‘Dream of You and I’: the healing song that came to Jeff Buckley while asleep
Across Jeff Buckley‘s brief but impactful songbook, there are countless songs that hear the late singer-songwriter profess sentiments of love and grief, two themes that remained central to his artistry.
One song, in particular, is technically “unofficial”, recorded during some of Buckley’s earliest sessions for Columbia Records, before his only album, 1994’s Grace, would be produced. The song was released posthumously on the 2016 compilation album You and I: the titular ‘Dream of You and I’, an original which aptly came about, according to Buckley, in a dream.
“This is, uh, based on some music that I heard in a dream, that I saw in a dream,” he introduces on the extended version of the song that appears on the compilation album, “It’s going to be called ‘You and I’, ‘cause that’s what the people in the dream were saying.”
On an acoustic guitar, Buckley strums a simple yet poignant melody that builds upon itself, slowing with the repeated line, “You and I, you and I, you and I / All for you…” Buckley sings in a near-whisper, hushed in a way that mimics the dream. His guitars, too, echo the sole lines of the song, strumming in tandem to punctuate the three words of each line. The song is a personal favourite of this writer’s, across Buckley’s discography, as it communicates so much of his signature devotion, which is continually resonant across his work, in just two simple lines.
“It’s like that, I heard the people singing that in a dream,” Buckley explains on the recording, continuing, “It was a dream where I was in an auditorium at a college, and everybody was congregated [sic] and singing the same words.”
He describes a band playing on the auditorium stage, “Sorta spacey, Deadhead band… a bunch of grunge guys but kind of playing this other thing, not like what I’m playing here on guitar”. While he delves into the backstory, his guitar continues to strum in the background, never stopping; he plays as though he is trying to remember what he heard in his dream, capturing it before it fades away.
“I dreamed that the song was about this guy or, you know, the person in the song is singing to his lover, supposedly, that, y’know, he’s completely theirs,” Buckley continues, parsing through the remnants of the dream. “The lover has forbidden anybody to have contact with him, the lover has taken away his freedom, taken away his days and nights, taken away, y’know, his dreams… sent away his friends, forbidden him to get close to his parents, all that stuff.”
Buckley then remembers that the dream took place at an AIDS rally. “That song was about AIDS, or about something like that,” he explains, “so every time the refrain came around,” – to which Buckley then picks up momentum on the guitar – ”the people would say, ‘You and I, you and I, you and I,’ and they point to the sign that said, y’know, ‘AIDS’ with a circle with a slash through it. And they go, ‘All for you,’ and they point to the sign. So, that was the dream. I woke up with it.”
Steve Berkowitz, the A&R representative for Buckley’s label, Columbia, recalled this particular session to Uncut in 2016. “We had gotten to the point in the sessions of, ‘So, what else have you got?’ when I heard him singing, ‘You and I, you and I,’” he remembered.
“I said, ‘What is that, where did that come from?’ Click. Record. ‘Yeah, this was a dream…’ and he started telling the story about a gay couple. This was a kind of verboten subject in 1993, but not in Jeff’s world. There are people dying of AIDS all around us in the Village. That was ‘Dream of You and I’. It’s almost some kind of healing chant.”
Compelled by the tragedy that was surrounding him in New York, Buckley’s dream came to fruition through a mournful ballad. The song, as it stands, is enchanting, as is the thought of what Buckley could have turned his momentary dream into, had there been more time.
“I thought, ‘This is fantastic, this is going to be an opera,’ but of course, it’s just two minutes of his brain working!” Berkowitz enthused. “We kept thinking we would come back to it one day. We thought there would be many more days. We didn’t think they would get cut short. And he was never one for going backwards.”
Thankfully, Buckley’s initial memories of his dream were recorded on tape, a beautiful moment of spontaneity. While surely ‘Dream of You and I’ had the potential to grow into a larger reflection of his dream, the near-eight-minute recording that we have is a gift to have.
“Anyways, as long as you got that on tape,” Buckley concludes on the song, “I’ll remember that.”
