How did Jeff Buckley’s posthumous album come to be?
Following the extensive touring he undertook to promote his 1994 debut album, Grace, Jeff Buckley decided to pivot, yearning for the days when he could bask in anonymity and simply play his music to whoever happened to listen.
Towards the end of 1996, he decided to embark on what he called a “phantom solo tour” of cafés in the northeast United States, performing under numerous aliases that would allow him to perform without outside pressures. Suddenly, Buckley turned into the Crackrobats, Possessed by Elves, A Puppet Show Named Julio and numerous other acts.
“There was a time in my life not too long ago when I could show up in a café and simply do what I do, make music, learn from performing my music, explore what it means to me, i.e., have fun while I irritate and/or entertain an audience who don’t know me or what I am about,” Buckley explained, in a note posted to his website. “In this situation I have that precious and irreplaceable luxury of failure, of risk, of surrender. I worked very hard to get this kind of thing together, this work forum. I loved it and then I missed it when it disappeared. All I am doing is reclaiming it.”
During this period, Buckley began writing for a new project, adopting the working title My Sweetheart the Drunk, taken from a poem he wrote titled “Sexpot Despair”. He recruited Tom Verlaine of Television to produce the record, after crossing paths with the legendary musician while the two made appearances on Patti Smith’s 1996 album, Gone Again. Three sessions took place between Manhattan and Memphis, Tennessee, the latter being where Buckley had relocated in 1997.
Renting a shotgun house in Memphis, Buckley found a second home at Barristers’, a bar in the city’s downtown area, where he played a number of shows testing out new material for live audiences. After Verlaine and his band joined him in Memphis for another recording session, however, Buckley was displeased with the results and contacted Grace’s producer, Andy Wallace, to replace Verlaine and re-record the material.
In preparation for working with Wallace, Buckley produced demos on his personal 4-track recorder, stopping his band from joining him in Memphis while he strived for perfection. They were set to finally return for rehearsals and recording on May 29th, the tragic night that Buckley drowned in the Wolf River Harbor, at just 30 years old. The hole that Buckley’s passing left in the music industry and the world remains.
Buckley’s estate transferred to his mother, Mary Guibert, after his passing. She soon learned that Sony intended to release Buckley’s sessions with Verlaine, and was in the process of mixing and mastering them despite Buckley’s wishes for them to remain unreleased. Guibert and Buckley’s band fought against Sony’s efforts, but were countered by the fact that Sony had not made back its investment in Buckley’s record deal. Guibert, who had sent a cease-and-desist letter to the label, would only allow the release of material that was “worth using”, compromising on a double album featuring Verlaine’s session on one side and Buckley’s demos on the other.
Guibert insisted that no alterations were to be made to the demos. “This is what you would do with his remains – put him in an Armani suit and some shiny shoes and comb his hair and put lipstick on him or something,” she recalled telling Sony, as quoted by Eamonn Forde in his 2021 book, Leaving the Building: The Lucrative Afterlife of Music Estates.
Adding, “That’s not who he is. These are his true remains – just as they are. Just treat them as if they were his true remains. If this was his body here and we were preparing it for his funeral, we would not put him in a suit. We would put him in a flower shirt and some black jeans and his Doc Martens and leave his hair all mussed up. And maybe a little mustard on his chin. We would not screw this stuff up by putting something out he would not approve of.”
Guibert worked alongside Buckley’s band, friend Michael Clouse and none other than Chris Cornell to get the album finished. Cornell and Buckley had formed a friendship, one that few people were aware of but was founded on a mutual respect for one another’s work. “Jeff hated name-dropping,” Guibert told NOW Magazine in 1998, “Which is why Chris’ involvement in the project has surprised some people. Few people knew they were friends.”
The resulting album was 1998’s Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk, named for its unfinished “sketches” of what would have been completed, had Buckley had the chance. Sketches houses a brilliant collection, from the sultry croon of ‘Everybody Here Wants You’ to the mysterious ‘Nightmares By the Sea’, to the up-tempo yearning of ‘Vancouver’ and the enticing chant that engulfs his ‘New Year’s Prayer’: “Fall in light… Feel no shame for what you are.” The compilation is truly boundless in its resonance.
While it is sincerely heartbreaking to think that many of these songs were not up to Buckley’s standards, in his mind, they are a glimpse into what could have been and possess a deeply personal sentiment that stands apart in its unpolished beauty.
