Chapter Two

Chapter 1

Стр. 57

Suddenly, this skinny, longhaired kid who had been lounging against the wall inside sprang forward to confront me, rolling and popping his eyes, intensely vibing me with his own personal voodoo He looked electric, on fire—as if he was about to jump out of his own skin.

He was the very image of the young Tim Buckley—same sensual, red-lipped mouth, same sensitive, haunted, blazing eyes. He was a beautiful boy: so charismatic, so handsome, his chiseled face, both angelic and demonic.

This was obviously Jeff Buckley.

Chapter Two

Не spoke first, in a soft but excited and intense high register:

"Hey man, I'm Jeff... Jeff Buckley! And you're Gary Lucas! Really glad to know you—I'm a HUGE fan of yours—I read all about you Guitar Player —I know your work, man! I LOVE what you did with Captain Beefheart—and I love what you were doing just now in there!"

Jeff gestured toward the chapel.

"Thanks, Jeff," I said. "You saw us rehearse?"

"Yeah, and it sounded REALLY cool," he replied, in a breathy intimate tone, like he was confiding in me. "Listen... can we get together soon and work on 'The King's Chain'? Do you know the song? From Tim's Seftonia album. Hal thought it would a really good number for us to do."

He was imploring me with big eyes, like a puppy dog.

"Sure. I know most of your dad's early work—I loved your Dad's stuff you know—but I've got to bone up on this one first. And I have to split now. Why don't you come by my apartment tomorrow after I've had a chance to work up an arrangement of this song? I live in theWest Village, we can rehearse there."

"Cool! Sounds good."

Jeff smiled, dazzling me with a thousand-watt grin that lit up the gloomychurch. Seducing everybody into his own personal orbit was very easy for him.

" How long are you in town for?" I asked.

"Dunno, not sure... maybe just for this one show. Then I've got to go back to LA. I just came here to pay my respects to my dad —but you know, New York is SUCH a cool place."

I gave him my address and set up a meeting for the next day. I really liked the guy on first impression—what was not to like? He had such a sweet intensity. There was a touch of the ragamuffin orphan and the strange foundling about him—kind of like a young Heathcliff.

And I was really attracted to his wiry energy—he was so on, so present—burning with an electricity that was totally in the moment. His essential sweetness co-existed with an almost demonic intensity.

So, with those impassioned penetrating eyes alternately entreating and boring right through me, I felt compelled to ask him a very corny question, superstitious guitar magician that I am:

"So Jeff, uh—what's your sign?"

He smiled that disarming smile again.

"Scorpio—can't you tell?"

He had the reflexes and the lethal sting of the Scorpion all right—as I was to find out.

□

The next day, Jeff turned up promptly around noon at my West Village apartment. I'd done my homework, listened to 'The King's Chain' a few times, and figured out a killer arrangement I couldn't wait to try out on Jeff, who seemed totally open and respectful toward what I was going for.

My development as a guitarist had grown steadily since that first solo concert at the Knitting Factory. Three years down the line, after much daily practice, and I was on the cusp of cutting-edge virtuosity. And as my fingerpicking skills became more fluid and my aggressive, slashing electric-guitar chops evolved, I had delved deeper into the world of electronics—digital delays in particular. These functioned as mini-tape recorders with which I could achieve spacious, oceanic, almost orchestral effects in real time with just my guitar and my black boxes.

I had originally come from a folk-blues perspective—one of the earliest reviews of my playing with Captain Beefheart commented that I had "the folkiest accents since Ry Cooder." But I always loved rocking out in a totally ecstatic way. I loved to go for the Godhead every time. Couple that with my early love for electronic psychedelia in the order of Syd Barrett and Davy O'List—two mad UK guitar pioneers of the 60s—and you have an idea of some of the colors I like to fling on the sonic canvas. (You could say I was a major—although fairly unacknowledged—progenitor of the psychedelic New York freak-folk scene the world has come to know most recently through folks like Devendra Banhart and Jeffrey Lewis.)

