Slow-Burning Star: The smouldering appeal of Jeff Buckley

That voice, that talent, those cheekbones, that brilliant first album. And he's single. No wonder the whole music world is talking about Jeff Buckley. Just don't mention his father...

He has cheekbones you could hang your coat on.
When he's performing on a hot night, he often takes his shirt off, and then grown women climb on nightclub tables just to get a better view. In fact, since a UK tour in June (that took in the Glastonbury Festival) and the release of his debut album Grace, a lot of people have been yearning for a good look at Jeff Buckley - and not entirely because of his phenomenal talent. But he would be scornful if you told him so. Off the stage, that celebrated face remains unshaven, the hair unwashed. His scruffy clothes look as if they've been donated rather than bought. At 29, Buckley is careless of his appearance, as only the truly good-looking can afford to be.

"First there were my mother's breasts, then there was music," says the American singer, declaring his life's primary passion. Call him a star or, worse, a sex symbol and he takes a long, dismissive drag on his Marlboro cigarette and looks away. But, about his art, he is eloquent. "I'm completely chemically altered by the end of a performance," he says, "due to the places I have to go in my head for my songs." If that sounds unwordly, so does Buckley's music. It's a darkly beautiful hybrid of the folky, the experimental and the deeply sensual - a sound that shimmers rather than rocks. And he sings in a dreamlike reverie, as if possessed by ancient spirits.

To sample the sheer talent, listen to Grace. It won Buckley major acclaim and sales were encouraging for a newcomer but low enough to preserve his cultish aura. Right now, you can be a fan and still enjoy that feeling of exclusivity.

Buckley can come over all mean and moody about any kind of praise but the sort he least appreciates is that comparing him to his father, Tim Buckley. His dad was a hippy troubadour of the Sixties, a restless soul who didn't take to family life. When Jeff was born in 1966, Buckley senior hit the road. The pair were reunited, briefly, in 1975, when Jeff was nine. His father died of an drug overdose two months later. He was about the same age that Jeff is now.

Despite the similarities in looks and vocal style, the younger Buckley bristles at comparisons. "Actually," he says, "I'm the son of Mary Gulbert." His Panama-born mother raised him in California, where they led a wandering existence. "We moved so often," he says, "I used to put all my stuff in paper bags. My childhood was pretty much marijuana and rock'n'roll." He remembers getting a part in the school play, only to learn he was leaving town that night. "I was the new kid everywhere," he says. But, having to sort potential enemies from potential new friends, he developed the observational skills a songwriter needs. As an infant, he had discovered his grandmother's guitar and, with his mother, would sing Joni Mitchell songs as they drove through California. At 17, he graduated to post-punk bands in Los Angeles and, in 1990, he moved to New York. Regular gigs on the coffee-house circuit got him a deal with the record company Columbia.

Now with a band of his own, he has created a genuinely new sound with impressive ease. "Usually when you get young guys," he says, "they just wanna rock, rock, rock. But if you can burn at a slow tempo, that's everything." It's precisely that slow-burning intensity, inspired by everything from blues to classical church music, that offers such sensuous support for Buckley's voice. And that voice is the most exotic element of all: slipping across the octaves fron a deep-breathing murmur to an imploring falsetto scream, it will soar, then suddenly swoop like a bird of prey. Women and men alike find the effect mesmeric.

"I love anything that haunts me and never leaves," he says of his music. "Like an old flame who has something about her you can't resist." Jeff's own old (and new) flames are subject to fevered speculation: there were rumours of romance with Liz Fraser of The Cocteau Twins and lately he's been seen with hellraiser Courtney Love (lead singer of Hole and the widow of Kurt Cobain) but, apparently, there is no one special: he lives alone and his taste for solitude is well-known.

What's on his mind at the moment is his next album - the all-important follow-up to Grace, due out next year. Will he fullfil his early promise? The anticipation is immense. An admirer of Buckley senior once said, "There's no name yet for the places he and his voice can go." Prophetic words, but will it be the son who lives them out?

Source: Paul Du Noyer