60 Songs That Explain the '90s - “Hallelujah” — Jeff Buckley

Episode Date: December 3, 2025

Today, Rob returns with a gift in time for the holidays, breaking down what many would call the voice of an angel. He takes us back to the ’90s, when one of the most covered songs on the planet was merely a forgotten, horny track from Leonard Cohen’s catalog. While many artists cover songs in an attempt to replicate the original (or just sing it more loudly), Rob explains how Jeff Buckley covered the song and made it new. Later, Rob is joined by documentary filmmaker Amy J. Berg to discuss her new project ‘It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley.’ She describes the intimate moments of Buckley’s mother she captured, how Buckley’s father affected his relationship with success and music, and the difficulties of what to do with an artist’s unfinished discography posthumously. Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: Amy J. Berg Producers: Justin Sayles, Chris Sutton, and Olivia Crerie Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Let's be honest, we all love finding out things that are none of our business. If you're like us, the kind of people who, when you're at a party, you're in the corner talking to somebody about their messy divorce or how they're talking to their ex again, then the show is for you. Welcome to None of My Business. I'm Sophia Benoit, a sex and relationships writer and professional nosy person. And I'm Kelsey June Jensen, co-host, comedian, and Sophia's best friend. And each week on Nautomy Business, we'll bring you a person's most intimate stories. And to keep them anonymous, we'll have a guest on to role play as the person and tell you their business. We're talking about their exes and ex, hookups and breakups and everything that you're not supposed to talk about, but that we all want to hear. None of my business comes out every Monday on the Ringer Podcast Network.

Find us on Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Oh, my friends, a few announcements before this episode. The first announcement is, I do apologize. This show has been gone for a while. Once again, our hiatus has lasted longer than anticipated. And people on social media are starting to wonder. if I'm injured or dead, and I am very sorry for that. I don't do stuff like this on purpose.

I have a calamitous lifestyle. Not really, but I'm still bummed that we've been gone so long, and I'm sorry. In our defense, our hiatus has lasted longer than expected because we've been working on some rad new stuff, namely, when 60 songs returns in full in January, 26, we will also be available on video. I got a fancy camera. I got a teleprompter. I got a cam link, whatever that is. And I got some very patient people remotely helping me to hook up all this shit.

Shout out to Kevin Pooler and Cole Kushna of Dissect. Cole especially has been enormously helpful and patient with me. As for this particular episode, you may have observed that this episode is not on video. You may have also observed that this episode is about a 90s song. This is indeed a bonus episode of 60 songs that explain the 90s. This episode is an apology of sorts, an olive branch, and an excuse for me to do bonus 90s episodes going forward. How often will I do bonus 90s episodes going forward? Periodically.

One might even say arbitrarily. In this particular instance with Jeff Buckley's, hallelujah. I am also delighted to tell you that. this week, Ringer Films and HBO Max will premiere the fantastic new documentary. It's Never Over Jeff Buckley. Directed by the great Amy Berg, we'll be talking to Amy later. That movie is worth it for Jeff Buckley's answering machine messages alone. Trust me.

So, today, this is a bonus 90s episode, and we'll do more of these down the road. But this is a one-off episode for now, and we're going to keep working on the video stuff. and then after the holidays, 60 songs that explain the 90s, colon the 2000s, will return for real in January, in both audio and video form. Don't tell anyone I said this, but you don't got to watch it on video if you don't want to, but you can if you want. And I'm very excited about it. I don't like not doing this show, and I've missed it terribly, and I've missed you terribly. and I'm very psyched that we'll be back real soon, and I'm very psyched to do this in the meantime.

Thank you, truly, for your patience. Have a jovial holiday season, and we'll talk again real soon. Okay. I ever tell you guys about the time I went to a cocktail party at Michael Bolton's house? Yeah, I have personally made excruciating small talk with Michael Bolton.

I have personally imbibed a gray goose cocktail handed to me by a bartender hired by Michael Bolton. I have grazed amidst Michael Bolton's various tasteful hors d'oeuvres, including but not limited to brusquette, crab cakes, lamb, spinach, noki, and a giant majestic wheel of cheese. I have gazed in awe upon Michael Bolton's myriad multi-platinum album plaques, his glass cabinet of Grammy and American Music Awards and whatnot. And his Encyclopedia Britannica, I remember the Encyclopedia specifically. It's a full set.

You know the fanciest, most impressive object in Michael Bolton's house? He had the deluxe Scrabble board with a little recessed squares for the individual letters so the letters don't move around. And also the board spins, right? There's a little wheel built into the base

and when it's your turn, you just gracefully rotate the board toward you. No more reading the Scrabble board upside down. No more fumbling to manually rotate the entire Scrabble board and jostling all the pieces because there's no recessed squares. And everyone gets pissed at you. You have to reconstruct the entire board. This is the greatest invention in modern history.

My grandmother had the deluxe Scrabble board, and I thought she was the Queen of England. This is March 2010. I'm living in Brooklyn. I'm a music editor at the Village Voice. I get an email that says, Hey, want to go to a cocktail party at Michael Bolton's house? And I reply, yes. Yes, I do. In September 2009, Mike, can I call you Mike? No? Okay. In September 2009, Michael Bolton had put out a new album called One World One Love. And he's looking to generate a little blog hype. So he loads a bunch of New York City critics and journalists onto a party bus. And we zooned on up to his house in Connecticut. Connecticut is way closer to. to New York City than I'd realized.

It's pretty close. Ask 50 cent. So this is a junket, right? This is a business transaction. At that point, Michael Bolton had sold 52 million records worldwide. That's what it said on another framed poster on his wall. He's up to 75 million records sold worldwide now. But he has never been what you'd call a critics darling.

Yes? So he packs a bunch of snooty critics onto a party bus. And he welcomes us to his kinetic. mansion in adjacent recording studio and he shows off his scrabble board and plies us with cheese and he plays us his new song he co-wrote with lady gaga not a full duet with lady gaga just a song he co-wrote with lady gaga and she does a little bit of backing vocals that is an important distinction that i had not entirely grasped when i got on the party bus that does sounds like a lady gaga song so michael It's all these bloggers to blog about him.

And all those bloggers get to write goofball, self-amused, semi-ironically removed blogs about drinking gray goose at Michael Bolton's house. That's what I did anyway. My blog is still up, but my photos aren't. That's too bad. I took terrible, amateurish photos of the Scrabble board and the giant majestic wheel of cheese. I am not exaggerating my response to the wheel of cheese now for comic effect. That was my primary takeaway from this party at the time.

Just today I say to my wife, hey, baby, remember when I went to Michael Bolton's house? And she goes, oh, yeah, the wheel of cheese. That's an actual conversation we just had. But yeah, so now I'm a medium cool blogger standing there in Michael Bolton's recording studio in front of a sales plaque for Never Let Me Down, the Kanye West song. And I'm like, ooh, Kanye West. That's my favorite song on the college dropout. Ooh, because I am a rock critic in 2010, and I love talking about Kanye West, and I cannot foresee a time when I will not want to do that anymore.

Best song on the college dropout. Hear me now and believe me later. So I ask Michael Bolton about this never let me down plaque while we're making excruciating small talk. and Michael graciously reminds me that he is listed as a co-writer on Never Let Me Down, a song that heavily interpolates a 1980 jam from Blackjack, which is Michael's pre-fame hard rock band. That song is called Maybe It's the Power of Love. I dig songs where a macho rock dude refers to his lover as lover.

You know, lover, comma, you never let me down. I dig that very much. Michael Bolton explains all this. to me. And he also tells me that initially his daughters had to explain to him who Jay-Z was. That's adorable. I am making small talk in a small group with Michael

Bolton. He's mingling gracefully. I am the one making this small talk excruciating, of course. In our group, he's joking about how maybe he should rough up his public image and get a little edgier. And I put on a dramatic movie trailer voice and I blurt out

to Michael Bolton's face. I go, Michael Bolton is. Jack the Ripper. And that, of course, is when he stops talking to me personally. But so we're talking to him in our little group. And there's an end table with a giant beautiful orchid on it. But there's also a framed photograph of a teenaged Michael Bolton leaning against a Porsche. And somebody asks him about it.

And Michael explains he was 14 or 15 in this picture. And he's posing next to his friend's Porsche with his bandmates in an even older rock band of his called The Nomads. And now Michael Bolton is having a full-blown teenage reverie in front of us, right? He's reminiscing about singing in bars when he's way underage, and he's living through the British invasion, and he's taking shit from people over his long hair, and he's taking shit from his record label when he wants to cover Otis Redding. Michael remembers how he wanted to cover sitting on the dock of the bay. And Michael's a superstar, right? He's a seasoned pro. He's exceptionally adept at making small talk and dropping humanizing personal anecdotes.

