McCartney In Goal
McCartney In Goal is a monthly podcast that debates and dissects the greatest albums of popular rock music. Hosted by David Hughes, and fellow judges, Brett and Steve Sumner, each episode the McCartney In Goal team pick a rock or pop music album that they love and put the songs through an imaginary competitive style-knock out format to find the best song on the album. At times, they may be uninformed, biased and they are often a bit unruly. Come and listen in on the fun - and if you enjoy it, TELL A FRIEND!!! Twitter - https://twitter.com/mccartneyin Website - https://mccartneyingoal.com
McCartney In Goal
Grace (Jeff Buckley)
We dive deep into Jeff Buckley's only studio album, "Grace," exploring its creation, impact, and the extraordinary talent behind this haunting masterpiece. And of course using our trademark competitive knock-out style format.
• Examining Jeff Buckley's complex backstory, with almost no relationship to his famous father Tim Buckley
• Discussing the album's eclectic mix of original compositions and inspired cover versions
• Analyzing the definitive version of "Hallelujah" that transformed a relatively obscure Leonard Cohen song
• Highlighting Buckley's extraordinary vocal range and expressive guitar playing
• Considering the album's growing influence on artists from Radiohead to Muse
• Reflecting on the tragedy of Buckley's death at 30 and the untapped potential it represents
If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave us a review or just listen to another one. Follow us on X @McCartneyingoal for updates on upcoming episodes.
Twitter - https://twitter.com/mccartneyin
Website - https://mccartneyingoal.com/
Hello, welcome to McCartney in Goal. This is the podcast where we generally talk about stuff when there hasn't been an incident outside my house with woodchip. That has discombobulated me and confused things, and now I'm all flustered and I don't know what to say.
Speaker 2:It sounds like a pulp lyric that it is a pulp lyric.
Speaker 1:So if you've listened to actually, to be honest, Do you? Want to tell people what happened? Well, what happened was there's a big pile of wood chip outside the house, yeah, and then, and then, and then a young man, uh, just decided to throw it everywhere and I had to go and deal with him. So we're running behind now. So what I'm going to suggest?
Speaker 2:let's call it wood chip gate wood chip gate.
Speaker 1:It's wood chip gate if he which is ironic because we've got a new gate and of course, if he'd thrown wood chip over the gate, it would have been wood chip gate gates oh, that'd be beautiful which would have been quite something.
Speaker 1:So, what I suggest, what I'm going to suggest to you listeners this evening, is that you go to any other episode, preferably one of the ones that Dave was presenting, because he does a much more comprehensive intro. Listen to the intro to that which explains how the podcast works, and then come back to this episode. Pause this episode, come back to exactly where you were and then start from there.
Speaker 2:And then you'll know the format. It's A convenient and B helps with the streaming numbers, so it's perfect.
Speaker 1:I think, controversially, that I should say hello to the two people on the podcast with me this evening, because we're going to talk about some stuff. I don't know where I am, I don't know who I am, so let's say hello to Guy.
Speaker 4:D-Ream brother Lovely. That's ream brother lovely. That's all I could do. You know what I? I spent all day thinking of that and that's the best I can do tonight it's such a. It's such a serious heavy album there is nothing funny. That's the best I could know serious chat from here on in lads just serious, hefty chat.
Speaker 2:I'm really worried about this moment as well okay, there we go and brett hallelujah. Oh, that's not okay, but it's not my finest work. But as Guy said we're on slim pickings here.
Speaker 1:We are.
Speaker 2:Which I think was the name of one of his side projects. It was yeah, yeah. The banjo act Beautifully describe him.
Speaker 1:Ask me about the puns.
Speaker 2:Hey, Steve, tell us about those puns.
Speaker 1:Hallelujah, I thought you'd never ask. Dream on if you think I'm going to write any of those. I didn't have the grace to write any. Let's move on. Sorry, sorry, dream on, brother.
Speaker 2:I mean, yeah, I can see why you're half bothered. Your heart's not in it. Let's be honest, well.
