"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 realised 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. 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. 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. 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."

Jeff Buckley Music See all quotes by Jeff Buckley →

quotekg

React to this quote

More by Jeff Buckley

“There's an undercurrent to his music. There's something you can't pinpoint, like the best of films or the best of art, there's something going on underneath, and there's a truth there, and I find his stuff absolutely haunting. It's just...it's under my skin.”

“We were talking earlier about lyrics and beautiful lyrics. That particular period that we've been dwelling upon this evening, partly, and in fact definitely, was a time for prolific writing. Recently, not too long ago, we lost one of the better, most beautiful, caucasian singers, Jeff Buckley, sadly, way, way out to lose such a talent and such a heart.”

“Jeff is one of my favorite musicians and singers of all time. Never have I seen such infinite musical potential in anyone. It's just gone. It's chilling how much it hurts.”

“Never heard such a range, and such a purity. When he would place one note next to the other, you could actually see its kind of roundness.”

“Everything I ever projected to be, it was—even the stinky, ratty, vomity part of it. Everybody has to do the subway. Everybody has to smell the same smells. And people get mad all the time. When people don’t like something, like ‘Get out of my way you blah, blah, blah.’ But it’s like, ‘How ya doing? Let’s do lunch! I love you!’”

“said I was stealing from the black man, and I was failing at it whereas was succeeding. So fuck 'em.”

Resonant Thoughts

"In Switzerland, there’s now this semi-urbanism; architecture that’s neither good nor bad, neither urban nor rural, and yet well-connected to the public transport network; where there’s always somethin…"

— Jacques Herzog

Sports1950

#nature

"Because the peculiarity of man is that his machinery for reaction on external things has involved an imaginative transcript of these things, which is preserved and suspended in his fancy; and the inte…"

— George Santayana

Literature1863–1952

#happiness

"there’s just something in my DNA, where I put on a wig and I just turn into these bizarre humans. I do weirdly find it quite fun, playing these offbeat, very disconnected people, who have no sense of …"

— Nicholas Hoult

Entertainment1989

#Human Nature

"Dante has not deigned to take his inspiration from any other. He has wished to be himself, himself alone; in a word, to create. He has occupied a vast space, and has filled it with the superiority of …"

— Napoleon I of France

Politics1769–1821

#love