JEFF BUCKLEY

Joan Wasser aka Joan as Police Woman: 

“Jeff was born today 54 years ago and this is what selfies looked like 25 years ago. No cell phones. An actual camera. 2nd Avenue. I needed to get us both in the frame without knowing if I had or not until the film was developed. I miss him every single day and am grateful every one of those days that I got to spend the time with him I did. Live now. It’s so much more fun than living in the past or the future. I’ve tried both and neither work. I’m going to keep living now until I’m no longer living. It’s how I witnessed Jeff live. It’s worth it. 💚 Sending love out to this beautiful and delicate world.” 17th November 1966

Did I know? Had I forgotten that Joan was 'Joan as Police Woman' and had a relationship with Jeff Buckley? That he was involved with her and seemed to have asked her to marry him at the time of his death at 30. I like both and Jeff's death knocked us all sideways and transformed us in some kind of collective shock as we had been excited by such a debut in 'Grace' . . . . .that he had produced quite difficult work just post that astonishing first album is a given to me and that then he should have perished by drowning in the Mississippi River that sounds so dark and foreboding, exotic and on the banks of the home of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain and people drifting on the gambling riverboats which is what sucked Jeff to his death. It all seemed so alien to us here in a continent of European eccentricity, British oddness and less so somehow, than such a mythic place. That he should slip away by the currents of a river of such power and mystique seemed somehow so cruelly unfair and so distressing to those who were so expectant of his early promise. Joan I think comes into that somehow American oddness, its peculiarity  . . . its otherness. I first registered her as 'Joan as Police Woman' of course and thought at the time now THAT is the strangest title for a singer, are they a band? What IS going on? . . . . . I know something of what is going on now and admire the plain fact that she can sing and write and reinvent herself  . . . if she chooses

Jeff here . . . .

Joan As Police Woman

'Grace' . . . . . live on The BBC 'The Late Show' - N.B. if you listen to just one thing today, make it this live performance of Jeff at his very zenith . . . . .  

Joan's Holy City . . . . 

Intriguingly enough (well for me) Floppy Boot Stomp have posted a set from Jeff's dad, the legendary Tim Buckley, the other day and I found both of those things at the same time . . . 

Tim Buckley - Happy Mad [plus Peel Session bonus] - Floppy Boot Stomp

Though it seemed Jeff had conflicting ambivalent feelings about his dad and understandably so (he was brought up Scott 'Scottie' Moorhead and self described his upbringing as 'rootless trailer trash' he only met his father once at the age of eight and only later discovered his true name when faced with his birth certificate and changed his name back while his family continued to call him 'Scottie') it seemed apposite here to make the connection . . . .both lost to us for very differing reasons both are terrifying losses of the truest of creative forces in both father and son