Speaker 1:I've got to be honest with you. I'm missing Dave and, in the hopes of trying to recreate Dave's presence, I thought why spend the week slash month running up to this podcast? Writing some actually good poems when I can recreate Dave's presence by scribbling some on the back of this small cue card two minutes before we start.
Speaker 4:You know what, steve? You know that's very honest of you. It's just so real of you to say so.
Speaker 1:Hey, come on, I'm going to give you 100 points, guy. 100 points, and there were only three available, so that's fine.
Speaker 2:Is that a last goodbye to the puns, then, for this podcast it?
Speaker 4:is oh, I think we have to yeah.
Speaker 1:Loving your work, sir Brett. Save us from this inane inanity and insanity.
Speaker 2:Fuck me, jeez, Get on with it. Lad, take it.
Speaker 1:Runners and Riders please.
Speaker 2:So the Runners and Riders. Steve, thanks for handing over to me, Hang on.
Speaker 1:Do you know what I should probably say we're doing? Grace by Jeff Buckley this evening.
Speaker 2:Well, well done, well done. It is so slick, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. If you're still listening, I judge you Right. Okay, runners and Riders, jeff Buckley is. Jeff Buckley on guitars and voice, mick Grondel on bass and Matt Johnson on drums. Produced, mixed and engineered by Andy Wallace. It is Jeff Buckley's only solo album. It was released on August 23rd 1994. Two mixed reviews, ten songs, 51 minutes long, four singles from the album, and it sold approximately two to three million copies. Them's your runners and riders.
Speaker 1:I love that you said Jeff Buckley is and then listed all the people who are Jeff Buckley.
Speaker 2:Well, when I designed the idea of doing the runners and riders, it was for bands, and then I realised we've got to do runners and riders for an artist. So I just thought yeah, jeff buckley is you know, jeff buckley? Jeff it tricks me to be honest, it tricked me oh tricksy stuff.
Speaker 1:Tricksy stuff, brett. Yeah, I'm not going to ask you, as ever, which is that? That? The, uh, the thought that always goes through my mind here when you're like which sold two million copies and have no, with no time frame in its first week between now and then it sold, I.
Speaker 2:it sold, I think, up to its death, because I think I do get interrogated on this. It does stress me out because it's actually quite hard to find the figures.
Speaker 1:No, I was admitting that it bothers me and that I wasn't going to ask you about it, so let's move on. No, it sold up to its death 175,000 copies.
Speaker 2:Then afterwards it sold a lot more. Went gold in Australia A billion copies after that.
Speaker 2:It's interesting, it's not. I always thought when you went to HMV there was loads of copies of it and you thought loads of people owned it. But the stats I could find I think they're up to about 2011, were about 2 million copies worldwide, which doesn't seem a lot for such a seemingly ubiquitous album. I thought everybody on earth had a copy of this. Yeah, but I think he's. I think he's a, like a musician's or a muso fans musician, isn't he?
Speaker 1:he's really right. Well, he's all sorts of things. He's a very confusing man. Let in bearing in mind that, let's uh, what's your relationship with this album?
Speaker 4:discovering it probably quite late. Again. I'm probably in the sort of post buckley well post his death. Essentially, uh would have been early 2001, going to art college, going through that phase where you discover there was more music. Because I came from the cotswolds, I went to move to london and discovered there was more music besides brit pop, which surprised me. It's more than the oasis b-sides I was just. I was a regional regions boy.
Speaker 1:I was hang on hang on, you're you're from the cotswolds, I'm from the cotswolds, oh yeah, where?
Speaker 4:whereabouts uh sort of near chipping camden this is brilliant it's like in a in a recent episode.
Speaker 1:This is how how a long uh guy and I've been friends. Um, in a recent episode, I discovered that Guy is actually about 52 years younger than us. Now I'm discovering he's from a part of the country I didn't realise he was from. I feel like a bad acquaintance.