So, as Jeff wandered around my apartment casually checking out the myriad albums and CDs in my collection, I sat in the chrome and black-vinyl armchair in the corner of my living room, from which I could commandeer the 16 effects pedals spread out before me, all wired up together—my effects arsenal.

I selected my trusty 1946 Gibson J-45 acoustic, which 1 had acquired a few years earlier on the advice of the late John Campbell, a white blues guitarist signed to Elektra who occasionally worked down in the Village at Matt Umanov's guitar store. John had sold it me as an instrument particularly well suited to playing "Greenwich Village blues."

I began to play an Indian-raga motif, all twisting bends and chromatic curlicues. The strings of my acoustic whined as this sinuous raga figure unfolded, and 1 leaned over, hit the "sample" button on one of my digital delays, set the melodic line looping endlessly, and then doubled the playback speed.

The room filled with a cascading waterfall of high-register chiming notes that sang and danced deliriously around us—and then turned inside out as I hit another switch to run the sped-up loop backward.

Jeff sat on the couch opposite me, watching intently, fascinated, as I began to strum the opening chords of?’The King's Chain’ over the ambient loop texture. I handed him a mic and motioned for him to begin singing. He closed his eyes and honey poured forth:

I couldn't buy you with a hundred cattle

But you hike in shells and feathers up the African beach

Oh my God. I couldn't believe the otherworldly voice that was pouring out of this boy.

I am king here

Tied to this hut by the king's chain

All of a sudden, a full-throated wail—sounding very close to Tim Buckley at maximum throttle—was emanating from this waif-like apparition sitting across from me.

My power's like a tree...

I sat entranced and barely registered my fingers gliding across the strings of my guitar. I was making the changes by remote control, so transfixed was I by the power of Jeff's performance.

This was way beyond mere imitation. Jeff was inhabited by the spirit of Tim Buckley.

And green taboo to me

The chameleon lies in your dusty fingers

I shook the dust off my fingers and continued playing, vibing Jeff all my prayers and love in a totally supportive way. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. The music we were producing together seemed to stop time.

And the blue flies circle your head like stars...

What a beautiful image. And then:

Jump into me now

I must not see the water

In the light of subsequent events, I find this heartbreaking to recall.

Let me sip weakness

From your dark nipples

Jeff finished singing the lyrics to his dad's song—a hymn to Sefronia, the ancient African slave queen—with all the authority of the the shaman within. I stepped on my Digital Metalizer pedal to take the song out with a fuzzed-out bluesy riff based on the orchestral line that ends the original recording.

From his innermost depths, Jeff let forth one primordial ululation after another. He was wailing, suspended in the void between purest suffering and total ecstasy, far beyond his father's lyrics now, speaking in an unknown tongue.

As I continued to play the almost Zeppelin-like riff, Jeff folded back into himself on the couch—a skinny, awkward, beautiful boy again—and gazed across at me with staring soulful eyes while my guitar loop faded out slowly.

I shook my head in disbelief and utter awe and amazement at his stellar vocal performance.

"Jeff," I said, "you're a total fucking star."

"Really?" he replied, shy and tentative. "Do you think so?"

"Absolutely."

Suddenly it became clear. Here, sitting before me, was the male lead singer I had been secretly longing for to complete my vision of Gods and Monsters. And I knew in my heart that my musical future lay not with the partner I was currently shackled to.

For months, I had been mulling over the idea of breaking оff my non-starter of a creative partnership with Julia and replacing her with a soulful male vocalist. The Doors, Led Zeppelin, The Smiths—all were groups from different stages of rock history, but they were all founded on the classic formula of a compelling lead singer complemented by a guitar-hero partner and foil. Jimmy Page, Johnny Marr, Robbie Krieger—joined at the hip, if only for a moment, with Robert Plant, Morrissey, and Jim Morrison.

After witnessing Jeff's spectacular performance, I knew he had what it takes to join me in this kind of partnership.

"Hey man, let's head out for some lunch," I suggested, trying to contain my mounting excitement. "It's too nice a day to stay indoors."