So he talks to us about getting resistance from his record label over this Otis Redding cover. Should this long-haired white guy be singing black music? Isn't that sacrilege? And then Michael Bolton goes on Showtime at the Apollo in 1987, and he is vindicated. And indeed, here we have pre-super fame 1987 Michael Bolton with his indeed voluminous hair, with his majestic plumage tearing into parentheses, sitting on, close parenthesis, the dock of the bay as he casually perches on a riser on the biggest and most intimidating stage in black American music. Now, because Michael Bolton has sold 75 million albums worldwide, you know how Michael Bolton

sings, even if you personally have not purchased any of those 75 million albums. Michael Bolton sings as though he is attempting to bench press the song and you, the listener, are nervously spotting him. He's got a home gym set up in his garage. He's pulled his thunderbird in the driveway so he got more space. He's got a cut off t-shirt with no sleeves. He's got two giant cinder blocks hanging off either side of the bar. And he's trying to bench press like 450 pounds. So you agree to spot him and he gets set up and he goes, ooh, sitting on the dock of the bay. And you, the listener, are anxiously hovering over him. Like, uh, all right, man, be careful. One more, man. Come on. You got one more.

And Michael Bolton's always got one more rep in him. The heaviest weight is light work for this guy. This guy is jacked vocally. And look, this vocal approach, this chest beating, this chest bursting approach to soul singing, maybe you're into this guy's vibe, and maybe you're not. Michael Bolton sings every song like he is clinging to the landing skids of the last helicopter out of Saigon. He sings hard, man, he sings so hard. And moreover, this is quite a provocative image culturally. This guy singing this song, this hard, on stage

at the Apollo. This guy, on stage in Harlem, belting out the line, I left my home in Georgia. Excuse me, sir. I do believe you were born in Connecticut. New Haven, Connecticut, to be precise, but he's not listening to my feeble wisecracks.

No, he's too busy tearing shit up. Michael Bolton does doesn't need a spotter, dude. He's got this. He's twirling a 450-pound bar in one hand while he pours you a gray-goose cocktail with the other hand. And he is vindicated by this performance because you know who watched Michael Bolton tear shit up on Showtime at the Apollo? Zelma Redding. Otis Redding's wife, Otis Redding's widow. Here in 2010, making small talk at this cocktail party. Michael tells us that after that episode first

aired, Zelma Redding wrote him a letter. Zelma wrote that Michael's performance, quote, brought tears to my eyes, end quote. And I can quote that because Michael had Zelma's letter framed and hung on his wall amongst all his platinum

records and whatnot. Michael Bolton's first solo album came out in 1975. By the time he had showtime in the Apollo, he'd been banging around for more than a decade. his fifth solo album, released in 1987 and called The Hunger. That one features his cover of sitting on the dock of the bay, and that one finally cracks the top 50 on the Billboard album chart.

In 1989, Michael Bolton puts out an album called Soul Provider, S-O-U-L, obviously, and that's the record that blows all the way the fuck up. As for me, I turned 11 in 1989, and I spent that whole year playing Contra for the original, 8-bit Nintendo, where you do the 30 Lives cheat code and you get the spread gun or the laser, and you blow up the giant alien heart at the end and then you escape by a helicopter as the whole island explodes. And ooh, look, there's Michael Bolton, clinging to the skid of the contra helicopter with one hand and bellowing the final chorus to how am I supposed to live without you

so loud that you can clearly hear him living without you, even if you are now living without him, very far away. The Soul Provider album also includes Michael's tasteful cover of Georgia on my mind. Connecticut. I do believe it's Connecticut on your mind, sir. Soul provider peaks at number three and eventually sells six million copies in America and 12.5 million copies worldwide. But that, inexplicably, turns out to be light work as well, because in 1991, Michael Bolton puts out an album called Time, Love, and Tenderness, and That One. Time, Love, and Tenderness hits number one. Time Love and Tenderness sells 8 million copies in America and 16 million copies worldwide.

Michael's Howling Contra Spread Gun caliber cover of Percy Sledges when a man loves a woman hits number one on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. In 1992, he puts out a greatest hits album called Timeless, Colon, the Classic. and that sells another 7 million copies worldwide. Now, maybe you dig this vibe and maybe you don't. Maybe a white dude with billowing, glorious Leonine hair hitting it big time by covering Percy Sledge and Ray Charles and Otis Redding. Maybe that skeaves you out in a Pat Boone sort of way,

in an Elvis Presley sort of way. But your personal preference aside, if you lived through the late 80s and early 90s, Michael Bolton is as prominent, as dominant, as ubiquitous a musician, as anyone you'd maybe rather talk about now from Nirvana on down. He might not be cool in the classic sense, but in the moment he loomed over everything and you bet your ass his booming voice was audible everywhere. No one was safe from Michael Bolton if you personally regarded Michael Bolton as dangerous like this guy did. It's a song about a dream. And with this guy, you have to start at the very beginning.

You have to start with that sharp inhale, the mellow drama, the quiet grandiosity, with which this dude simply breathes, let alone speaks. This is a song about a dream. Anybody else you get on stage at Open Mic Night and kick off with, This is a song about a dream. Somebody is going to throw a chair at your head, whereas this dude imbues that statement, with biblical import.

That one breath, that handful of words, those 10 seconds or so of ethereal ooze over flowery guitar. In retrospect, that's all it took. The absurd, ultra-romantic force field slash tractor beam emanating from this guy, the halo, the lifelong cult he forms around himself, and a handful of breaths, the florid verbiage he apparently inspires. Excuse me.

His name is Jeff Buckley. He is indeed the son of famed cult singer-songwriter Tim Buckley, but maybe don't bring that up to Jeff. He was born in Anaheim and raised in Southern California, but he's in New York City now, because if you can sing like that, if you can manifest a superstar cult before you've even sung any words,

then you are teleported from wherever you are straight to New York City. I keep trying to describe this person's voice and my descriptions are so full. florid and corny and overwrought. Dude, I type something out, and it sounds so dorky to me, and I scowl at the words on the screen, and then I put the offending phrase in bold, and then I put on caps lock and type no, no, no, no, no after it,

and then I scow at the words some more, and then I delete it. I have never had this specific problem. This is going to be a struggle for me. Ooh, look, he's going to sing words now. And the first words he sings are when I'm lying in bed. Oh dear. Jeff Buckley has been teleported to early 90s, New York City. He's got a regular Monday night gig at a tiny cafe on the Lower East Side called Chenet.

S-I-N-E with an accent. It's Irish. Just him. Just Jeff set up in a corner with his electric guitar. He's a phenomenal guitar player and his voice. He is a generation-defining world historically phenomenal singer. And what you hear immediately in Jeff Buckley's voice at any volume and in any register is a fearlessness, an unbridledness, an electrifying lack of restraint. He's not trying to sound cool, whatever that means.

He's not trying to avoid sounding cringe, whatever that means. Talking to the Los Angeles Times in 1995, Jeff says, quote, The whole secret in searching for your own voice is to have faith in your. your deepest eccentricities, your dumbest banalities, your epic romanticism, except what's inherently inside of you without fear, end quote. And if you do all that, here's what comes out. I personally transcribe that as wah with a W5A's and 13 H's. That's not coming out of you unless you're Jeff Buckley, alas.

This song is an original call. Mojo Pin. Dig the sauce Jeff puts on the word whips here. Dig how hard he hits the P in the word opinion here. Oh, the wealths of your scorn, my love, give me more. Send whips of opinion down my back, give me more. Well, it's you I've waited my life to see. It's you I've said so Jeff Buckley sings the word opinion like he has no interest in your personal opinion. Jeff's in his mid-20s. He has signed to Columbia Records. He is working on his debut album in upstate New York, but it's taking a while.

So to stall for time in late 1993, Jeff makes his major label recording debut with a four-song EP called Live at Chenet, documenting all these incomprehensibly rad Monday night solo shows he's been doing. Two originals and two covers on this EP. One thing you learn quickly about Jeff Buckley is that his cover songs sound as singular. They sound as unmistakably hymn. They sound as original as his own original songs. Here's the song Edith P.F. sang and released in 1939 called Jainen Canis Pazrafine.