Speaker 2:I think acquaintance is the only word you can use at the moment. You're showing your absolute lack of knowledge about who Guy Langley is. Langley is your surname, by the way. Just in case. That's confusing, you know. Just in case, yeah, no uh.
Speaker 4:I discovered it. Yeah, through that phase of you know everyone goes through where they go. Oh, you should listen to this and then yeah, yeah, cool. And then everyone, everyone I knew, went through it one week after the next sort of yeah this week it was my turn to kind of get obsessed with uh, hearing, hearing the record and just getting sort in. Really it's a very unique sounding vocalist and his arrangements and it sounds very 90s. As a record I've got to obsess with it.
Speaker 2:I'm going to pick your brains on the production of it because it piques my interest.
Speaker 4:From then on he's like a gateway drug, he's like a sort of artist that spans in. Then you get into more Dylan. For me I got lots of Bob Dylan off the back of his covers and his work and Nina Simone and Led Zeppelin and all that sort of stuff. He was really the sort of the junction between all those little avenues I could take in music. So yeah, it means a lot to me as a record. It means a lot to me.
Speaker 2:Brett. Well for me, yeah, no, I've got two copies of this album, as we've seen this week, because we were trying to find when the second edition came out with an extra track on it, and I've actually got both, so I really do like them. My experience of it was that I was, you know, would have heard it when I was about 22, 23 kind of, you know, in your ideal young, romantic kind of period of your life where you're listening wistfully to things like this and Nick Drake and, you know, enjoying kind of the joy of being sad really that's what melancholy is, I suppose and that that type of thing. But then I haven't listened to it for about 10 years. So I was really interested to, when Guy suggested we do this album, how I would feel about it when I listen to it again, and I'll tell you during the podcast. That keeps you listening, doesn't it?
Speaker 4:what about you? What's your relationship with it?
Speaker 1:I never liked it all extremes.
Speaker 2:To be fair, does he like it? Definitely doesn't like it no, no, I didn't.
Speaker 1:To be clear, I'm not being controversial here. I've never actively disliked it, but I found it was too Well, all right, spoiler, I do now. Oh you've spoiled it. Oh, I'm sorry I do now and I like it even more, having spent some real time with it for this episode, which, I have to say, I've enjoyed enormously and has really got me over the thing, but to me I always found it. I had so many different issues with it that all came together to just make me mean I owned it and never listened to it.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:We can get into those another day.
Speaker 2:Let's get into an issue per round and then we need to cut out that bit there where you said now I love it, and then we can staple on at the end and that gives us our ending okay, yeah, you're being serious.
Speaker 1:No, I could do okay, but that'll be a vault face yeah, yeah, okay, good, uh, as long as you know that I uh, I tell kids off if they pronounce it like that.
Speaker 2:So that's okay, well, how do you pronounce it then, voltiface?
Speaker 1:Voltiface.
Speaker 2:Voltiface. I mean, you sound like a wally, though, don't you saying Voltiface?
Speaker 1:You sound like a complete knobhead.
Speaker 2:There's no way you can order a pint and then say that you pretentious arsehole Voltiface.
Speaker 1:I was going to order that pint but then I had a volta fast and I decided I decided not to right, let's get into. Let's get into round one, because this has gone on far too long. Um, round one is dream brother against Cause they're waiting for you.
Speaker 5:I got waiting for mine. Nobody ever came. Nobody ever came. Oh, that was so real. Oh, that was so real. Oh, that was so real. Oh, that was so real.
Speaker 2:What an album. This is the guitar playing. It's amazing. It is an extraordinarily eclectic album and there are very few songs that are similar, and obviously these aren't really similar either. Dream Brother is the end of the album, isn't it, Steve it is because we are yes, we're not.
Speaker 1:Well, both of these are relevant to this discussion. We are not listeners, including Forget Her, for a number of reasons, not least because he didn't want it anywhere near this album. We'll come back to that later. He very strongly didn't want it anywhere near this album and in fact it was replaced by so Real much to the record, company's extreme discombobulation and upset and dismay, frankly, yeah, company's extreme discombobulation and upset and dismay, frankly, yeah, um, uh. But also I think I think I think we'll get more into to why it's not here later but I I think dream brother is a. It's not a great ending, um, but I think he should be allowed the ending that he, that he chooses he really wanted this as the ending of the album.
