When the musician Jeff Buckley died at the age of 30 on May 29, 1997 — just three years after 27, the cursed age that most prematurely deceased rock stars check out at — he left behind one album, in the form of Grace, that was to become one of the most admired, even beloved, records of the late 20th century. Everyone from Bob Dylan and David Bowie to Brad Pitt and, of all unlikely people, Morrissey have lined up to eulogize both the record and Buckley himself, who has, like so many dead musicians before and after, been preserved in reputational aspic by dint of expiring long before his due date.
Somehow, it seems hard to imagine a 57-year-old Jeff Buckley. His father Tim made it to a mere 28, too. Clearly, the Buckley men were destined to burn bright and then disappear rather than fade away into obscurity. Yet while Tim died of that most passé of decadent binges, a heroin and morphine overdose, Jeff’s end was inimitable. Apparently overcome by a Dionysian urge to perform, he threw himself into the Mississippi, fully clothed, singing Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” and drowned after being swept under the wake of a passing tugboat. No trace of alcohol or drugs was found in the autopsy. He had been spending the previous year trying and largely failing to record his sophomore album My Sweetheart the Drunk, but he was a committed professional who took his work seriously, which meant that rumors of suicide have largely been dismissed by those around him, not least his mother and executor Mary Guibert.
The difficulty that Buckley faced was in producing a second LP that would have been superior to Grace. Judging by the collection of offcuts and demos that were eventually released, Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk, it would not have been. The most engaging and successful song, albeit in unfinished form, was a cover of “Yard of Blonde Girls,” which was written by Audrey Clark and Lori Kramer about Buckley himself. The rest of the songs all have flashes of interest, demonstrating Buckley’s undeniable songwriting and vocal abilities, but he was right to believe that the album was not anywhere near finished or of releasable quality. It is possible that there may have been some alchemy wrought on it by Buckley and his producer, Television frontman Tom Verlaine, but it is more likely that it would have been received less favorably than its predecessor and its creator dismissed as a one-hit wonder.
But what a hit. Grace’s iconic cover — of the handsome, brooding Buckley, microphone clasped in one hand with Byronic conviction — would go on to sell millions of copies to anguished young men and admiring young women alike. It has adorned a thousand dorm rooms as a poster and, along with a few other albums of its time (OK Computer, Nevermind, and maybe Dookie), became shorthand for cerebral yet accessible rock music. It would have been loosely described as “indie,” but there was, in truth, nothing independent about it whatsoever. It was released by the Sony-owned Columbia Records, an unrepentantly profit-driven behemoth, which hoped Buckley’s photogenic qualities and octave-spanning voice, to say nothing of memories of his famous father, would make them a huge amount of money.
They were, initially, disappointed. When Grace was released on Aug. 23, 1994, it reached a miserable 149 on the Billboard charts, and although Entertainment Weekly later rated it as one of the 10 best albums of the year, it was far more rapturously received in Britain than it was in Buckley’s home country. It isn’t hard to see why. Not only did the album feature Buckley singing Benjamin Britten’s arrangement of Corpus Christi Carol, beautifully, but slightly self-consciously, but its musical influences and style were far closer to such British artists as Radiohead and Led Zeppelin than they were to the grunge of Nirvana or the big stadium rock of Guns N’ Roses. As for the grim nihilism of Nine Inch Nails, then slouching into vogue, forget it. Grace was not an album concerned with saying how awful the world was or encouraging the alienated youth of the day to disrespect their parents and adorn themselves with heavy eyeshadow. Instead, it was about such old-fashioned things as … wait, what is it about?
For an album that holds such iconic stature among so many, it is both a shock and a surprise to revisit Grace and realize that Buckley’s undeniably beautiful and octave-vanquishing voice aside, the songwriting — or, at least, the seven original songs featured on the album — is accomplished and striking without boasting the true brilliance that one might expect. “Lover, You Should’ve Come Over” is the closest that Grace comes to the truly sublime, perhaps because it is the sole time on the album that Buckley sounds as if he genuinely means what he is singing. As for the rest, “Last Goodbye” has the feeling of a lightly atmospheric song that might have been written to accompany a Tom Cruise film (no wonder that it eventually did, in the form of Vanilla Sky), and “Eternal Life” is so transparent a Led Zeppelin homage, or rip-off, that it was just as well Page and Plant applauded the album. Many might simply have consulted their lawyers.
Even the much-vaunted cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” for me at least, can’t compare to John Cale’s somber, haunted version, although it undeniably improves on the synth-drenched original. Buckley undeniably has the vocal pyrotechnics, but it’s hard not to feel that it, like his cover of “Lilac Wine,” is an exercise in impressive technique rather than genuine feeling. All of which is to say that, while Grace remains a thoroughly enjoyable album to listen to, it is not truly the timeless masterpiece that its legions of fans have heralded it as.
Instead, Buckley’s untimely death has left his entire career dangling as a “what might have been.” With this perennially popular yet flawed record, his admirers have to console themselves with what was. Which, for many, will be quite enough.
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Alexander Larman is the author of, most recently, Power and Glory and is an editor at the Spectator World.