That's French. Leave me alone about how I pronounce that. I was going to look up how to pronounce that and then I thought it would be funnier if I I didn't. The last song in this live at Cheney record is Jeff's 10-minute version of The Way Young Lovers do by Van Morrison. From Van Morrison's extremely famous and canonized 1968 album, Astral Weeks. It takes a young, relatively unknown singer-songwriter of a very specific disposition to hear a famous Van Morrison song and think, This song would be better if it were three times longer, way less restrained, and I was singing it instead.

Jeff Buckley is of that disposition. The way young lovers do, the way young lovers do, the way on loves, way on loves, way on loves, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way. That's what's going down seven minutes into Jeff Buckley's version. of the way young lovers do. What if Van Morrison loosened up a little? That is Jeff Buckley's value proposition. You gotta be shitting me. This is the early 90s when Jeff's doing all these legendary Chenet gigs.

So there's not tons of video footage, but there's some. And it's mostly Jeff with his back pressed up flat against the wall of this tiny club like he's facing down a firing squad. Listen to Jeff wailing like the firing squad should be cowering

in fear of him. So let me ask you something. How would you describe this person, this musician, this vocal stylist, if you were, hypothetically speaking, a rock critic for the Daily New York City Paper Newsday in 1993. Well, in December 1993, an actual rock critic for Newsday compared Jeff Buckley to Michael Bolton.

This was not a positive comparison. This critic wrote that Mike and Jeff, quote, both awkwardly reach for a balance of emotion and technique, eventually relying on sheer force of will, over-singing, flaking out, end quote. And Jeff Buckley was big mad. This particular opinion he cares about. When Jeff Buckley read that review in the studio,

work on his debut album stopped for two days. In the Boat Dream Brother, the lives and music of Jeff and Tim Buckley, published in 2001 by the great journalist David Brown. In that book, Jeff's producer, Andy Wallace, says that Jeff was, quote, almost apoplectic. It stopped him cold.

If somebody had thought, who can I use to really get his goat? You couldn't have chosen someone better than Michael Bolton, end quote. And then David writes, quote, for two days, work on the album halted, as Jeff, whose ability to handle criticism was never strong, agonized over the review.

It was a little funny, Wallace thought, but he still felt bad for the kid. End quote. Okay, so maybe Jeff hits the P in the word opinion so hard because he cares too much about your opinion. While Jeff is talking to Interview Magazine in 1994, this comparison comes up again. I'm pretty sure this specific Newsday review comes up again. And Jeff responds to this notion that both he and Michael Bolton are taking from the tradition of African American soul and blues singers. That's what the review said. And Jeff says, quote, but the thing is, I'm not taking from that tradition.

I don't want to be black. Michael Bolton desperately wants to be black, black, black. He also sucks, end quote. So look, that's pretty rude of Jeff. that statement, and I feel inclined to defend Michael Bolton, and not just because I have been in his house and eaten his cheese. But I don't feel compelled to bloviate here about how Michael Bolton is underrated or whatever. I don't think he needs my approval or any critical approval. I think he's enormously successful and beloved and pretty comfortable with his public perception, including the

ruder, snootier aspects of that perception, the office space movie calling him a no-talent ass clown. etc. You sell 75 million records and you ain't got to give a shit what anyone thinks of you up to and including Jeff Buckley. But I would prefer to live in a world where Jeff Buckley and Michael Bolton could both be perceived and appreciated and could have perceived and appreciated one another as two ludicrous powerhouse vocalists who love the old songs they sing and respect those songs tremendously. but these guys still sing those old songs fearlessly and singularly. Yes, they sing Van Morrison, they sing Otis Redding, they sing Nina Simone, they sing Percy Sledge, they both sing Billy Holiday. But it's not that Jeff Buckley and Michael Bolton desperately want to be those famous singers.

These famous old songs, these old songs, they help make famous or keep famous. These songs are simply a vehicle, a medium for allowing Jeff. and Mike to revel in their deepest eccentricities, their dumbest banalities, their epic romanticism. Because Jeff knows that truly incredible things can happen when you dig deep into the catalogs of the most famous and eccentric singers the world has ever known and multiply those eccentricities by your own.

My name is Rob Harvilla. This is the first bonus episode of 60 songs that explained the 90s. And this week we are discussing, Hallelujah. as performed by Jeff Buckley from his 1994 album, Grace. Hallelujah, of course, which was written and originally recorded by Leonard Cohen. Yes, many words must add break now, lose job. All right, in 1984, Leonard Cohen turns 50 years old.

He is a proud Canadian, a ludicrously dapper cult icon, a mordent and precise poet, an electrifyingly deadpan singer-songwriter, an Ariadite spiritual explorer spanning from Judaism to Buddhism, and an unremitting sanctified hornball. This is not exactly a deep cut, as the story to Leonard Cohen discography goes, but the coolest thing Leonard Cohen ever did in his whole life is when he sang slash signed his name at the end of famous blue raincoat. I will never get over that as long as I live.

simultaneously the raddest and most devastating five seconds in pop music history. I would say that every songwriter should end every song by singing slash signing his or her name, but anybody else would sound ridiculous doing this, right? Sincerely E. Vetter. Sincerely D. Matthews. No, nobody else try this ever. Leonard's first studio album released in 1967 is called Songs of Leonard Cohen. His third studio album released in 1971 is called Songs of Love and Hate.

That's the one with famous Blue Raincoat. His fifth studio album released in 1977 is called Death of a Ladies Man. That's the bonkers record no one likes that Phil Spector produced, and it sounds drunk as hell the entire time and usually not drunk in the fun way. And Leonard's seventh studio album released in December 1984 is called Various Positions. and it is somehow not immediately apparent to everybody that the best song on it is Hallelujah. Now I'll say a secret and it please the Lord,

but you don't really care for music, do you? The first thing to say about Hallelujah is that especially when Leonard Cohen sings it and maybe only when Leonard Cohen sings it, is that this song is very funny in a rapturously grim, shattered, hard-fought, and super horny sort of way. It is honestly hilarious that in terms of structure, in terms of rhymes scheme, this whole song relies on the premise that hallelujah rhymes with do you.

This song collapses if Leonard Cohen does not spend the whole time referring to you as yuh. Do you, overthrew you, what's it to you? I didn't come to fool you. There's a fantastic book by the great journalist Alan Light called The Holy or the Broken, Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, and the unlikely assent of Hallelujah. Came out in 2012. And in some interview, Leonard Cohen says, quote, They are really false rhymes, but they are close enough that the ear is not violated.

End quote. That is a delightfully Cohen-esque way to put it. I'll never get over this as long as I live, either. The casual incorporation of music theory here, calling out the chord progressions and melodic progressions as they occur. Even the phrase, the baffled king, the startling economy of that image and the dissonance between that startling economy and how long it apparently took Leonard Cohen to achieve it. Leonard says it took him years to write, hallelujah, or years to finish, Hallelujah.

He says he wrote 80 verses, and here in 1984, he only recorded four of them, though some of those discarded verses are going to come in super handy later. Now, Leonard Cohen does not have a classically beautiful voice. Well, okay, Leonard Cohen does not exactly have a classically boisterous, expressive, bombastic voice. It's not laugh out loud, funny exactly, but as we hit the chorus, I dig the contrast between the stark, near monotone gravity of Leonard's voice and the booming choir that kicks in for the chorus. I dig how the booming choir goads Leonard into joining the booming choir. He sounds baffled, but he sounds regal. So I got a mild dilemma here. I guess I just resolved the dilemma. but the dilemma was, do I even bother playing you the chorus to Hallelujah?

Dude, you have heard this song a billion times. You have heard a million different cover versions of Hallelujah a billion times total. But Leonard Cohen singing this song for the first time, circa 1984, he doesn't know any of that. He doesn't know Hallelujah will emerge as his signature song, as his crowning achievement. He doesn't know that Hallelujah is now the national anthem of Canada, of America, of any country, really. It is the international national anthem. This is perhaps obvious to you listening now.

This song is perhaps wildly overplayed and overexposed to you now. Possibly, if you were at an open mic night and some dude launched into Hallelujah now, you would throw a chair at that dude's head. I understand that impulse. All those movies, all those TV shows, all those reality talent shows seizing on the immortal, obvious to everyone magnificence of Hallelujah. Ain't none of that happening in the mid-80s.

This various positions album comes out, and like most of Leonard Cohen's albums, it is fairly well-received critically, but not exactly a juggernaut commercially. And at first, even when people say they like this record, they often don't mention Hallelujah at all. Various positions starts with the song, Dance Me to the End of Love, and ends with the song, If It Be Your Will. And either of those is a fine choice for your personal favorite Leonard Cohen song.

