Then a barge glided by. Its current tugged Buckley underneath the water. He was gone.

Following his death, Columbia intended to cull a 10-track album from the two Verlaine sessions and release it under Buckley’s working title, My Sweetheart the Drunk, in late 1997. His mother, who took charge of her son’s estate, nixed that plan, and instead compiled a two-disc set featuring tracks from the Verlaine sessions as well as some of the four-track experiments Buckley was compiling in his small house. Either way, there’s no getting around the fact that Buckley did not want any of the recordings on Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk to be heard. Even so, it’s a fascinating document, one that lifts the lid on a prodigy’s creative process and lets us peer into an erratic mind that could be too mercurial for its own good.

From the first few seconds, it’s clear that this is not Grace 2. Opener “Sky Is a Landfill” is the closest Buckley ever came to agitprop, a denunciation of capitalist and media systems that now reads prophetic, if a bit overwritten. “Turn your head away from the screen, oh people,” he sings, “it will tell you nothing more.” Considering the proliferation of smartphones in the last 20 years—and the untruths and addictions that have come with them—it’s easy to see the warning as wisdom. Meanwhile, the music is stark and fuzzed out, like a post-hardcore version of the Smashing Pumpkins. Its angst has not aged terribly well, though, as with everything on this document, it definitely allows for future greatness—what if he changed that one wordy line, or smoothed out that other transition? Listening to an incomplete work like Sketches, it’s natural for anyone to turn into a music critic, picking at things that could be improved. And it’s reasonable to think Buckley was doing the same exact thing in Memphis.

Though he was aiming for something gritty with the new music, the general rule with Sketches goes: The less distorted the song, the better it holds up. Buckley’s voice, which could go from divinely supple to shockingly overwrought, just sounds better when it’s not trying to blow the room out. Just because he could sing anything doesn’t mean he should sing anything. “Yard of Blonde Girls,” written by a few of Buckley’s friends, is a grungy trifle that has him trying out his best Alice in Chains impression. The singer originally hid the song from Columbia thinking they might glom onto it as a single, and his reservations are founded; unlike Buckley’s best, “Yard of Blonde Girls” sounds carbon-dated to the mid-’90s. “Nightmares by the Sea” fares better, its foreboding atmosphere and quicksilver arrangement finding a midpoint between Grace’s flowering darkness and something more sinister—twist your ear just right and you can almost hear St. Vincent coming up with something similar now.

And like many tracks on Sketches, “Nightmares” can be hard to hear, filled with eerie lines like, “I’ve loved so many times and I’ve drowned them all.” But then, Buckley always used water imagery in his songs. It was an elemental fear for him, something he could not wrap his hands around. So instead of enacting some sort of death wish by wading into the Wolf River—as some have suggested—he could have been finally overcoming a phobia. As for these songs’ scenes of death, that was typical for Buckley as well. As in any important drama, the stakes were always high in Jeff Buckley songs—he fashioned himself a poet, a seer, a gothic diva. Music was his life, so echoes of death were inevitable. He was always running away from them.

“My opinion was that the guy was much better without the band,” Verlaine has said of Buckley, and Sketches bears this theory out. The most beautiful moments occur when Buckley lets himself be beautiful, something he was loathe to do after his high cheekbones, intense stare, and luscious vocals turned him into alt idol following the release of Grace. But these songs aren’t mere retreads—they’re more creepy than consoling. “Morning Theft,” “Opened Once,” and “Jewel Box” are all love songs, but they flutter, never quite landing on a resolution. They are lyrically surreal, dancing around a romantic elusiveness that fuels so much great songwriting. “New Year’s Prayer” is similarly low-key, a mantra between light and dark inspired by Buckley’s infatuation with Sufi devotional music, while “You and I” comes off like an unsettling plea from a damp forest in the middle of the night.

The song hints at yet another future for Buckley: as a Scott Walker-type ghostly menace throwing shadows around his unearthly voice forevermore. Perhaps the most surprising song on the album is “Everybody Here Wants You,” a straight-up R&B number that could sit comfortably aside hits by the era’s neo-soul stars like Maxwell and Erykah Badu. Buckley wasn’t happy with the song, thinking it was too much of a pastiche. He’s probably right, but it’s wild to think that he could toss off such genre-tourist brilliance at will.

The four-track demos, by nature, are frustratingly unfinished, and they require a special sort of imaginative listening to hear what could have been. With its bittersweet resignation and one of the better hooks Buckley ever put to tape, “I Know We Could Be So Happy Baby (If We Wanted to Be)” has traces of a rock radio hit; “Murder Suicide Meteor Slave,” with its careening structure, ugly discordance, and self-lacerating lyrics, barely has traces of a song. One of the most intriguing demos, “Gunshot Glitter,” was wrongly turned into a bonus cut but is worth seeking out—riding a steady DIY bass thump, it hints at flamboyant dance rock decadence, as Buckley playfully deems himself a “paranoia politician diva.” The song had the potential to encapsulate all sides of Buckley’s persona—the weirdo, the hopeless lover, the charming clown—into something that could pump both hearts and bodies. It hurts to know we’ll never hear it as it was supposed to be heard.

Even if all had gone according to plan, and the finished My Sweetheart the Drunk was released at the end of 1997, it would have entered a shifting pop landscape. By then, the aggressive male wing of guitar rock was migrating from grunge to nu metal. Teen pop was on the rise, with Backstreet Boys and Spice Girls CDs flying out of chain stores while *NSYNC and Britney were still on the horizon. Hip-hop and electronic were ascendant as well, making the idea of a band of white guys with guitars seem increasingly quaint. There was an exception: Radiohead, whose frontman Thom Yorke counted Buckley as a major inspiration on his vocal style, released OK Computer the week before the singer’s death. That album pinpointed a lot of the anxiety and doom that Buckley was trying to put forward with his own music, but in a way that was epic and widescreen instead of insular and austere—it would have provided some tough competition in the howling-falsetto sweepstakes. Coldplay, perhaps Buckley’s most successful progeny, didn’t arrive until a few years later, essentially unspooling the singer’s complications for mass consumption. But, given his wariness of the mainstream and his quest to subvert expectation at every turn, it seems safe to say that Jeff would’ve hated Coldplay.

Sketches ends with a solo performance of the standard “Satisfied Mind” that Buckley sang on the radio in 1992. It’s a song about maintaining a richness of spirit that everyone from Ella Fitzgerald to Bob Dylan to Mahalia Jackson has sung over the years, and he does it justice. “When it comes my time,” he sings, “I’ll leave this old world with a satisfied mind.” But in the context of this release—and the tragedy intertwined with it—the conclusion is too easy, too pat. By most accounts, Buckley’s mind was anything but satisfied when he passed. In the days before his death, friends say he was acting strangely, talking in code, making random phone calls to people from his past. He was also coming to grips with manic-depressive tendencies. All this doesn’t necessarily mean he wanted to die, but it does seem to indicate he was dealing with some serious issues. The volatile nature of Sketches’ four-track demos bear this out too. Plus, satisfaction was never this artist’s goal. He wanted to disrupt, even if that meant going against his most obvious gifts. Dissatisfaction was something Jeff Buckley had to grapple with for much of his life. It’s where he left us.