The British band Jeff Buckley could never be matched: “Nobody can beat that”
When talking about Jeff Buckley, it’s easy to get lost in the tragedy.
It’s easy to look at his discography and mourn everything that could have been and feel sad that when the artist died at the all-too-young age of 30, the world lost out on all the beauty he inevitably would have brought to it.
However, there’s a lighter way of looking at it. Not only did Buckley deliver one of the greatest albums ever made in the form of Grace, a truly stunning debut that has rightfully become a timeless classic. But with all the extras released from his archives, including live tracks, studio demos and Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk, his almost-done sophomore record, we get to form a thorough picture of both the artist and the man.
Despite being so young when he passed, Buckley left us with plenty to sink our teeth into as people still pore over his lyricism and get lost in interviews of him talking about anything from his process to his personal life. People are still hungry to know him as there is constantly talk of biopics based on his life, or new biographies released about either his life, or the complex connection between him and his father, Tim Buckley.
One of the most beautiful elements of it all is the way that Buckley’s releases allow us to know so much about his music taste. Beyond his own talent, he was just as much a fan as he was an artist, and he was never shy about sharing his opinions and favourites with the world.
In his own first bio, which he wrote himself, Buckley described himself as “the warped lovechild of Nina Simone and all four members of Led Zeppelin with the fertilised egg transplanted into the womb of [Edith] Piaf out of which he is borne and left on the street to be tortured by the Bad Brains.”
His influences were always clear, and as you shuffle on his Spotify, one comes up often: Morrissey.
Buckley covered a few Smiths songs, including ‘The Boy With A Thorn In His Side’ and, most notably, ‘I Know It’s Over’, where he took the already devastating song and made it even more so. Alongside the likes of Bob Dylan and Nina Simone, who he also covered often, Buckley’s love for The Smiths as one of his all-time favourite artists was clear.
To him, they were the best. “The Smiths hasn’t been equaled. That goes for the composition of the songs, the lyrics, and the performance,” he said once, putting the Manchester band on a whole higher level. They were never matched in his eyes as he continued, “What Johnny Marr and he [Morrissey] did was fabulous, nobody can beat that.
“If I’d ever start a rock band, I’d want to approximate that level,” he said, and from the sound of Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk, it seemed that around the time of his death, Buckley was going all in on the rock band sound, taking his love for Morrissey and running with it in an attempt to match up.