A few people clock the significance, the greatness of Hallelujah immediately. Bob Dylan loved it immediately, for example. but Hallelujah blows up in super slow motion across decades. Hallelujah is a secret handshake for years. The ascent of Hallelujah is so drawn out and so bizarre that of the four verses Leonard Cohen sings in the original, the last two verses are way less famous now than the first two. The original third verse is way less famous.

When Bono from you two first heard, Hallelujah, that's the part that apparently made Bono laugh out loud. You say I took the name in vain, I don't even know the name. And that's significant, I think. I can't conjure up many images of Bono laughing. Bono would later do his own fairly polarizing cover of Hallelujah, and some people laughed at that for different reasons, but never mind. Speaking of economy of phrase, get a load of,

there's a blaze of light in every word. Get a load of the holy or the broken hallelujah while you're at it. In four verses, the very meaning of the word, hallelujah, changes drastically, from triumph to despair, from the deeply spiritual to the defiantly godless. Leonard Cohen himself once said, quote, I wanted to push the hallelujah deep into the secular world, the ordinary world.

The hallelujah, the David's hallelujah, was still a religious song. So I wanted to indicate that hallelujah can come out of things that have nothing to do with religion. End quote. Even the meaning of the word you changes. Y, I mean. The y'a of you don't really care for music, do you in the first verse, is not necessarily the same y'a as the y'a of her beauty in the moonlight over through you in the second verse. Hallelujah is a malleable song. It is a modular song. Pick your preferred reading. Pick your preferred singer. Pick your preferred singer. Pick your preferred suite of verses. The listener or the singer can choose to emphasize the holiness or the brokenness. or the baffledness or the horniness.

If it matters to you, though, Leonard Cohen himself especially dug his fourth and final verse. I didn't. It wasn't much. I couldn't feel so I tried to touch. I've told the truth. I didn't come to fool you. I couldn't feel so I tried to touch.

I totally get how it maybe took Leonard Cohen two years or so. to pack that much hornball profundity into nine words. The original Hallelujah does not end in stereotypical triumph. The broken Hallelujah wins. The king is even more baffled than when he started. Leonard Cohen is a quiet master of biting sarcasm, but I did my best, it wasn't much, doesn't strike me as that sarcastic.

And even though it all went wrong, doesn't strike me as sarcasm either. The original Hallelujah ends in failure, but ecstatic failure. It all goes wrong, but Leonard sounds triumphant anyway. Maybe he always knew where this song was heading. Maybe he knew how long it would take to get there. Various positions comes into the world as another Leonard Cohen album, nothing less, nothing more.

Hallelujah comes into this world as another Leonard Cohen song. Nothing less, nothing more. And when Leonard sings Hallelujah Live as the 80s roll on, he mixes it up. He cuts out some verses, the verse about taking the name in vain when you don't even know the name, the one Bono liked. That verse will be much less prominent going forward. And he adds some totally new verses that will get famous when this whole song gets super famous. But Hallelujah doesn't blow up for real until a few other guys get involved.

The first guy is John Cale. Baby, I've been here before. I know this room I've walked this floor. I used to live alone before I knew you. Baby, comma, I've been here before. I also dig songs where a not very macho rock dude refers to his lover as baby. Notice immediately that John Kale politely declines to perpetrate the whole U equals y-s scheme. It's less funny, but it's more poignant if you play it straight and sing,

I used to live alone before I knew you, I suppose. The ear is less violated. In September 1991, we get a full Leonard Cohen tribute album called I'm Your Fan, featuring a bunch of famous college rocker types, REM, The Pixies, Nick Cave, Ian McCulloch, etc. But John Cale, avant-garde icon, low-key super producer, and founding member of the Velvet Underground, John Kale steals the show

with a monster solo piano version of Hallelujah. Yes, this is the Shrek version of Hallelujah, just in case Shrek never comes up again. Of course I've seen it, but I have zero emotional attachment to it. I was too old to watch Shrek all the time, but too young to have kids who made me watch Shrek all the time. You know, there ought to be a German word

for that specific kids. movie Blind Spot. I got a similar deal with SpongeBob Squarepants. Forget it. John Kale hears a live version of Hallelujah, and he asks Leonard Cohen to send him the lyrics, and so Leonard faxes over 15 pages of lyrics. He apparently sends all 80 Hallelujah verses,

including the original ones, the new live ones Leonard's been singing, and all of the abandoned ones. And per the Hallelujah book, John Kale says, quote, verses I couldn't sing myself. Some of them are about Yahweh, about religion, and reflecting Leonard's background. So I took the cheeky verses, end quote. Of course, when you're dealing with either of these

people, cheeky is an extremely relative term. I've seen your flag on the marble arch, and love is not a victory march. It's a cold and it's a Now, this guy is not exactly an operatic diva type either, but simply by virtue of not singing like Leonard Cohen, John Kale plays this song a little straighter, a little smoother. Simply by virtue of not hiring a choir to back him up, John Kale's hallelujah magnifies the poignants, but also the bleakness. His hallelujah is colder and sadder and brokener, but somehow also cheekier and somehow also raunchier. There was a time you let me know what's really going on below, but now you never show it to me, do you?

Once again, now you never show it to me, do you is pretty raunchy, but now you never show it to me do ya would be like 500 times raunchier. This is another of Leonard's recent live verses. This verse does not appear in Shrek, just in case Shrek never comes up again. And here is where the changeability, the modularity of Hallelujah really pays off. Now, here in 2025, anytime you hear any version of this song, new or old, anytime Hallelujah shows up to soundtrack an emotionally manipulative TV show, anytime Hallelujah anchors an award show in memoriam montage.

Anytime Hallelujah bails out a flailing contestant in an American Idol-type competition show. Anytime it shows up at a wedding or a funeral. Anytime you hear this song in any context, you are legally obligated to ask, out loud, do they even know what this song is about? Because Hallelujah is about a lot of things. devotion, desolation, pleasing the Lord, taking the Lord's name in vain, whether you know the Lord's name or not. But now, at least, this song is also about what's really going on below. Remember when I moved in you, and the whole air dog was moving to, and every breath we drew a sound.

And despite not being an operatic diva type, John Kale hits those awfully raunchy lines. lines awfully hard. And there's almost an anger there amidst the raunchiness. In that book about Hallelujah, this guy Bill Flanagan, he's an author and radio host and you two confidant, Bill says, quote, Kale's version has a menace to it. What for Leonard was resignation in Kale is kind of like a drunk call at 2 a.m. to the ex-wife. There's a certain amount of, Remember this. Remember this? Remember when I moved in you? End quote. That line is not in Shrek. Just to reiterate. And now a funny thing happens. Here in 1991, John Kale has now done a super dope cover of a medium obscure 7-year-old Leonard Cohen song. And it's not so much that people assume Hallelujah is a John Kale original, but John Kale's Hallelujah does become, briefly, the definitive

Hallelujah. His version is the base camp for the avalanche of hallelujah's to come. That metaphor does not work base camp for the avalanche. That almost worse, but then it doesn't. All I know is it's John Cale's Hallelujah that first lights a fire under this guy. So young flame throwing budding superstar Jeff Buckley takes a couple days to get over the whole Michael Bolton comparison thing. And then Jeff resumes work on his full-length debut album. which finally comes out in August 1994 and is called Grace and is now routinely and justifiably

hailed as one of the best albums of the 1990s. Grace also blows up in slow motion. It peaks at number 149 on the Billboard album chart and Jeff gets on MTV and Alt Rock Radio some, but not enough.

But let's estimate that one out of every five people who do play this CD is madly and permanently in love with Jeff Buckley, platonically or otherwise, by the end of track one, which is a very raucous full band version of his song Mojo Pin. One out of every five people is genuinely,

permanently stupefied by the sauce Jeff Buckley puts on the words slow and black. And vocally, Jeff Buckley is an operatic diva type. Thank you very much. And just the words slow and black there. The ethereal falsetto of slow and the carnal arena rock howl of black, you can guess at Jeff's influences. You can guess at who Jeff aspires to be.

And sometimes you'll guess right. Robert Plant from Led Zeppelin? Yes, good guess. There's a fantastic new ringer films documentary called It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley, directed by Amy Berg, who will be talking to her later. In that movie, Jeff says, quote, My main musical influences, love, anger, depression, joy, and zeppelin,

end quote. But he also talked endlessly about Nina Simone and Edith Piaf, and Nazrat Fata Ali Khan, the beloved Pakistani singer, who specialized in Kwali singing, a Sufi Islamic tradition of using your voice to induce a sort of hypnotic religious rapture.

