Mojo Pin
There is a long list of famous musicians who died young. Some musician deaths can be attributed to self-inflicted wounds of one kind or another, other musician deaths are plain dumb luck. In rock and roll, there is the “27 club,” a club whose membership is restricted to those who died at 27. Club members include Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse. Two of the greatest rock and roll drummers in history, Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham and The Who’s Keith Moon, both died at 32. Early deaths among musicians are not limited to rock and roll of course. Country great Hank Williams died at 29, Patsy Cline at 30. Jazz legend Charlie Parker died at 34, John Coltrane at 40. Bob Marley died at 36. Earlier this week Jerry Allison, one of Buddy Holly’s Crickets, passed away at 82, obviously not a tragically young age, but hearing of Allison’s death was a reminder of the age of rock and roll itself, and of just how young Buddy Holly was on “the day the music died.” Buddy Holly was 22, and fellow flight passenger Ritchie Valens was only 17.
It is impossible to say what would have become of any of these musicians. It is a tragedy when anyone dies at a young age. When an esteemed artist dies young, society adds an extra weight on the “opportunity lost” side of the scale. Fans of deceased artists feel deprived of future expected rewards. Personally, I think there is a sense of entitlement and perhaps of blind faith that goes into this calculation. Like an insurance adjuster, fans and critics make a kind of collective determination of the impact of a young artist’s death based on 1) previous artistic output, and 2) the artist’s age at time of death. Artistic output is assessed on peak quality more than quantity, especially if the artist is very young. It is for these reasons that Jiles Perry “J.P.” Richardson, aka The Big Bopper, is often an afterthought from the tragic plane crash of February 3rd, 1959, that killed Holly and Valens. The Big Bopper is an afterthought because at the time of his death he had only produced a single Top 40 hit as a solo artist, and he died at the ripe old age of 28, much older than the other two famous musicians on board. I do not know how old the pilot Roger Peterson was when he died in the crash, because Roger Peterson did not have any Top 40 hits at all.
Some artists, like Holly and Valens, had music careers that were just getting warmed up at the time of their deaths. Some artists, like Hendrix and Coltrane, were going through a kind of musical transition (Coltrane may have sensed his death coming and may have been musically transitioning to the afterlife). Some artists, like Brian Jones and Jim Morrison, were going through some creative rough patches, in part due to chemical substances, and were on a musical downswing when they died. We are left to wonder about what would have become of these artists, and of the music they would have made if they had lived longer.
One musician who died too young that I wonder about is Jeff Buckley. Buckley died on May 29, 1997, aged 30, from a drowning accident in the Mississippi River. Buckley’s death was not a suicide. His autopsy revealed no drugs or alcohol in his body. Buckley’s death was just an accident. In the insurance adjuster tragedy scale of young musician deaths, Buckley’s relative old age of 30 is counterbalanced by his output at time of death, having released only one phenomenal album. Remember, in the tragedy calculation it’s quality over quantity. Everything Jeff Buckley had released (one album) was fantastic, so there’s no reason to think that everything Jeff Buckley would have released in decades to follow would also be fantastic. I’m kidding about Buckley’s presumed musical future, but I am not kidding about the one album that he released; it is outstanding, start to finish. Given the multitude of musical styles Buckley had already delved into, and a couple glimpses of what he was working on for a follow up release, I think Buckley would have made very interesting, engaging music for many years to come.
Jeff Buckley was the biological son of musician Tim Buckley (who died at 28 from a heroin overdose), but Tim Buckley did not raise Jeff. Jeff Buckley did grow up around music, however, in his Orange County, California home. His mother was a classically trained pianist and cellist and his stepfather listened to classic rock (or simply “rock” as it was then called). Buckley learned to play guitar and sang from an early age. He played in his high school jazz band. He learned some music theory at the Musicians Institute at age 19 and played in local bands with influences ranging from reggae to jazz to metal. In 1990 and 1991, Jeff moved back and forth between New York and Los Angeles, occasionally working with guitarist Gary Lucas (of the band Gods and Monsters), who had performed with Jeff at a tribute for Tim Buckley. This week’s SOTW is cowritten by Jeff Buckley and Gary Lucas. In 1993, Buckley would assemble a band and record his debut album Grace, which would be released the following year.