Speaker 2:He fought very hard, didn't he have dream brother on? So yeah, I think I think it's.
Speaker 1:I think it's a weaker ending to what I now accept is a very strong, in many ways, album. For me, this is easily so Real, I have to say.
Speaker 2:OK, so you're voting. So Real early Guy, let's hear from you.
Speaker 4:For me and maybe we'll get on to it when we talk about Forget Her and so Real later potentially, but I'm a Dream Brother fan. The thing about Jeff Buckley is there's a really weird mesh of so many different styles and influences. Sometimes he's heavy, sometimes he's very sort of folky, sometimes he's sort of soul and sometimes he's kind of everything in between and weirdness, and he seems to find arrangements and song structure and things that are very off kilterter, and so Real is one of those. Well, both of them to a degree. But so Real particularly is really great. It's really like you're drunk and you're sort of woozy and it has a beautiful lilt to it and the time signatures are all over the place and that's great.
Speaker 4:That's what I like about it definitely A hundred percent and it's definitely got. It's got that really heavy, gnarly bit as well where it just goes really Led Zeppelin sort of noise, trashing the instruments. It sounds mad. You would not expect that to be in the same song, but Dream Brother, it has a real cinematic. It sounds like a movie. It's got this really symphonic kind of. Obviously there's a very Eastern music scale being used and it just has a really haunting feel that I absolutely love.
Speaker 4:I love the instrumentation, the sort of odd instruments in there and I've just always loved it as what I think is a fantastic closer to the record really. So I'm a Dream Brother fan.
Speaker 1:Oh, one for each then. Then okay, brett, you have the deciding vote. Sir, really I'm absolutely flabbergasted. But all right question could either of you hum or sing me anything from dream brother, because I've listened to it a hundred times and I can't retain a word of it absolutely, but as we've discussed in this part, it's not really. I don't want to start singing oh, I tried to get him in, I tried to draw him in to sing, but I can really well I find I find it really majestic.
Speaker 4:I also find it a real nice companion to the opening track of the record, which has a similar sort of ethereal.
Speaker 1:I do find it majestic when I listen to it now. I mean, I've never even used to register its existence back in the day because I couldn't get that far through the album. And one of the issues I had with this album it was just too big a meal for me, it was just too large to consume at all. So I ended up listening to bits and then I just either lost interest or was just completely overwhelmed by it. So I never even got as far. It's not impossible that I've never heard the last two tracks on this album because I just never, ever made it that far. So I've had to really get to know Eternal Life and Dreambrother, and I'm really glad I have. But I still couldn't hum you a note of Dreambrother.
Speaker 4:But I think, going back to the Forget Her situation with so Real, if I think going back to the Forget Her situation with so Real, if we want to talk about that now because so Real's not going through, I personally think Forget Her is probably one of the best songs he did. Forget Her is a song that I think he brought in, was it? He brought it into the sessions. It was kind of half finished and they kind of convinced him to kind of put it down.
Speaker 4:Ah okay, right. And I think everyone's reaction quite instinctively was this is amazing, we need to double check. We're recording this.
Speaker 2:Record label loved it. They were loving it. They loved it. Yes, let's get this bad boy on this debut album. This is going to shift some units. And he said if I hear it again, I'll throw up. Yes, he did. That's his quote about it.
Speaker 4:But grow up. Yes, he did. That's his quote about it and I was, but for me, that's the beauty of when you have that's just like having distance from being the artist yourself. Look, I get it, it's the artist is the artist.
Speaker 2:However, having perspective and a holistic, uh, an overarching view, um, well, you've worked in ar and you've worked as a producer, so if this were you, how would you possibly convince him because you really like this that you'd really like? Forget Her, don't you?