Jeff Buckley loved Morrissey. Patty Smith, Billy Holiday, Judy Garland, bad brains, and you hear all of this far-flung music in Jeff Buckley, or maybe later Jeff Buckley inspires you to go seek that music out. Either way, there is clearly a massive amount of musical input flowing into this person and some absolutely stupefying syllables flowing back out. Syllibles such as ah and yeah. That is the climax to the song, Grace, holy shit. I try and avoid using the word climax in this fashion for obvious reasons, but that's the only word that fits this time. If you're familiar with the great 33 and a third book series, cool pocket books each devoted to one album,

the 33 and a third book on Grace is really stupendous. It came out in 2005. It was written by Daphne A. Brooks, the critic and scholar and friend of the show. And Daphne writes, in essence, about how Led Zeppelin lies, Jeff Buckley's voice channels both Robert Plant and Jimmy Page. Daphne says, quote,

Before recording Grace, he was perhaps inadvertently readying himself to make one of the great all-time guitar hero records without a fetishistic over-dependence on heavy guitars. Rather, throughout Grace, Jeff Buckley reimagines the use of voice in relation to guitar. He manipulates voice in similar ways to that of a guitar. guitar virtuoso. Moving from guttural growl to searing falsetto, from mediate whisper to aching yelps, from Sufi-influenced quali scale jumping to gospel-inflected call and response, Jeff plays his voice on grace with all the fever and passion of a fast-fretting Prague rock ax-man, end quote. I agree with all of that, but I'd like to add that Jeff Buckley sings like a fast-fretting

Prague rock Axeman while singing ultra-sweeny and not very Prague-rock lines like, kiss me, please kiss me out of desire, baby, not consolation. That song is called Last Goodbye. That song constitutes most of Jeff Buckley's exposure on MTV and on the radio, at least at first. Please kiss me out of desire, comma, baby. Oh dear. Plus he's a handsome guy. Jeff, he is handsome enough to make People magazine's list of the 50 most beautiful people in 1995,

and he's got enough crabby 90s rock star type integrity to be so mortified about making people's most beautiful people list that he tried to buy all the available copies of that issue so he could throw them all in the trash. Nice try. This song is called Lover, Comma, You Should Have Come Over, Oh Dear. And speaking of crabby 90s rock star type integrity, let me ask you something. Does Grace sound to you like a 90s album, really? The heavy guitars, the stormy and colossal and semi-macho grandeur, the turbulent self-conscious swagger.

There's plenty of quote-unquote alternative rock action here. Plenty of overlap with a glamier and more lead zeppelin-based end of grunge. mother love bone and sound garden especially jeff buckley and sound garden frontman chris cornell got to be real life friends they recognized something they recognized themselves in each other their sensitivity their ferocity their 12 octave vocal ranges but there's an incredible vulnerability to grace an epic romanticism a poetic intensity and a fearlessness about flaunting all of that all my blood for the of her laughter is more direct and more lovey-dovey than most alternative rock lyrics. That's a compliment, lovey-d-dovey. Would you rather I said mushy? Mushy is less of a compliment.

I can maybe imagine Trent Reznor singing that line. I can maybe imagine Trent Resner singing she's the tear that hangs inside my soul forever. But I can't imagine him singing that like this. And so part of what makes grace timeless for me, or maybe I mean unstuck in time, part of what makes grace feel both current and ancient to me is the sense that the lyrics to grace sound like Jeff Buckley wrote them out longhand with a giant feathered old-timey quill pen on, you know, a tear-stained parchment with the back of his other hand, passionately pressed up to his forehead, such as the paralyzing enormity of his desire and his heartbreak. My favorite song on Grace is called So Real. This is a full band record most of the time, a full-blown, swaggering rock band record. We got Michael

Ty playing guitar on So Real. We got Gary Lucas, an old Captain Beefheart cohort credited with magic guitarist on a couple other songs. We got bassist Mick Grandal and drummer Matt Johnson throughout. And so real peaks with a gloriously absurd burst of pure super macho noise. For these 15 seconds at least, this is what you might call a fetishistic over dependence on heavy guitars. And I'm all for it. I love this part so much. In case you've ever wondered what it sounds like in a love-lorn dipshit 90s teenage boys' head, that's what it sounds like.

But then all the fetishistic heavy guitars bleed away and there is near silence. And then Jeff Buckley says, I love you, like he is the first human being who has ever said that. I love you. Afraid to love you. And even though I've heard Jeff Buckley say those words five thousand times, I am shocked anew. Every time at how unguarded and how ridiculous he allows himself to sound, I love you. but I'm afraid to love you. It takes total commitment to sing those words with total commitment,

and it takes generational talent to sell those words. You're not supposed to say stuff like that out loud in the middle of a song with no heavy guitars to drown you out or provide ironic, plausible deniability. No one can sing the way Jeff Buckley sings, the power, the range, the 30-second long syllables. But just as crucially, no one was willing to lay themselves bare. No one was willing to emote the way Jeff Buckley emotes. It's one thing to know the secret chord that David played and it pleased the Lord.

It's a whole other thing to actually have the guts to play it. Any discussion of Jeff Buckley's Hallelujah has to start at the very beginning. You have to start with that breath, that sigh, the audacity, the pompousness, the silliness, the silliness, almost. He risks derailing this song before it even begins. He leads with the lovety-doveiness, with the eccentricity.

He's got you before he even sings a word. Hallelujah is just Jeff Buckley and his electric guitar. We're back to the gargantuan intimacy of his Chenet gigs. We're alone in the room with him. He is singing and sighing directly into

our ears. I heard that Jeff Buckley's only studio album, Grace consists initially of seven original songs and three cover songs. The three covers, let's see. We got lilac wine, a melancholy Broadway tune from 1950, also sung by Nina Simone. Jeff Buckley remains the only white guy in world history who is allowed to try to sing like Nina Simone. We got an early 16th century English hymn called Corpus Christi Carol, which Jeff sings in an aching falsetto that no one else has attempted ever.

Do you know those scary signs they put up outside electric power plants that say, like, if you sneak in here and get shocked, you will die and it will hurt the whole time you're dying? That's how I feel about anyone else trying to sing Corpus Christi Carol. And finally, we got hallelujah. cover of a cover, so perfect, so beloved, and so intoxicating that pretty much every singer on earth has attempted this song since. Here's the new base camp for the Hallelujah Avalanche. Your faith was strong, but you needed proof. You saw her bathing on the roof. Her beauty. And Jeff said that he'd never even heard Leonard Cohen's version of Hallelujah when he did this. He only knew John

Cale's version. So Jeff sings the same five verses, the first two original, the last three fairly new, that John Cale sang. You'll notice, though, that Jeff does, at least subconsciously, revert back to Leonard Cohen's y' y'uh. Jeff once again makes hallelujah rhyme with do you, and overthrew you, and so forth. Even so, this hallelujah is not at all trying to be funny. It is not a little sarcastic, like Leonard's version. It is not a little caustic, like John Cale's version. Instead, what you hear, in Jeff's voice, is best case scenario sincerity and best case scenario sentimentality. What you hear instead is simply the most preposterously beautiful song ever sung by anybody. For his part, and this quote is semi-famous,

Jeff Buckley described Hallelujah like this. Quote, whoever listens carefully to Hallelujah will discover that it is a song about sex, about love, about life on earth. The Hallelujah is not an homage to a worshipped person, idol, or God, but the hallelujah of the orgasm. It's an ode to life and love. love, end quote. Now, Jeff is an intensely

spiritual person from his adulation for Nasrat, Fatah Ali Khan on down. It's just that for him, the worshipful aspects of Hallelujah are entirely blotted out by the wanton horniness of Hallelujah.

Meanwhile, I'm starting to feel bad only playing you the first half of every verse because the second half of every verse is where Jeff Buckley really shows you what's going on below. Look, Leonard Cohen has written and or sung and or done a lot of delightfully lewd stuff in his career, but nothing quite as lewd as the way Jeff sings the second hallelujah here. But remember when I moved in you and the holy dove was moving to and every breath we drew. is hallelujah Hallelujah

Did you know that Michael Bolton covered Hallelujah? I did not know that when I started talking about Michael Bolton, but I know that now because I found a list Newsweek did once

ranking 60 famous cover versions of Hallelujah and Michael Bolton's version was ranked 58th. That's quite rude. But in Newsweek's defense, there's apparently a key change in Michael Bolton's. Hallelujah.