I was not an immediate fan of Buckley the first time I heard him. A friend of mine loaned me a Grace CD sometime around 2002 and asked me for my thoughts. At the time, I thought the album was interesting, but it did not become an instant favorite. About a decade later, a coworker gave me another copy. She said she wasn’t crazy about it, wasn’t listening to it much and thought I might enjoy it. I told her that I’d be happy to have it, and I could understand that she might not like the album. I shared with her my recollection that Grace was an album full of music for musicians, an assessment she agreed with. There are some songs on the album featuring traditional melodies and straightforward rhythms, but much of the album contains more eclectic chord changes and exotic musical influences. Perhaps because I had grown more open minded in the previous decade, perhaps because I had become a better musician, perhaps because I had done some growing up and the lyrics of the album reached me more than they had previously… for whatever reason, I eventually fell in love with the album. It was probably the singing.
Jeff Buckley was a very adept and creative guitarist, skills achieved through hours of training, but no amount of training could allow someone to sing like Jeff Buckley without being enormously talented. Jeff Buckley was an incredibly gifted singer. Buckley was a fan of the Qawwali singer Nusrat Faleh Ali Khan. I, too, am a fan of Nusrat Faleh Ali Khan. I would love to sing like Mr. Khan. I consider myself a decent singer. I am by no means classically trained, but I’ve impressed strangers at karaoke. All of that said, there’s no way in hell I would embarrass myself by attempting to imitate Nusrat Faleh Ali Khan in public. Jeff Buckley could pull it off though, despite being a white kid from Orange County.
This week’s SOTW comes from a live performance in Germany in 1995 that was recorded for television. The song is “Mojo Pin,” which opens both the Grace album and this concert in Frankfurt. The concert venue has the vibe of a TV studio, or perhaps a bar in a shopping mall. The audience is not very large, but I don’t think Jeff Buckley ever played to large audiences unless it was at a music festival, or he was the opening act. Grace was more popular outside of the United States and was not well received by critics, at least initially. Critical opinion has changed over the years, suggesting the album may have been one of the rare artistic achievements that was ahead of its time, or perhaps the critics grew up like I did, or, you know, dead guy syndrome. At any rate, the lack of Buckley’s immediate success while he was alive had a silver lining for his fans, who got to witness Buckley in intimate settings. Witnessing Buckley in a small venue would have been something special.
This German TV clip illustrates the high level of musicianship of the entire band and their cohesion as a unit. I think Buckley’s backing band gets overlooked at times, but they’re all fantastic musicians and several of the songs on Grace were cowritten by Buckley and his band members. I think most of the songs on Grace performed by another outfit would sound considerably different.
Though the phrase “Mojo Pin” is a drug reference, the song is about a relationship with a woman more than a relationship with drugs. The intro from this live performance shows off some of Buckley’s improv vocal mastery, blending Western and Eastern spiritual musical traditions. There is a very brief false start in the transition to the song proper around the 5:28 mark, which Buckley hides well as he catches his breath. The rest of the performance is basically flawless, the band flexing their muscle in support of Buckley’s compelling vocals. A spiritual, ethereal seduction transitions slowly, eventually reaching a powerful climax. Buckley was a fan of Led Zeppelin. As it turns out, Jimmy Page was a fan of Jeff Buckley, and you can hear why.
I do not know what the future would have held for Buckley. Given his vast array of influences, he could have taken his music in wildly different directions. Buckley was working on a follow-up album when he died, and songs from various stages of recording were collected and released posthumously as an album in 1998. This follow-up album, Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk, has its moments. The album isn’t as good as Grace, but the album wasn’t finished yet. Jeff Buckley wasn’t finished yet. It is disappointing to not know what might have been, but it is a blessing to have what we’ve got.
8.24.22