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Found sounds
The Jeff Buckley/Gary Lucas recordings
BY TED DROZDOWSKI

It’s a sad truth of rock and roll that the younger a star dies, the brighter he or she burns. Fans seem drawn to charismatic fallen artists like moths to the flames of a terrible car wreck. Doors’ frontman Jim Morrison is the premier example, but more recently that’s been the fate of Jeff Buckley, who has considerably more listeners now that he’s absent from the world.

The angel-voiced singer-guitarist was just 30 in 1997, when he drowned in the river waters of Memphis. During his life he released one EP, 1993’s solo Live at Sin-E, and the album Grace (both on Columbia), an overrated disc that pitted his flashing genius against hyperbolic production. His dark but uplifting songs, which thanks to his soaring vocal style often play out like gothic-gospel operettas, were better served by 2001’s double-CD Sketches (For My Sweetheart the Drunk) (Sony), a collection of home demos and spartan productions with Television guitarist Tom Verlaine, who had cut an album’s worth of tracks with Buckley.

Now, a new CD of demos and live recordings unveils what may have been the most creative period in Buckley’s career — the time when he wrote his signature numbers "Grace" and "Mojo Pin" and played a series of dates that have been spoken of as transcendent experiences by members of the small New York audiences that witnessed them. Songs to No One 1991–1992 (Evolver/Knitting Factory), which hit stores on October 15, is a record of Buckley’s collaborations with guitarist Gary Lucas.

The way Lucas and his band Gods & Monsters match the passion of Buckley’s baroque phrasing in an early demo of "Grace" rings with drama. Right from the second number, a live on-the-fly version of "How Long Will It Take" preserved from a CBGB’s Gallery soundboard tape, it’s obvious that Lucas and Buckley had a special rapport. Lucas’s playing underpins the romance of Buckley’s poetry. After setting up a loop of an arpeggiated rhythm pattern, Lucas strums to Buckley’s breathless delivery and uses volume swells, sweet harmonizations, and surreal phasing to reflect the same giddy and lovelorn feelings. It’s apparent that Lucas, a master of sonic experimentalism whose résumé includes decades of solo work and years in Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band, had an influence on Buckley’s later, orchestral approach to the guitar. He also wrote the music for "Grace" and "Mojo Pin."

Yet Buckley, for reasons that seem unfathomable, shelved these beautiful recordings with the handwritten label "Disgusto Garbage." Perhaps it was his interest in a solo career rather than fronting Gods & Monsters that soured him on the tapes.

Lucas prefers not to speculate — he would rather recall Buckley as "the best collaborator I’ve ever had." The two met at an April 1991 tribute to Buckley’s father, Tim, the eccentric late folk-rocker, at St. Ann’s performance space in Brooklyn. Producer Hal Willner, who coordinated that concert, suggested they collaborate, and the rest was a short spell of history.

"The first time Jeff came to my place, I set up this little digital delay loop of a very Indian-sounding figure speeded up, and I started to play chords and he started to sing," Lucas recounts over the phone from his Greenwich Village home. "I was completely taken. When he finished, I said, ‘Man, you’re fantastic, you’re a star.’ And he said, ‘Really? I am?’ He needed reassurance then, although he was quite aware of how talented he was."

In the summer of ’91, Buckley went to LA to try to shop his solo demos. He returned to New York later that year, playing bass with the Commitments. From November 1991 through April 1992, Lucas and Buckley recorded this disc’s demos and performances.

"We did this showcase at St. Ann’s on Friday the 13th, March 1992, and we got a tumultuous response, which you can hear on my tape of it," Lucas recalls. "The next day I was sitting at home with my wife thinking, ‘This is incredible. The band is dynamite. We’ll get a deal.’ Then the phone rings and it’s Jeff saying, ‘I’ve decided not to continue the group project.’ I was bewildered. We continued to do duo gigs through the spring, at which point he started playing Sin-E and stopped returning my calls."

Lucas says he’s very happy that these collaborations have been released. "It was a wonderful moment, and Jeff and I really struck sparks off each other. The music is timeless because it wasn’t overworked. It just came from our hearts and our spirits."

Issue Date: November 21 - 28, 2002
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