I thought about listening to that and then playing it for you, but I've decided to do neither of those things. I also thought about listening to the two versions of Hallelujah, apparently worse than Michael Bolton's version, and then playing those for you as well. But I decided not to do any of that either, because you know who did the all-time worst version of Hallelujah? me. In the late 90s, I tried to do Jeff Buckley's version of Hallelujah at a college open mic night, and I stunk up the place so bad

that the government boarded up the coffee shop and nobody's gone in that building for 25 years. The ear was violated. Let's just say I have a newfound respect for anyone who attempts to sing this song. Many fine versions.

Rufus Wainwright, Katie Lang, Chester Bennington, John Bon Jovi, etc. But with all due respect to the guy who wrote it and the first guy who covered it, Jeff Buckley is the guy who mastered, who perfected, who consecrated. Hallelujah. And what makes his version perfect is his singular and quite youthful mix of total romantic certainty and profound spiritual uncertainty.

Maybe there's a god above, but all I've ever ever. learn from love was how to shoot somebody who I drew you. Maybe there's a god above. Even here, even on the last verse, usually, of one of the holiest anthems in secular pop music history, there is doubt. There are no definitive answers. In that Hallelujah book, a lot of people point out that Leonard Cohen at 50 years old singing All I've Ever Learned from Love is a wildly different proposition.

and then Jeff Buckley at 27 singing All I've Ever Learned from Love. Maybe that makes Jeff's hallelujah more idealized, romantically speaking, more innocent to the point of naive. But as heartbreaking as it is, I cherish Jeff Buckley's voice all the more for the fact that he never got the chance to grow jaded. And it's not a cry that you hear at night. It's not somebody who's seen the light. But then again, even young idealized Jeff Buckley's Hallelujah ends up cold and broken. Jeff Buckley died of an accidental drowning on May 29, 1997. He was 30 years old.

I figured I'd have to talk a lot about that here, but I don't want to, so I'm not gonna. I'll say one thing. Leonard Cohen died shortly after a fall at his home in Los Angeles on November 7, 2016. He was 82. Earlier that year, Leonard had released an album called You Want It Darker. The first song is called You Want It Darker, and the end of the chorus goes like this. Ready, Needy, Needy, Ready, My Lord. I get chills every time I hear Leonard Cohen sing, I'm Ready, My Lord.

And it's heartbreaking that Jeff Buckley didn't live nearly long enough to make that decision himself. To call his shot. to get a little more jaded but never entirely lose hope or lose faith. In 1998, the year after his death, Jeff Buckley's label released an album called Sketches from My Sweetheart the Drunk, a compilation of demos of songs for the actual second album Jeff never got a chance to make. I have never listened to that record, not once.

I don't know why exactly. It's not a moral stance or anything. I've helped myself to plenty of postures. album's unearthed demos, stuff from Prince's vault that Prince definitely didn't want anyone to hear while he was alive, etc. But Jeff Buckley, I've always wanted to keep present tense. If I never acknowledge he's gone, then he can always be the guy who stretches the word hallelujah out for 24 seconds. I don't think I can play you all 24 seconds of this, Hallelujah, but it's better. that way, actually.

This way, however jaded we might become, we can almost convince ourselves that he's still out there somewhere, still singing that one word. Sincerely, R. Harvilla. We are thrilled and honored to be joined today by Amy J. Berg, an Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker.

Her films include, Deliver Us from Evil, Janice, Little Girl Blue, and West of Memphis. Her latest documentary is called It's Nestle. ever over Jeff Buckley. Amy, thanks so much for being here. Such an honor to be here. My favorite podcast. Oh, my goodness. That's wonderful to hear. That's an honor. Thanks so much.

There's such a tenderness and such a grace to this movie. You know, there's a lot of heavy moments, obviously. There's a lot of crying on camera, but there's a lightness to it as well. Like, it's heavy, but it's never uncomfortable. And I was wondering just these interviews, you know, these, you know, Jeff's mother, you know, these women Jeff had a relationship. with, how do you create such a safe and sort of comfortable environment for them to feel comfortable enough to go there, you know, and be that emotional? Right. Well, okay, just in terms of like the levity of the film, I think that I use Jeff as like a bouncing

board in a way just because he was always, he would go deep, but then he would come back with like a joke or he would kind of lighten things up. So regularly. So I didn't want, I really wanted this film to inspire people to make art. So I wanted to keep it on that level of like not going. Because Jeff, maybe he was dark at certain points, but he really did try to keep it, you know, in the middle. So I embraced the levity because he was such a jokester.

In terms of the comfortability of the subjects, I spent 10 years trying to get this, you know, film off the ground. I did not have the rights until 2019. So I had a relationship with people. And I built trust. And there was a safe space to talk about Jeff. you know, and I wanted to talk about the real Jeff, not just the kind of larger than life figure that he became

because of all of our personal relationships with his songs. Right, the parisocial, Jeff. Yeah, so I guess, but we also spent a lot of time in the edit, which you probably know personally because I reached out to you at a point where I was trying to deal with like a note that I couldn't figure out, which we can talk about if you would like. But yeah, no, I think that having the time to really like, like peel it away and peel it away and then like lift it up again and then you go and then sink in a little bit

I wanted to spend the time to let it just kind of rise yeah because he strikes me as someone who took himself very seriously but knew when to not take himself so seriously like he had sort of a perfect balance between being a very serious you know committed artist but also like acknowledging the levity of it there was a good balance it seemed in him that I think has now been imprinted onto this movie oh thank you yeah I mean Jeff was great at reading the room. Yes. I think that that was never an issue. So I think that that was probably part of his charm and his expertise as a performer.

Ten years to get this made. You know, you're talking to people. People have been trying to talk to Jeff's mom, you know, and Joan Wasser for years and years. They've had to talk about Jeff. And I'm sure there's a skepticism they have. When someone new comes to them, you know, want to do a movie or another book or stuff like that. Like, what did you have to do to sort of earn their trust? And like, how did, you know, over the course of those 10 years you spent making the, getting the movie made, like even getting to this point, like, how did you earn that trust from them?

It was even extra sensitive in this case because Joan, Rebecca, and Mary do not all have a relationship with each other per se. So there was like, there was just the trust in me, which, you know, I don't take lightly. And I wanted to make sure I got it right. but I think they all just believed in my passion. Maybe it was because I spent 10 years trying to get the, you know, get it off the ground. But it was challenging because I wanted to keep them separate but bring them together. And so, you know, I had to kind of really walk the line, as they say. There's a beautiful moment.

I forget what she's talking about, but Joan sort of looks away, looks back at you and smiles, you know. And it's like 10 minutes of silence. And there's just, there seems to be such a comfort and trust. you know I assume it was you like talking to her in that moment like how long are you sitting with these people interviewing these people you know how long does it take them to build that trust like on camera with you well that you're referring to the nistrat fatali Khan moment that's right when he sings directly to me I mean as much as I love that she was comfortable with me in that moment I think that was all her memory I think she just remembered it and she actually felt it

she like put her hand over her mouth out that's it that's such a beautiful scene Yeah, she just kind of went there. So she was back in the room again. Yeah. Yeah, I experienced that when I was making the Janice Joplin film. I remember spending a lot of time with D.A. Pennebaker, who's no longer with us anymore. But he would get that kind of look in his eyes when he would talk about certain things that had to do Janice where he would just like tap into that memory. Right, right.

It's there, you know, artists are empaths and, you know, we feel things. And so I think that was, you know, part of that. It's beautiful. Joan says something, he says, Jeff would go to Tower Records, buy all the Tim Buckley CDs, listen to them, and throw them away, right? You have all these moments, all these clips of Jeff, you know, shutting down any questions about his father, any comparisons to his father. You know, but at the same time, you know, one of his big breaks in New York City was singing at this tribute concert for his dad, you know, he talks about how much he loves his dad's music

in spite of everything else. Like, it's, it was important to Jeff clearly to not, be compared ever to his father. But do you think that his career, the music he was making, at least at the time, was in some way about proving himself to his father or was about his father in some way? Yeah, of course. I mean, the rejection and the abandonment. And then, like, I guess you're a man. I'm not, so I can't speak to this.

But I've heard from my male friends that there's just this comparison with the father. And especially if your father passed away early, that there's going to always be. be this kind of measure. And so that's why I thought it was really important to point those things out, but also to show that he really celebrated after his 28th birthday, because his father died when he was 28. So it was like he had passed that threshold. I've outlived my father. Yes, I've outlived my father. And that's, I think, like, he had a bit of a probably like a prophetic idea that something might happen to him. So I think he kind of did, in the end, I think he did kind of outperform his father with just one album, you know.

