I dunno... I feel out of step. Musically. Just out of step, not even behind or ahead. Just sort of like... I dunno, sometimes I feel like I'm still... just not... in sync. I don't know how to explain it. I just am.
— Jeff Buckley
On my record cover, you can barely see my face. I still think I look really geeky.
I don't see myself in an ivory tower.
I'm far from being a consummate artist. I mean, this is just my first album, and the work is very new. I'm just beginning, and I'm certainly not worthy of demigod status. There's absolutely no danger of me reaching that.
The only goal is in the process. The process is in the thing with little flashes of light: those are the gigs, the live shows... it's the life in between. That's all I've got.
Maybe I'm not a good enough artist that people just think of me. Maybe in the future, I'll bloom into something that will just make people look at me for what I am.
I once took a ride to the beach in L.A., and all along the shore there were all these so-called jazz places. And I saw these college guys and session players playing this fusion Muzak stuff. It was just a lot of notes, and the more notes they played, the more it kept them from expressing anything. So I came back home and got out my Zeppelin albums.
I'm convinced part of the reason I got signed is because of who I am, and it makes me sad.
The music business is the most childish business in the world. Nobody knows what they're selling or why, but they sell it if it works.
I just let the emotion dictate what the arrangement is.
I've always liked the electric guitar better. Even though the acoustic can be a very sexy and mysterious instrument, I can go to way more places with an electric.
There are times when what you do will be mysterious to everyone... times when you have to change directions before people are ready. Just because someone does something that critics don't like or understand doesn't mean you're failing as a musician. It probably means you're growing.
Critics... They're like traffic cops. They say what they have to say, then leave, and another guy moves in ,and he has his say - and it's often just the opposite. The result is either critical acclaim or critical murder, and neither has any bearing on my music or direction.
In my early shows, I wanted to put myself through a new childhood, disintegrating my whole identity to let the real one emerge. I became a human jukebox, learning all these songs I'd always known, discovering the basics of what I do. The cathartic part was in the essential act of singing.
I do like structure, and I'd love to be better at it.
'Grace' is basically a death prayer. Not something of sorrow, but of just casting away any fear of death. No relief will come - you really just have to stew in your life until it's time to go. But sometimes, somebody else's faith in you can do wonders.
I think that all people are many people. I think all people have many, many, many different souls inside, and they just shift from one to the other.
When I was a kid. I started writing when I was 13. I got my first electric guitar when I was 13, but I'd always been singing. I had my first little acoustic when I was six. But I started being in bands when I was 13. Crappy rock bands, avant-garde things where we'd, like, 'wanna go against the norm, man.'
People have a certain perfection about them, no matter who they are. Like when Janis Joplin sang. Gorgeous!
If you're going to write, then write a novel with a Haitian woman in it and try and describe her accurately. When you can do that, you can write about people.
I don't choose the songs; the songs choose me.
I have a lot of my mother in me, but I was just born with the same parts as my father. I don't sound like him. I mean, I can do an impression of him right now, and I do not sound like him. I sound like me. My sense of rhythm I learned from my mother. My melodies, I think sometimes, I get from my mother.
I'm concerned with the future. I'm concerned with my life, my present, my friends, people I love, people who love me. I have no intention of taking on a legacy that wasn't bestowed on me.
I once tried to sing jazz for real. But jazz didn't do it for me. You can't have jazz without a jazz world, which doesn't exist anymore.
I figured if I played in the no-man's land of intimacy, I would learn to be a performer.
Grace is a quality in people that I just enjoy. It's a very human quality.
I don't know any artists that are really emotionally well adjusted. In fact, I think we're all pretty much insane.
I'm sick of all these labels and these manufactured subdivisions of music that don't even exist. And even though I'm pierced myself, I'm sick of everyone equating body piercing with musical courage. If you ask me, it takes a lot more than that.
I'm not 'Grace.' That album is like a brick onto itself. It's like a coffin that I put certain feelings and observations in so that they can be capsulized forever. I wanted to put them there so I would be free to move on.
They will accuse me of stealing from my father. They already stand in baited judgement, waiting for my first move, waiting to dump their loads of garbage on me.
What I'm trying to do is just sing what comes to my body in the context of the song. And if you go by the emotion of the song, it's almost like stepping into a city. Cities have certain customs and rules and laws you can break, and that's what I was doing.
I am very observant of people's character.
Life's too short and too complicated for people behind desks, people behind masks to be ruining other people's lives, initiating force against other people's lives on the basis of their income, their color, their class, their religious beliefs, whatever.
I don't really go on what people say so much; I go on their voice. I go on their energy at the time. I go on how close their arms are folded into their chest.
I just think too much sometimes.
There are thousands of great artists that wouldn't be doing the same kind of work if there were no music business machine. The ones who are popular would be doing much different work, too. Michael Bolton would be pumping gas.
The words come from here. From memories, from dreams, from people I've known. I'm always writing and reflecting on life. I want to suck it all in.
I'm actually the son of Mary Guibert. My mother was born in the Panama Canal zone and came to America when she was five with my grandmother and grandfather, and that was the family I knew. Everybody sang; everybody had songs all the time, and they loved music.
Maybe someday, I'll just make, like, a complete on-demand record that everybody wants to hear. But that would be impossible and, also, I just changed my mind. I don't think I'll ever do that.
More than any other place, New York is where I felt I belonged. I prefer the Lower East Side to any place on the planet. I can be who I am there, and I couldn't do that anywhere I lived as a child. I never fit in when I lived in California, even though that's where my roots are.
Sensitivity isn't being wimpy. It's about being so painfully aware that a flea landing on a dog is like a sonic boom. I enjoy a lot of mystery.
You can tell everything from the eyes.
You can't be, like, smashing guitars against Marshall stacks all the time. As a matter of fact, after a while, it just looks like posing - it never really gets down to any message or any real expression.
I disoriented myself from everything about being a human being and just played and played and played and sang and sang and sang.
All these people that want to make me out as part of Generation X had better watch out, or they're going to get X'd out themselves.
The thing about a music career is that it ain't over until the fat lady sings. Look at all the times people threw in the towel on Dylan - or Neil Young. Remember when Young was doing things in the '80s like 'Trans' and the rockabilly album and being completely lambasted by critics who now think he is wonderful again?
When I was 12, I decided to become a musician. 'Physical Graffiti' was the first album I ever owned.
A song just doesn't have verse-chorus-verse. It could just be one line. There are Chinese love songs that you have to learn one melody for a three-minute thing, and nothing ever repeats. I like that.
All music industry places are the same, really. They have the same dynamics and the same concerns and the same needs.
Grace is what matters in anything - especially life, especially growth, tragedy, pain, love, death. That's a quality that I admire very greatly. It keeps you from reaching out for the gun too quickly. It keeps you from destroying things too foolishly. It sort of keeps you alive.