Speaker 4:I do. I love it when he does it many times on this record, and even if you listen to his posthumous release of the sketches for my Sweetheart, the Drunk, where you hear everybody here wants you and we could be so happy together, baby, if we wanted to be, or something. It's called something like that. But there's this amazing sort of what I guess that sort of they can be called white soul records really, but they're just. They're just incredibly, um, poignant and powerful because of the combination of his voice, his playing and his, his kind of. When he writes those type of records, um, they just he does something that not many people can do.
Speaker 1:And Forget.
Speaker 4:Her is one of those. It's up there with Love you Should have Come Over and Grace for me as a single contender. Really, I don't understand his derision from it. I understand that potentially it's because of the meaning and he spared it because it was about an ex partner and oh, I can tell you, I can give you I really you're perfect right, I, I'm good.
Speaker 1:I would like to present to you two arguments against this track. The first one would be the michael bolton incident what's that he was talking about?
Speaker 2:forget hearing, aren't we?
Speaker 1:yeah, forget, we're talking about forget her. So the michael, do we know about the michael bolton?
Speaker 2:incident. No do to do, tell I need to, I think go.
Speaker 1:I does god, you want to tell it no, okay the michael bolton incident is essentially, uh, that michael bolton and, uh, jeff buckley were reviewed by badly by the same reviewer in the same breath and were compared together and he but the reviewer was basically going oh yeah, there's just two white blokes who were just ripping off black music, trying to be all soulful and whatever, and just just like completely put them both down as if they were both trying to achieve the same thing.
Speaker 2:Wow to be compared to michael bolton is something, isn't it?
Speaker 1:and this sent jeff buckley into a massive tailspin, for I think for two days he just sort of stayed in his room and, just like, tried to deal with this issue and eventually came back out my first argument. We'll come back to the michael bolton stuff later perhaps, but my first argument is there is only only one song on this entire record, as it now exists, that you could picture michael bolton singing, and it's sure as fuck is forget her right that that would be my first issue. Um, uh, which, which?
Speaker 2:you've kind of ruined it for guy now.
Speaker 4:You know that, don't you I love that bolton oh yeah, it's fine.
Speaker 1:I mean there's nothing. I mean the thing is it is a good song. But the second thing I mean I'm not saying it's a bad song, my second issue is I. I mean I'm really the more I've thought about it, the more angry I've become on his behalf. Right, all it would take to stop me being angry, because Brett sent us a picture earlier in the week of his two copies of Grace and and one one had 10 tracks on it and the other had 11 tracks on it.
Speaker 1:And as a listener, you would not know if I, if I created a 10 track album and and said I absolutely categorically do not want this track on it, and then I died and you just went haha, he's dead now. Let's just stick it on. No one will know neither wiser, and I mean I'd come down and haunt you forever. All it would take to mitigate that would be to put the words bonus track after it. It doesn't have to say bonus track colon, which Jeff hated and didn't want you to listen to and said he'd throw up if he didn't listen to, if he had to listen to it ever again, etc.
Speaker 4:It doesn't have to say those things it just has to say bonus track and then you get a little bit of context.
Speaker 1:To just chuck it on, aren't, because he's dead and he can't tell us no anymore is unforgivable, absolutely unforgivable.
Speaker 2:And I do think I'm actually not a big fan of Forget Her. It's quite good. I do like it. I quite like it.
Speaker 1:No, it's not my favourite. I just have a moral issue with this.
Speaker 2:No it is good, it's very good, amazing, like he was an absolute blooming genius. But I do really think dream brother really works better to end the album. It does feel like, oh okay, I can. I can see what you're saying when you this is the way to book in the album. It really works but, forget her it's slightly, slightly, the only kind of bluesy one on there really you can really hear.
Speaker 1:It's more conventionally bluesy than the rest, so you see what's happened here is that brett is congratulating himself for his wonderful opening first round. But as a result of his first round, we have been on this first round for weeks.
Speaker 2:Is it over yet.