That's exactly right. And I, yeah, because I was going to ask, having made the Janus documentary, you know, there's a lot of talk about, you know, Jimmy Hendricks, you know, this idea of the 27 club, you know, these beloved artists who tragically died. So young, I was wondering if Jeff actively sort of saw himself in that lineage or sort of worried that he'd meet the same faith that his father did or if it's more posthumous, if it's more, you know, critics and filmmakers and podcasters, whoever, who sort of assign people to that kind of tragic pantheon. Yeah, I mean, I don't, I can't totally answer that honestly. I don't,

I didn't see signs of that in his journals, but I think that, of course, there was some element of like, just the ghost of it, you know. But I think that what Jeff did, was he chose very strong women and his mother was a very strong woman and he chose strong partners and then he also kind of latched on to these men in his life and it's very sad that Hal Wilner

passed like very early on because I had met with him and we spent the whole day together and I was so excited. I didn't film because I was just getting to know him but he passed away at the beginning of the pandemic so I didn't get to film him. But I think he got that

you know, he got that thing that he was missing from some of these men in his life. He had these role models. But there's nothing that could replace, like, you know, being loved by a parent. So it's hard for him. So as you said, one album, you know, I, watching the movie, I was so struck, you say in there, he had seven original songs, seven original songs on Grace, you know, these covers that are transcendent, that are transformative almost. but it's just the legacy that is accrued around this person off of one album, you know,

it just seems like the ultimate sort of quality over quantity situation. Like, what do you think it is about grace, you know, that can sustain, you know, this myth, this legacy, you know, just one album. Well, this brings me back to you, Rob. I remember calling you that exact same question. Yeah. Because I was trying so hard to answer it, but I wanted the film to answer it. but my producers who I love,

and they were, like, really wanting this to be the best movie that it could be, they were very, they kind of got blindsided for a minute by the TikTok thing. Because the TikTok thing happened like a year before I finished the film. And what happened on TikTok was he had like 400 million followers for one song, Lover, you should have come over. Yeah. And it was like, what is it? And you can't explain it.

You cannot. There is not a word. But you had talked about, you had talked about the kind of Romeo and Juliet, like the Greek tragedy of the story and how it kind of, it kind of checks that box. But it really is just, it's so personal. It's like a hard love, you know? Yeah.

I don't know that there's a word still. Right, because it didn't sell, you know, it went platinum eventually, but it was not a best-selling album. It wasn't regarded as a success, but it feels like one of these cliched albums where like everyone who buys this album, like falls in love with it.

Right. You know, it's not about the quantity of people. It's the intensity of the people who do fall for it. Right. Totally. And I have to stop using this TikTok reference. But there was this girl that said she had a video that she posted. She's like, my boyfriend said, I love you.

But Jeff Buckley said, you're the tear that hangs inside myself forever. It's like, okay, well, you know, it's like you don't really have a way to compare those to. I forgot that it was lover you should have come over. Like, do we know what the patient zero of the TikTok thing was? I don't. I actually don't. This is supposed to be mystifying to people of our generation, I think. Totally.

But it is, you understand because you and I are from that era when we used to listen to CDs and records in our room. And it's like, if your mom walked in in the middle of like a song, it was like, I mean, socks. That's right. Yeah. It's like, ball up. Yes. Yeah.

And there's just this thing about getting inside of the music that I think that, that we might have in common. I'm like so in it. Like I just want to get inside of that song all the time. How did you come to Grace? Was it about when it was released or what was your path to him initially? Well, I was going to see live music

at the time. You know, I was working. I managed this band called 16 horsepower that you made. Oh yeah. You remember them? Yeah, I do. And they opened up for him at the Fez in New York. I got the CD.

And it was just finally, it was like, That period of time was, I was on like super drive all the time because everything was very grungy and the mosh pits and everything was so kind of masculine misogy. It was macho, macho. And then there's this angel. And it's like, it's like the good version of Bon Jovi for girls that came out of the hair metal. You know? So it was like suddenly your heart just melts and you're like, it's okay to talk about love. It's okay to feel like this.

And so I just felt all the feels. And after that, it was like Jeff Buckley forever. That's so cool. Because I was going to ask you, if, looking at it now, if Grace feels like a 90s album to you particularly, you talk about sort of, there's a lot of sound garden in his sound. There is some grunge heaviness to him. But does this album now feel timeless and sort of out of time in the best way where it didn't really, it doesn't really sound like the 90s as we remember the 90s now?

Yeah, no, but yeah, this album is timeless 100%. There is no genre. It's like it brings everything together and it goes straight into your heart. And it's like there's no need for description. It's like a universal language, Jeff Buckley. I think it's Alanis Morris said who says like he's my favorite singer, like masculine or feminine. Yeah. I don't think gender fluidity is the right word for it.

But he says something like I imagine music as a woman and gave myself to her. I imagine music as a man. It gave myself. To him, you know, he loves Sound Garden Media, he loves Judy Garland. You know, there's, there's, he just seemed in touch with his feminine side. Totally. In a way that did not feel particularly 1993. At all.

I mean, Michael told me that, you know, he was the most comfortable at the gay bar down the street. And he felt very, he felt empowered to wear Jones dresses. And he was, he was, he was. So was Kurt Cobain, though. We talked about this a bit, you and I. But yeah, I think that like, there was a thing about I don't want to be macho. And I want to be able to embrace this. So I do think it was fluidity before that was a term.

I think that's part of what Jeff was doing, you know. The other thing, like him saying, you know, for a while I thought I was Nina Simone or I imagined, you know, and when Joan first sees him, hears him saying. It's like, that's Nina Simone. Like, a white dude, you know, announcing that he intends to channel Nina Simone, like, that's going to strike people differently now. But it seems so earnest coming from him. And it seems so convincing.

to people who heard him. Like, what was it about him where he could be that audacious, you know, and make such a direct connection to such a beloved and powerful singer, but, like, convince people, you know, that he was sincere. Right, but you know from your expertise

on the 90s that that was probably even more radical back then. Of course. It was, like, the only thing on the radio was, like, out of Seattle or sounding like Seattle. So I think it was such a bold move. But then that's where the timeless part comes in,

because there was not a label that didn't want to sign him. Right, right. That extends to Hallelujah itself, of course, right? Like, I think about it now, and, like, the song is timeless and bulletproof, but, like, people trying to use it, you know, from Shrek on down in movies, you know, in, like, American Idol style auditions. Like, we need to retire that song as, like, something you pull out just to get an emotional reaction out of somebody.

But for him, for Jeff Buckley to cover, you know, I think the song itself was only like 10 years old at that. point. But like, how audacious was it for this unknown singer, you know, to take a shot at a Leonard Cohen song on his debut album? Right. I mean, yes and no, I guess it was audacious, but then that's why I really wanted to show the backdrop of the performance art scene that he was so just engrossed in because I think that for him, it was just like express myself however I can, you know, so for him it was just part of his Chené show and it obviously went over. really well as everything else did there. But, yeah.

One of the funniest moments in the movie is when, like, Robert Plant, you know, he's talked about how much he loves Led Zeppelin, and we've established that. And then Robert Plann, he meets him, and Robert Plans, like, you're one of the best new singers. And he disappeared. Jeff disappears for two days. Like, do you think, obviously the record was not an immediate huge commercial success, but do you think Jeff felt validated by the reaction, the intensity of the reaction to

grace, you know, by a lot of his. heroes. Yeah, I think I talked to Michael about this because I was curious, like, did Jeff know his own worth, you know? That's exactly. Yeah, and he, I think, from what Michael said to me, he knew he was

great, but he still had that little boy who was abandoned and, like, so, you know, every time, I've spoken to this men's trauma healer, cowboy, he's really interesting in in Colorado about, because I'm working

on another project about another male singer. And he was telling me about how, like, if you were abandoned by your father, whenever you're showered with love or adoration, that, like, you shrink to that small boy if you haven't, like, healed all the... Five-year-old or whatever. Yeah. Right. So, like, it makes sense that, like, you always have that voice that's, like, you're good

for nothing, so... But he also knew he was great. And so I think that it's hard to like come out of the box with grace, have all of that going for him. But I think he was ready to come. I mean, I really think sketches was my sweetheart the drunk. I mean, sorry. I think my sweetheart the drunk was poised to be an incredible album. Had Jeff finished it himself?