□

After a ritual toke on my bong to seal our newfound friendship and shared musical exploration—and put us in the proper head—I took Jeff for lunch at the historic 19th-century White Horse Tavern on Hudson Street—the same landmark tavern where Dylan Thomas drank himself to death in the 50s, determined not to go gentle into that good night.

The White Horse had a great jukebox inside, which at one time featured the 'Ice Cream For Crow' single I'd recorded with Captain Beefheart. I'd spent a memorable afternoon there some years previously in the company of Don Van Vliet and the painter Julian Schnabel. Don loved the joint so much. His whole ethos, which he'd passed on to me, was "Rage, rage against the dying of the light!"

Jeff and I sat together at one of the outdoor picnic tables out front. What a magical afternoon. Basking in the warm city sunlight filtering through the leafy side streets of the West Village, it was one of those fecund spring days where you could almost feel the buds bursting forth and the trees throwing out new roots and shoots under the pavement.

Over an extended lunch of hamburgers and fries, we talked about everything and nothing—laughing and joking, relating our various life stories, bonding over our likes and dislikes and our similar approaches to music-making. (We both believed in going for the Godhead.) We gossiped about the upcoming St Ann's concert, and Jeff, who was quite an accomplished mimic, did wicked impressions of everyone on the bill. We spoke of the quality of life in New York versus Los Angeles, where Jeff was presently living with his mom, working part-time as a clerk at the Magic Castle, a hotel with a magic theme that employed professional magicians.

Jeff told me he had studied for a while at the Guitar Center in LA, where he learned to play Yes and Led Zeppelin solos note for note. He mentioned various musicians he had hung out with in his attempts to get something going musically, including his buddy Chris Dowd of the ska-punk band Fishbone. He spoke of a childhood spent shuttling from town to town and school to school, up and down the state of California; how he had never really known his dad, except for a week they spent together when Jeff was eight years old.

Jeff had very mixed feelings on the subject of Tim— understandably so, since Tim had abandoned both Jeff and his mother—but in talking to Jeff, and of course later playing with him, it became quickly obvious that he really loved his dad's music—that he had studied it closely and intensely, and knew it inside out.

When I raised the topic of Gods and Monsters, Jeff told me how much he loved and admired the three bands I had mentioned to him as possible models of what I was contemplating going for to further develop the band. He was especially enthusiastic about The Doors. The Oliver Stone biopic was out on release at the time, and we both dug it, especially Val Kilmer's portrayal of Jim Morrison.

I recall describing the very strange feeling I had experienced in the movie theater when the actress playing the music critic and Wicca practitioner Patricia Kennealy fights with Jim over whether or not to she should abort the baby she's carrying by him. When Kennealy remarks how beautiful their baby would be, if born, Morrison replies: "Knowing me, it will either be a god or a monster."

I'dactually worked alongside Patricia Kennealy—she was the assistant copy director at CBS Records in the late 70s, and also my friend. She used to sit for hours in her darkened office under a beautiful photograph of her lost husband, Jim, who she'd married in a secret Wiccan handfasting ceremony in 1970.

Naturally, this line of dialogue—which Patricia, who consulted on the film, swore was authentic—literally jumped out at me from the screen when I saw the Oliver Stone film. Hearing it in the darkened theater gave me an eerie sense of confirmation that yes, my instinct to re-fashion the band with a shamanistic male lead singer was the way forward.

"I love the name Gods and Monsters," Jeff said to me that afternoon at the White Horse. "And I'd love to sing with you."

It was music to my ears. Our creative partnership was born.

□

Jeff and I started to meet at my apartment on a regular basis to run over 'The King's Chain,' plus 'I Never Asked To Be Your Mountain' and 'Phantasmagoria In Two,' two songs Hal Willner had requested we perform with other musicians on the program.

Both songs were taken from Tim Buckley's magnum opus, Goodbye & Hello —an album I had cherished in my high school days, and the only album of Tim's to actually break into the Top 200 upon release in 1967. (Sadly, it had been all downhill for Tim from then on.)

***

Дата добавления: 2015-08-03