Speaker 1:So let's get to round two, which is Lilac Wine versus Corpus Christi Carol or, if you're, american Lilac Wine which I want to be.
Speaker 2:next, I would like me a glass of Lilac Wine Lilac. Wine I will not do a volte-face over that.
Speaker 6:I can tell you right now. I lost myself on a cool damp night. I gave myself in that misty light, Was hypnotised by a strange delight Under a lilac tree.
Speaker 5:A falcon hath borne my maid away, and in that orchard there was a home.
Speaker 2:Well, these are both covers. He wrote he had seven original songs, an eighth of which he refused to put on the album, much to the record company Chagrin. Is that correct? Yes, yes, well done.
Speaker 1:But Chagrin would have also been acceptable, chagrin, so that's okay.
Speaker 2:I mean, I should have said Chagrin, that would have been good.
Speaker 1:Chagrin, chagrin. Well done, yes. Yeah, that would have been good Chagrin.
Speaker 2:Chagrin. Yeah, I have to go with my head when I say that, obviously imitating the French pronunciation. It's actually three covers, two of which are Lilac Wine, which he heard Nina Simone's version, loved it. He's, you know, big Simone fan, big proto-feminist actually. I think when you listen to what he said he's brought up by his mother, single mother. We'll get to that. We'll get to the story of jeff buckley, who is in the quarterfinals whoa, there we'll get to that.
Speaker 1:Calm down, calm yourself.
Speaker 2:Whoa, it's on the way and it's versus corpus christi, which is really nice. It's a carol written by benjamin britain. I like both of these. I know you have problem with covers and albums. We're going to get into that, aren't we well?
Speaker 1:there's, there's my, there's, of course, my second issue at the time, which was was that I I, especially at that time, you know, I I didn't know how to process this album because it's like you know, I'm fine listening to linda ronstadt. This is just me, by the way, listeners, it's my issues, I know they're my issues. Yeah, I'm fine listening to linda ronstadt because she's an interpretive artist, so I'll listen to her sing the phone book and I'm happy. I'm fine listening to joni mitchell, because I expected to write all her own stuff and I'm listening to her processing her own emotions. Put on jeff buckley, it's like there's all these covers and I'm like what is he? Is he an interpretive artist? Is he a singer, songwriter? What is he? Is he a metal head?
Speaker 1:is he is he a jazz? Guy, isn't it I was, I was, I was confused, as were the record company, by what he was trying to do. And again I've learned why it is the way it is and we'll get to that, uh, and I'm fine with it now, but at the time that was the fact you've said at least four times you're fine with it really sells it to us. The lady protest death.
Speaker 4:Too much me thinks what do you think these guy, uh, love them, so they, like you've just said, he's unique in that artist where he is a bit of everything, but what these two songs, I think, highlight if you've ever listened to, if you haven't listened to it, go and seek out the Live at Sinead double album, which is him essentially busking in this cafe in the East Village of New York. He would do two-hour sets, three-hour sets and he would just play a Led Zeppelin song into a Bob Dylan song, into a Nusrat Fatiha Ali Khan song, and it is one of the most remarkable listens you'll ever hear. There's a bit where he just he stops to go into a Nusrat Fatiha Ali Khan song and to do the song he went to an Urdu teacher, learnt the language so he could pronounce it properly and the language so he could pronounce it properly, and he starts singing. He starts singing it and they start laughing at him because he's singing this to them a gobbledygook kind of sound, but he's really into it and by the end of it they are absolutely blown away by the guy who's just on a seven minute freak out.
Speaker 4:Essentially it's incredible. It's what it's phenomenal and what I think makes me love jeff buckley so much he is. He doesn't really do cover versions. In my opinion he does these. He just. They just melt and become his and there's only. I think him and Eva Cassidy in the nineties were the two sort of interpretive, sort of filters that filtered all this music that you might not have heard and then represented it in a way that, um, just really influenced a whole generation of people, and these two songs are, but you couldn't be farther apart.