Like that could have been just an amazing sophomore album, you know? I don't think I realize it's so heartbreaking. Like his band had shown up in Memphis that day, right? They're like waiting. is like literally like the sun is going down there landing and he's going in the water he just he had that like I'm always so hyper I'm so hyper I can't calm myself down he had that behavior and so his road manager like sent him out of the house to go like calm down and there he sees the water and the tragedy begins yeah from what you know talking to his bandmates and his manager like how close do you think he was to turning the corner to finishing the record oh they were going to finish it. I mean, this is a tragedy on every count. Yeah, yeah. They were going to finish it. Because one thing that I think the movie's really good at is conveying to you how hard it is to make a grace and then make another grace. You know, the cliche is like you have 25 years to make your first

record, a year to make your second, you know, just the pressure that he was feeling. And I, what I had always wondered, you know, it's hard for me to listen to sketches from my sweetheart to Dujan just because I can't tell how finished it is, how close he was, how close it was to how he wanted it, how comfortable he would have been with the idea of people hearing it in his form, like all of that. Right. Well, I mean, just, you know, when you're editing, you have to make choices, you know, obviously storywise. And there was, you know, he worked with Tom Verlaine before Andy Wallace was going to come in. There was like a thought that this was a failure by the label, like the Tom Verlain session. did not work out the way everybody else wanted them to.

But I think that there was some joy in those demos from Jeff. I think that they sound really good. And I think that from what I understand about Jeff and his relationships and his inspirations, that he needed inspiration. And he got, like, so real came from a riff in Michael's bedroom when Michael was in high school. That little bit gave Jeff the whole song.

And so I think he was just, needed his people around him. He needed some time alone before that, and then he needed his people around him. And I think he was going to make an incredible album, My Sweetheart, The Drunk. So the most dragging thing Jeff himself says in the movie, I think, is it's, there is no art without ordinary life. And I think that what the movie does so wonderfully is sort of illustrates both like Jeff, the hallowed artist and Jeff, like the person living ordinary life. Like how important was it for you to sort of balance like the deified figure and like the guy just sort of walking around? It's so interesting.

because that line was in, it was in reference to Chris Cornell and Susan Silver's marriage, and which fell apart. Yes. After Jeff died, ironically. Right. But I think, like, Chris Cornell's version of that would have been totally different than Jeff's version. But it's like, you see things in a certain way. You see the white picket fence and the dog and the kids.

Right, right. Oh, I want that. But I think Jeff was just trying to figure out how to have his musician and musical career satisfy the grand part of his life and still have a relationship and I think it was hard for him to understand that from what his friends say because there was so much

like there was drugs and alcohol and tour and he's on the road yeah and missed connections and women throwing themselves and he didn't know like how to find the balance and I think that's what he was looking for but he was also 30 you know and he was like 26 when he got signed so it's like

you know he hadn't even gotten to that other side yet So. The most striking element in the movie is his voicemails, you know, these beautiful, like, they're so thought out. They're so almost written. They're like poems. They're like songs.

Like they're just so beautiful, whether it's his goofy, like outgoing message like about the cat, pickles the cat. Oh, yeah. Spinach the cat. Thank you. And then, of course, like this heartbreaking final message to his mom about how much he loves her and how proud he is and how strong she is and how my singing. my phrasing is you.

You know, how many, how much of that material are you sort of sifting through? And like, is this the different movie, you know, without those voicements? Oh, yeah. I mean, that message to his mother was the reason I wanted to make this movie. She played it for me

years before she gave me the rights and I just couldn't get it out of my head. Of course. And it's so emotional. It's so evocative. And like, that was Jeff. He plugged in. When he plugged in, he gave you everything. know, and so it's beautiful. But yeah, that was the movie for sure.

Yeah. I was thinking about, I don't know if you've seen, it's Kurt Cobain montage of heck. Oh my God, I love that movie. I love it too, but it's so heavy and it's so intense and it's so heartbreaking. And it's so upsetting. Different artists at times. But just the similarity, like animating Jeff's doodles and his notebooks and just his handwriting. Yeah.

Sometimes I just as a listener, you know, as a fan, like I struggle with that stuff that feels personal, you know, like publishing someone's diary. Even like down to posthumous records, again, like, oh, did, you know, would Prince want people to have heard these things that they're now releasing? Is this just a cash grab or whatever? But I do think that this movie, I didn't have that unease that I often have with a use of, like, private, you know, material. Like, again, there's just such a light touch and such a respect, I think, conveyed for him.

Right. Even as you're sort of musing that. Is that down to sort of having, you know, his mother, you know, these people, these women he had relationships with? Like, how do you develop that comfort, you know, with this private material of him where it doesn't feel exploitative, I guess? Well, we wanted it to feel earned and true to the story. I mean, she's released those journals in a book. And so it's not like it's brand new information. We just used, we wanted to get into his mind all the way.

And so that was the thing. like not to bring up Chris Cornell again, but it's like, that's the thing, you know, that, because I'm working on that film right now. Oh, my goodness. And that is the thing is that like his hard drives had a bunch of songs on them. And it sounds like it's just like the wife versus the band or whatever, but the truth is like, how do you know? I've spoken to so many musicians about this.

How do you know if you die and your hard drive gets discovered by, you know, people in your estate, how do you know what to do with it? He didn't leave a note. He didn't even leave a note for his death. So it's, um, so like how do you justify just handing over someone's music to someone? And I guess that's a situation I would not want to be in, you know. No more musicians in my dating life. I'm so glad somebody who's making the Chris Cornell movie, but I'm so glad it's you, right?

Because I, that's such, that's another, another heavy and beautiful story. And just what's so heartbreaking about Chris Cornell is that he had, you thought he had turned a corner. You know, like you thought that he had gotten on the other side of it, the way that Jeff didn't get to, you know, and to sort of reckon with like, if you have a fight, you know, with mental health, you know, with those kind of feelings, it just never goes away and you can never be sure. I'm so glad that you're doing that. Yeah, it's complicated. I'm sure. I'm sure that it is. The other thing about Jeff's voicemails to sort of wrap up, I guess, was.

there's no social media footprint here. There's no digital footprint. Like what you have to remember him by are these notebooks, you know, these doodles. You know, the idea of basing this movie off like his tweets or something just feels so repellent to me. But I just did that feel that's the most 90s element of him in retrospect now is that we're trying to reconstruct this picture of what he was like. but we don't have, you know, all the noise that we have from all the rock stars that we worship now. Yeah, analog days. Analog days.

I mean, yeah, I just, I often, when I was in the ed, I often wondered how Jeff would deal with social media. Yeah. Which I don't think that he would be able to. I don't think he would have at all. Yeah, I don't think he would have gone online. I would really hope not. Because he was very private. And that is, you know, I also wanted to respect that because like when his mom did go into that chat,

room. That was really upsetting for him. That's right. That's right. He very much did not want, you know, he wanted to interact with his fans in person at the club after he played. And even that, the angry voicemail, he leaves her after that. You know, it's like, you got to get your shit together. But there's, he's clearly so angry and you can understand why, but there's still such love and respect there. There is. But he's also like, you know, I had to be the man in your house. You know, he was, he had a lot of responsibility from a very young age. Yeah, I forget what he says. It's so heavy. It's like, you know, your anger and everything, that's still in me. That's how I know how to hurt people. That's how I know how to hurt people. That's, wow. That's heavy. That's really heavy. Now, that line is

very heavy. There were so many of those, you know, where you're just like, oh my God, he actually just, that's forefront for him. It's not like it took a deep dive to say that, you know. Yeah. I was hoping to end on a more whimsical note, but I think I'm out of whimsical material. Okay, he was kind of like Charlie Chaplin and a lot of the footage from... He was. There is... No, I can see that, like a silent film sort of... Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.

No, I can totally see that. And he was like, okay, like, here's a good story about Jeff. Like, if you go to, like, he's in a kind of business setting with like the label and... Sure, the conference room. Whatever conference room. Sure. And then a song comes on that he likes... He is gone.

Literally just gone. He's like air drumming, air guitar. He's completely gone. Mimicking the singer. People would think he was rude. But he would just, once he heard it, he couldn't, like he couldn't come back to it. So, so lightning things up a little bit. It's a beautiful movie.

Thank you so much for being here to talk about it. Thank you. It's awesome. Thanks to our guests this week, Amy Berg. Thanks very much to our producers, Justin Sales, Chris Sutton and Olivia Creary. And thank you very much for listening. We will be back very soon with more episodes. of 60 songs they explain the 90s,

colon the 2000s. In the meantime, let's all go listen to Jeff Buckley's version of Hallelujah. Thanks so much, and we'll talk soon.