TREON031 |
Since his desperately early death in May 1997, there's been an inevitable mythologising about the life and music of Jeff Buckley. Perhaps it's not surprising that in the posthumous rush to acknowledge his genius, memories have been clouded or, retrospectively,
given a silver lining.
The quiet, uncertain foundations of his reputation were laid on a solo tour of Europe three years earlier,
in March 1994 - and, in particular, during one day. On the 18th March, Buckley was scheduled for a photo shoot (with Kevin Westenberg), an appearance on BBC GLR and his first proper London concert, at a folk club called Bunjies. In 'The Grace of Jeff Buckley', those who were there speak for the first time about the man and his music: Buckley's American manager Dave Lory, his UK tour manager Steve Abbott, booking agent Emma Banks and photographer Kevin Westenberg share intimate memories that have so far not featured in the Buckley biography.
And the programme also includes rare archive: the GLR radio session that has not been heard since that live broadcast in 1994 - including an astonishing version of 'Grace' - and, exclusively, a private interview that Buckley recorded on the eve of this tour but decided not to release.
Together, these glimpses offer a portrait of a young man whose voice and musicianship, as well as his irresistible charisma and the trauma of his early death, touched millions.
Produced by Alan Hall.
A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4
Notes:
The download includes the documentary plus the two complete GLR session tracks and an interview thought to be a promo to accompany Sin-é, but was never released. The last two tracks are from the Mark Radcliffe session. I remastered these two tracks originally for the "Asking To Stay" bootleg but didn't use them so I thought I would make them available here.
Tracklist:
01 - The Grace Of Jeff Buckley (Documentary)
02 - Grace (GLR Radio Session 17.03.94)
03 - Lover, You Should've Come Over (GLR Radio Session 17.03.94)
04 - Interview (Unreleased Promo)
05 - Grace (Mark Radcliffe Session 22.08.94)
06 - So Real (Mark Radcliffe Session 22.08.94)
Hi there, stumbled on your blog via a Jeff Buckley vid on you tube of yours and i'm glad i did. Love your passion for all things Buckley - I have most of the stuff that you have on here aside from the Live At The Sony Music Conference '93 find and the Wdet Session as i used to be a big trader a few years back now - got pretty much all of what can be found of what's surfaced of JB. Just wanted to give you a little more info of the interview track included here - I managed to acquire a duplicate of an original tape - It was recorded on the 15th Feb '94 at the Holiday Inn, Syracuse, NY and was given away as a cassette freebie at Jeff's solo UK shows early '94 > http://flowersintime.org/show.php?gigid=72
ReplyDeleteRegards x
Thank you, I'm glad you are enjoying the blog. A lot of what I post from Jeff I have attempted to "Remaster" in some way or another so even if you do already have the it might be worth downloading them anyway just to hear my clean up efforts. Thank you for the info on the interview.
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