Speaker 4:Yeah, the most whitest thing and the most sort of soulful thing on the same record and they both sort of sound like the right same artist. Yes, it's, one of them is very hymnal and very ethereal, but it's just it shows his voice so beautifully. I mean, I've never it got me into a lot of classical music and a lot of choral singing.
Speaker 2:Oh, nice yeah, I love a bit of choral singing.
Speaker 1:I agree with all of that. I think that again, it's because I understood his Live at Sinead period and the fact that he was being like this incredible human jukebox of interpretation and sort of this big soup of all these people he was covering and then, but like you say, sort of not covering, like making his own and just being playful with them and just all of this stuff he was doing. And and to have the three covers we have on this makes so much more sense to older me than the younger why is?
Speaker 4:that why?
Speaker 1:is it you, perhaps, who let's hope? Uh, it makes much more sense to to me now because I I see the context of it rather than going oh, he just didn't write enough songs, did he? You know, he's obviously not got, you know, any inspiration. He's run out of tunes, any, and which, to an extent, is what had happened. But but you know, only in that, only in that his songwriting was, was a nascent thing, um, and he was just finding his way, and I think he would have developed into an incredible songwriter, um, and, and he was just, he was just beginning to find that. So I have no problem with these covers now because, exactly as guy said, he turns them into something shimmering and totally different great stuff, stuff.
Speaker 2:What are you voting for, langers? I as much as I do love Corpus Christi.
Speaker 4:Carol Lilac Wine is the song that got me into Nina Simone properly and I just love. I just love it when he does that register and the sort of smoky jazzy slow. I just love the tune. I think it's hypnotic and beautiful.
Speaker 2:They're both great. I really like Corpus Christi. It reminds me of Coventry Carol a bit, which is my favourite carol after Vorderman, king and Steve. Let's level it up a bit. Well, I did think, hey, how do we bring a trademark source of whimsy and irreverence to a very soulful, beautiful musician who died at the age of 30? Spoiler alert sorry if you didn't know that listeners. Jeff Buckley sadly passed away at the age of 30. So really, what happens when you listen to this album is obviously you're very present with the idea that obviously he died very, very young and that's obviously very sad and the music is very heartfelt and emotional. So it kind of it's in your mind, isn't it? Also, because he's just so spectacularly good, your, your jaw drops the floor and it was like shit, what else could you have done? You know that, I think, is kind of always present to some extent it's very hard to decontextualize it from what you know happened absolutely yeah, so that's that's.
Speaker 2:That's a beautiful way of putting it I'm gonna vote.
Speaker 1:Well, you voted one each. From what? From my understanding of it um, yes, I'll vote.
Speaker 1:Corpus christi, carol, yeah all right, I'm gonna go lilac wine. There's not a lot in it. I'm gonna going to go Lilac Wine because I think for me, benjamin Britten, it is rather beautiful. But I think Benjamin Britten might be an eclecticism too far here and I think Nina Simone is. You know, there's eclectic and there's. I'm really trying to prove the point about how eclectic I am, which is how I sort of took it at at the time. Much less so now, as I said before. But I think Lilac Wine pips it, just because Nina Simone makes more sense here. Right, so we're into the quarterfinals, quarterfinals. So the first quarterfinal is, for the first time, a mojo, a pin, whatever the flip that means against. For the second time, because it came through Dream Brother, I'm lying in my bed.
Speaker 6:The blanket is warm. This body will, as it came through.
Speaker 5:Dream Brother, I feel afraid and I call your name. I love your voice and your dancing say I hear your words and I know your pain, your head in your hands and a kiss on the lips of another.
Speaker 2:First track versus last track. First track versus last track. Hey, who did this draw? Liking them apples.
Speaker 1:Oh. Book ending, Hashtag book ending, oh God it's smooth as fuck.
Speaker 2:So just a bit about Jeff Buckley before we get into the quarterfinals, because we're getting into the meat of it now, aren't we? We're getting into some very strong songs and all very interesting. So he was like he is the son of Tim Buckley and I believe he only met him once in his life.
