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Click Podcasts, and "Jeff Buckley on Jeff Buckley" will be the first audio podcast available, released on 7/2/09. This interview is from
November 16,
1994. I am unable to post all of the transcript here because it's too large.
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The transcript follows:
Did you always know that it would be music for you?
Jeff:
I never gave it a second thought, it's been very natural. I just sort of got into it.
—-
Jeff: I love
Jazz, and I got a lot of love of improv from people like
Duke Ellington and
Miles in arrangement and pacing. Basically all that music comes from moving people in a live setting
... Live meaning not on television, live meaning not on the radio.
Live meaning you are there, there are some people in a performance space and they are movin' the hell out of you. It creates a certain kind of experience. It creates a certain kind of writing.
—-
For a long time death and rock n' roll to some people have been somehow synonymous.
Jeff:
Yeah, 'cause most of the good people are dead.
But there's so much about music that is life-affirming.
Jeff: Yeah, sure. Just its identity alone is totally life-affirming.
Completely.
That's complex to me. There's something interesting to me about that.
Jeff: Well that's because we live in a culture that kills artists. Wants them to die. They've killed them.
Wants them to make the sacrifice?
Jeff: Yeah, you know.
It's like
... people who talk poetically or act and express are totally devalued. Just like women are devalued, and their femininity.
Everything that brings the flow... the understanding, the intuition. Not like you know, knowing facts, but just understanding things, just somehow. That's very, very, extremely devalued. It's the seat of all art, it's the seat of all artistic expression.
And I say that that is the cabin slave of the world.
But I'm not sure about that. Even when (Jeff: I am.) you say that... Well, okay. You say that perhaps it kills artists and artists are devalued, and people who have the courage to bare their souls and to be poetic in public and to say 'I care' about something, 'I'm passionate' about something... They also get eulogized. They also get followed down the street, or people swarming you...
Jeff:
Sure, but either adored or damned, but never really understood. Because people, sometimes, throw a light... they let these artists carry a light that they refuse to carry for themselves, sometimes. And I've done it. I will do it. You meet someone and you admire them, and you're like 'I can't do that...'
I'll still do it, it's a human thing. I mean, it's why they killed
Jesus. I mean, why do you stick a man on a stick?
Why? Why? Why, because he's... supposedly the
Messiah. Why do you inflict such cruelty, what is it that you're getting away from, what is it that you're denying, what is it that you're trying to kill?
Well in his case, he was not a special case. That was just the torture of the day.
Jeff: I know, but he's the only one that we remember. And for some reason he's remembered as being on the cross. He's not seen as like, this beautiful young man with a lot of understanding. He's always martyred, he will always be bleeding.
For all eternity.
Yeah but we could talk about that for 2 hours because...
Jeff: That's the same, it's the same thing with artists. Same thing. Same exact thing. It's the same exact thing. I mean, I feel it, and I wish I could explain it better.
—-
Jeff: And I'll tell you this, everybody knows what it's like to create an artistic moment. So-called artistic moment, 'cause it's really just heightened humanism. It's just a heightened human language. If you've spent a night making love, you know exactly what it means to... strip your ego down, where you are there expressing yourself, wordlessly, collaborating on a moment that has an energy about it that is... replenishing, or even completely inspirational in a way you could never imagine. That's the way art really is. Or if you've raised a child. That is an artistic venture baby! You solve problems. You express yourself to the kid, you feed your soul to the kid. Or else he or she doesn't
... you know. They get you. And that's art. That's an artistic moment.
Everybody has done it, everybody will do it. It's not just musicians. It's like, those abusive parents that adore the oldest child but also give them the worst of their behavior. That's sort of like what artists get. And I'm prepared to get it. I'm just saying that you don't have to feel left out... you know what it's like. It just culminates in music to me.
—-
Read the rest of the transcript at this link:
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- published: 05 Jun 2013
- views: 2491