“Drown my name”: The tragic foreshadowing in Jeff Buckley’s ‘Grace’
“This is a song about not feeling so bad about your own mortality when you have true love,” Jeff Buckley says as he begins ‘Grace’, captured on the beautiful live album from Sin-é. Recorded in 1993, the musician had just begun work on the album that would make his name, titled after the track. The song led him to his career and to his legacy. But as he died four years later, there’s a strange feeling that it also seemed to lead him to his death.
There are lyrical coincidences and prophesies embedded within the annals of rock history that stack beyond imaginable heights. There’s the weird moment on ‘Up From The Skies’ where Jimi Hendrix seems to predict climate change long before the topic or even that phrase was used. There are a gathering of haunting incidents where John Lennon seemed to almost tempt fate surrounding his death, whispering “shoot me” in ‘Come Together’ or naming an album Revolver. There are equally as many tragedies in music as an art form – where far too many talents have been taken too young. In the case of Jeff Buckley, both occur at once.
Buckley is one of those stars who lived a devastatingly short life. When he died at the age of 30, he was only just getting started. His debut album, Grace, rightfully made him a star as he unleashed his incredible lyricism and heart-shattering voice into the world. The common listener would know him best for his cover of ‘Hallelujah’, granted personal permission to record the track from Cohen himself after performing it at his father Tim Buckley’s funeral. Even in that raw, emotional early form, Cohen seemed to bow to the take, claiming it to be his favourite version of the song.
But if ‘Hallelujah’ sets the bar high for the album, the rest of Grace more than delivers. It’s devastating in places, raging in others. It was the birth of a bright new talent, but not long after that light went out. The beauty of the LP is there for all to behold, but there are a number of lyrics in the title track that can make your blood run cold.
“Well it’s my time coming, I’m not afraid, afraid to die / My fading voice sings of love / But she cries to the clicking of time, oh, time,” Buckley sings on the title track. It’s haunting now, strangely prophetic of his ending as his death loomed, swooping in the right as he was working on new music. It’s not unusual for an artist to sing about death, especially not one as intrinsically connected with his emotions as Buckley — after all, his father also passed tragically young.
But the song’s oracular nature goes deeper than simply musing on inevitable death. “And I feel them drown my name,” he wails in the bridge, the music all crescendoing as Buckley seems to predict the very nature of his death. The singer sadly lost his life after he jumped in a river running near his studio. With heavy boots and an inability to beat the waterway’s current, Buckley’s life was simply washed away, his talent burning bright enough to provide an afterglow of classic songs.
Buckley accidentally drowned in 1997 while working on new material. He was in love with Joan Wasser, also known as Joan as Police Woman, and by all accounts, he was happy, fulfilled and joyous in his life. Harking back to that 1993 introduction, perhaps Buckley had hit that place of not feeling quite so scared of his death right as he met it.
