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The Making of GraceHow
Jeff’s only finished album was snatched from the ether, as a deadline loomed.
By David Browne. 10:
Sept '93 Up to Bearsville to record
for three weeks. 11:
Jan '94 album released. 12:
Real work then begins. Jeff Buckley, portion of hand
written itinerary, summer '93. ANDY WALLACE'S CAR
SNAKED UP THE WINDING road, kicking up gravel with each turn. At the top of the
unnamed street, past the private property signs and hidden behind trees, lay
Bearsville Studio. The two-storey, barn-like wooden structure off Route 212 had
been a musicians' favourite for two decades, thanks to its relaxed environment
and isolation. Woodstock in 1993 was still very much an artists' community. It
seemed ideal for Jeff: removed from the potential distractions in New York, yet
close enough for visits home. Wallace, the
46-year old professorial producer responsible for mixing Nirvana's Nevermind,
walked inside the building into Studio A, whose hardwood floors, cement walls
and 38-foot ceiling made it feel like a combination aircraft hanger and school
gymnasium. Seated behind the organ, Jeff was singing Hocus Pocus, the '70s
novelty single by Dutch prog band Focus; he even had the song's recognisable
yodel perfected. "They were," says Wallace, "eager to
start." Adds bassist Nick Grondahl, "The leaves were starting to turn.
It was a beautiful time of year." For his first
album, Jeff had been allotted five weeks at Bearsville. Andy Wallace intended
that the band would record the basic tracks: bass guitar,
drums, a guitar track or two, and a guide vocal. At $2,000 a day, including rent
of a nearby 'writer's cottage' in which Jeff stayed, Bearsville wasn't cheap; it
was vital to work quickly because the more money spent, the greater his
recoupable debt to Sony. Not
surprisingly, given Jeff's indecisive nature at the time and the fact he was
working with a new band, the first few weeks were unfocused. Nearly a year had
elapsed since he had signed to Columbia, yet the exact nature of his all-
important debut album was still amorphous. To Columbia's A&R man Steve
Berkowitz, the album would be 'Jeff Buckley with accompaniment': Jeff singing
his Sin-e repertoire, both
originals and covers, with unobtrusive accompaniment from drummer Matt Johnson
and bassist Grondahl. To warm Jeff up before recording each day, Wallace even
had him perform solo sets of his Sin-e material to an audience of engineers and
studio employees. (One of the performances, Lost Highway, would later surface as
a B-side.) For Jeff, though,
the process was not so simple. As they set up in Studio A, facing each other in
the middle of the room, the trio started with Last Goodbye. Jeff had been
performing the song solo for several years as Unforgiven; the new title took its
cue from the song's opening line. No one was sure how the band arrangement
should sound, and several different patterns for the bass and drums were
attempted. It soon became apparent that Jeff didn't have just one, solid idea
for how to approach each song; he had several. "Jeff never finalised
anything," says Wallace. "He never said, 'This is the arrangement,
this is the way it has to be.' It would always be a little bit different -
sometimes vastly different - every time he played it." A few of the songs
came easily: Mojo Pin was nailed in its third or fourth take, and Grace in eight
or nine. Burying a hatchet, Jeff invited Gary Lucas, his bandmate in God And
Monsters back in 1992, up to Bearsville for four days to contribute the
swirling, darting guitar lines he had added to the original band demos of those
two songs. The session logs list multiple takes of most of the songs, including
over 20 of Hallelujah (one is described as "angrier, harder"). Lover,
You Should've Come Over was still rough, and by the session's end, had been
whittled down to three versions. Johnson was given two drum kits - one for a
beefier rock sound, the other for a jazz feel - and a local arranger (and
jazz-vibes legend), Karl Berger, was hired to write orchestral parts, which were
then played by a local string quartet. At the latter session, Jeff surprised
everyone by writing out some of the notation for the string parts; consistent
with his enigmatic image, he had failed to tell anyone he had attended a music
school in LA. Adding
to complications was a film crew Berkowitz had hired to document the sessions.
As the crew was shooting one day, Jeff stood at a microphone and sang Grace.
"He probably did four or five takes," recalls friend and Columbia
employee Leah Reid. "He did one amazing version, really intense, and at the
end he said, 'Oh, that was OK'.” After
a month, a number of tracks had been recorded but the album still seemed
somewhat nebulous, and there wasn't yet enough for a full CD. Then, several days
before the scheduled end of the sessions Jeff came in one morning and told
Wallace, "I have an idea for a new song." Seated in the wood-panelled
control room, Wallace liked what he heard - a dark, brooding, blues-flecked
instrumental - and asked the trio to bang out a quick take. "They're
into the first take and I'm like, Andy, are you recording this?" Berkowitz
recalls. "And he says, 'Yes.' We were both stunned. The song ended and we
were like, Where did that come from?" "Oh,
I don't know," Jeff replied. "It was something we messed around with
last night.” Thinking
it had potential, Wallace asked if there were any lyrics. "Ahh,
they're not done yet," Jeff replied. Yet, as Wallace recalls, "He was
agreeable and went out and sang the vocal the first pass. I said, Damn, that's
killer." Jeff called it Forget Her, after its chorus: "Don't fool
yourself, she was heartache from the moment you met her/My heart is still frozen
as I try to find the will to forget her.” It
was, according to Berkowitz, the beginning of "the moment". Over the
next few days, literally the end of the session, ideas for instruments, vocal
textures and overall shaping burst out of Jeff. "All of a sudden,"
says Berkowitz, "we were on this roller-coaster ride." The fully-realised
opus he and other Columbia executives had thought Jeff would make on his second
or third album was suddenly happening, and Berkowitz hurriedly obtained
authorisation for an extra week of studio time. Rather than being a mere
recreation of Jeff's solo and cabaret side, the music began to incorporate
Zeppelinesque intensity, modal Qawwali tunings and anthemic, windswept rock
guitars. Grondahl
feels Berkowitz's perception of a last-minute rush of creative juices "is
coming out of his anxiety or misunderstanding of what was going on. There were
sparks happening six weeks before that." There was no better example than
the evolution of one particular track. On the first day of band rehearsals in
New York City, Grondahl had played a two-note bass line that Jeff and Johnson
picked up on and began building into a denser, swirling instrumental. The piece
continued to evolve at Bearsville. After recording rough versions of it, the
band and Berkowitz would pile into their van and drive for hours along the
winding, unlit Woodstock roads, repeatedly listening to the tape of the
unfinished song. As the tape rolled and the van ploughed on into the night, Jeff
listened intently, staring ahead. Although the song was nowhere near finished
and had no lyrics - only a title, Dream Brother - Jeff knew it was a special,
meaningful piece of music. After
six weeks, ending the day before Hallowe'en, the sessions were done. The album
was far from complete, but the basics, the soul, were in hand. Equally, if not
more importantly, it appeared that Jeff had discovered something else along the
way: himself. Even he had no idea what had been unleashed. |