... in Words: Interviews
"Forget Tim, Jeff Buckley's mom is his musical muse and guardian," by Robert Hilburn
An interview with Mary Guibert
This interview was originally published in Commercial Appeal, June 1, 1998
Forget Tim, Jeff Buckley's mom is his musical muse and guardian,
by Robert Hilburn (LA Times)
Every time the late Jeff Buckley read a profile or review about him or his music during the boldly original singer-songwriter's tragically brief career, he found himself linked with one of his parents. Somewhere in the article would always be a mention of his father, Tim Buckley, a richly talented songwriter who died of a heroin overdose in 1975 at age 28.
The difficult thing for Buckley in seeing his name constantly tied to his father is that the two had almost no personal connection in life. Tim Buckley's year-plus marriage to Mary Guibert ended before she gave birth to their son in 1966 in Anaheim, Calif.
"Everything I know about him was secondhand except for about a week, and even then I don't remember much," Jeff Buckley said in a 1995 interview with the Los Angeles Times. "Genetics be damned...I have completely different musical choices."
Ironically, Jeff's mother is the parent who will now be most often mentioned in articles involving the posthumous release of "Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk," a two-disc collection of her son's music. It's a captivating work that extends the enormous promise of Buckley's 1994 debut, "Grace."
In the months after her 30-year-old son accidentally drowned in a Memphis marina in May 1997, Guibert listened for hours to his unreleased tapes to select tracks to be included in the new set.
On the eve of the album's release Tuesday by Columbia Records, Guibert, 50, who lives in Santa Ana, California, spoke about her son, his music and how she hopes he's remembered as a positive force.
How did you feel when Jeff told you he was going into the music business? Given the way Tim's life ended, did you worry about what might happen to him?
From the time Jeff was an infant, I knew he was musically inclined. Even when he was in those little infant seats, he would vocalize with the music on the radio in a way that you could tell he was trying to follow the melody line. It was amazing.
But did you feel any fear that he, too, might end up tragically?
No, not that. The fear that I had was the same fear Jeff had...that people wouldn't give him the opportunity to express his own music...that they would never be able to shake the comparisons with Tim Buckley.
When did you start thinking he might actually be able to have a career...that he was truly talented?
It sounds like a mother talking, but I really knew early on that his love of music was so profound that it was going to put him somewhere in that world. I hoped that he would become a good songwriter, someone whose work was often performed by other artist, which might be an easier life...rather than being a star.
And, I think that's what he originally had in mind. I once said to him, "What out, 'Grace' might get a Grammy nomination." And he said "No Mom, that's not the kind of artist I am." He didn't see himself as a pop star. I think he even went out of his way to avoid that mold. Look how long it took him to make the second album. He didn't rush back into the studio after "Grace" to cash in on its success.
He was thinking of a long career. He didn't want to be the flavor of the month. He wanted a stable life.
That's interesting...the "stable life" part because it's easy to think of him, especially after his death, as a tortured artist. There was such a restless, soul-searching quality to his music. but that wasn't him?
No, Jeff hated that stereotype of songwriters. He hated how this society seems to glorify negative issues. If artists are drugging themselves to death at an early age, then something is wrong with the psyche of those young artists. But that wasn't Jeff.
Jeff was a very positive person...very much a seeker of truth. He was into a Sufi way of thinking, that we do not need a go-between between us and god and that love is the highest power.
Why did you agree to put the album together? It must have been hard to listen to his voice for all those hours.
I knew I wanted to be the one to sort of monitor what was going to happen to his music, though I had no way of envisioning how difficult it would be. There were tapes from the different sessions...the early ones in Chicago with Tom Verlaine producing, which Jeff was not happy with, and the four-track demos...
At the moment that Jeff walked into the water, he was ready to finally go in and make the second album. He knew exactly what he wanted. He and I had a long conversation just previous to that. We talked about everything about his life. We even covered some stuff that we needed to clean house on as a mother and a son.
What has it been life now that you've "surfaced" in Jeff's life. Do you hear from his fans? What do they say?
His fans are some of the neatest people. They came from all over the world on their own money to the memorial in New York. Some slept on borrowed floors and bus benches. They wrote some of the most beautiful poetry. I've received CD's and cassettes from musicians all over the world who were inspired by Jeff.
They always want to say how Jeff touched their lives. A lot of them mention that they had lost love ones and "Grace" helped them heal. That's the most beautiful thought to me because it's exactly what Jeff wanted with his music. He wanted to touch and inspire people. That was his dream.
©1998 by Commercial Appeal. All rights reserved
Copyright ©1998, 1999 Russ Fuller <kfak@attbi.com>. All rights reserved.
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