{"id":545457,"date":"2025-11-03T03:32:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-03T03:32:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/545457\/"},"modified":"2025-11-03T03:32:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-03T03:32:12","slug":"the-performance-that-made-jeff-buckley-want-to-be-a-musician","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/545457\/","title":{"rendered":"The performance that made Jeff Buckley want to be a musician"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Jeff<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Roy Tee)<\/p>\n

Mon 3 November 2025 0:00, UK <\/p>\n

Some things come beautifully and tragically full circle, like when Jeff Buckley<\/a>\u2019s final ever performance was alongside the person who first made him want to be a musician.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Most artists have a story like this, where they talk about one clear and vivid moment a particular song, performance or artist broke through and hypnotised them: for instance, Paul McCartney cites Elvis Presley bringing his world into colour, while Keith Richards mentions the influence of Chuck Berry<\/a>. Even modern artists have the same thing, as rising creatives today still talk about the impact of icons like Debbie Harry, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell and so on.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It takes just one moment to change a person\u2019s path, suddenly putting them on track to becoming an artist as they witness someone else and become overcome with inspiration. For Jeff Buckley, it was punk that did it, and one punk in particular.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Buckley\u2019s introduction to music is an interesting one. The elephant in the room is always his father,<\/a> Tim Buckley, but given that his dad walked out when he was barely sentient, the folk legend didn\u2019t have all that much of an impact in shaping young Jeff\u2019s taste.\u00a0Instead, that was left to his mother, who raised him on an eclectic mix of rock and roll, folk, prog-rock, metal and beyond, a diet that ranged from Kiss to the classical music that his cellist mother would play. But one of the key discoveries he made for himself changed everything, as the first time he saw Patti Smith perform, he knew what he wanted to do.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember seeing her on TV, on The Mike Douglas Show. It was when Horses was released,\u201d Buckley recalled. He would have been only nine as Smith unleashed her debut album and stepped up from being a niche New York scene star into being a bona fide rock star. \u201cI think she did \u2018Gloria\u2019, and she had these skinny feet, no shoes,\u201d he said, rehashing the wild image of the punk poet bringing her chaos to a relatively clean-cut television show to freak out the normies. <\/p>\n

\u201cShe was insane. Fucking insane. This, like, royal guttersnipe, siren girl-woman, and she rocked. She freaked Mike Douglas out,\u201d he remembered, remaining forever enamoured by this image of rebellion and how electrifying it was to witness.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight there, I was like, \u2018Hmm\u2026there\u2019s one kind of life on the one side and then there\u2019s\u2026her. I want that. That\u2019s what I want,\u201d he explained his rising determination to venture down the path, and then everything was different as he travelled into his own musical life. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s a path that would end by Smith\u2019s side as the final ever recording<\/a> of Buckley\u2019s voice is on a Smith song, singing prophetically \u201cCrossover boy\u201d, on \u2018Beneath the Southern Cross\u2019, a track about death and grief, only months before his own tragic passing. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Roy Tee) Mon 3 November 2025 0:00, UK Some things come beautifully and tragically…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":545458,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[77,144890,269,4160,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-545457","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-jeff-buckley","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-patti-smith","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115483663117482480","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=545457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545457\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/545458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=545457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=545457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=545457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}