Speaker 1:Yep, or if so he said he only met him really once yeah, and then he stayed with him for a few days, but he didn't get much out of him, so they had they had zero relationship yeah, zero and didn't tim write a song about him called not not your there's.
Speaker 1:There was a song called I didn't want. I didn't want to be your mountain it's actually a very good song. Uh, it's a lovely, lovely song. I did listen to it on the back of this, but it was kind of sort of saying to the mother I just had sex with you. I didn't ask to be your mountain, I think it was. I just had sex with you. I didn't buy into any of this other having a kid stuff. So there's that.
Speaker 2:So he has zero relationship with his dad, even though his dad is an amazing kind of folk jazz musician, but completely independent of that, and also his dad dies very young. Completely independent of that, jeff buckley develops into this incredible musician. He discovers a guitar at the age of five in his grandma's closet. He decides at the age of five he wants to be a professional musician.
Speaker 1:His stepfather hang on first record. What was the record he grew up on?
Speaker 2:Physical Graffiti.
Speaker 1:Physical Graffiti Led Zeppelin.
Speaker 2:Absolutely right, well done, he loves Led Zepp massive Zepp fan, which you don't initially hear when you first listen to Zepp and think of Jeff Buckley.
Speaker 1:But it's true, once you know, you don't notice it. It's really interesting.
Speaker 2:The guitars are distorted, apart from at the end there's no fuzz pedal, so he discovers he wants to be a musician. He then goes to music college at 19. He then lives in Los Angeles, works in a hotel for about 5 years in loads of bands, does backing vocals in a band. He's the backing vocalist in a band called wild blue yonder. Can you believe you got this guy?
Speaker 1:I just stick him on backing vocals I mean, it's incredible and he's a massive metal head as well, like metal bands, yeah, yeah what's his name at this point? His name at this point is scotty moore, scotty's head, isn't it scotty moore head, scotty moore, scotty, scotty moorehead, isn't it scotty? Moorehead, scotty moorehead, yes scotty moorehead, you're right, scotty moorehead, um, and he, yeah, so then.
Speaker 2:But then so he's doing that, he's loving being a musician, playing open mics all the time, playing where he can, just developing all the time in loads of different ways. And then in 1991 there's a tribute for tim buckley and he's like, oh, I should do that. And then he decides he's going to go to pay his respects and he plays it and obviously he blows everyone away and this singular event is so pivotal in his life because obviously then he gets record label interest, he gets the residency at the cafe you were mentioning earlier, guy, where he was yeah yeah, um, and he meets rebecca, um, rebecca moore, his girlfriend, who inspires a lot of this, this album grace, and she's also an artist and musician herself.
Speaker 2:So they live together in new york for a bit, so that one single event he decides to do because he wants to pay respects to tim buckley, who was never there for him in his life, explodes his life and then, obviously, once he gets that residency, moves in york, he becomes everyone's after him so his dad, his dad, weirdly, um, yeah, it ends up starting his uh posthumously starting his career, in the same way that jeff buckley after his death, sends a lot of people back to tim buckley's records.
Speaker 1:So it's a very strange thing and it's mad and he chooses the surname buckley, but then he really resents.
Speaker 2:I've got another story I'll tell you later because I have wanged on here. I do apologize, but he, he kind of resents. You know obviously that reference. Oh, it's tim, tim Buckley's son. You know obviously, because if you hear that and see those two albums they go oh, that's nice, father and son, they must have sat him on his knee and taught him guitar.
Speaker 2:Nope nada, no, nothing at all so yeah, there we go, and along the way he picks up loads of influences. He's a complete sponge for all music and one of those influences is, as guy said earlier, as noserat fatty ellie khan um, who is awesome and I I did credible.
Speaker 1:If you've not heard him, I I had heard him before uh on a track on I think it was the dead man walking soundtrack, where he collaborated on two tracks with uh, eddie vedder right so I was I was aware. I was aware of him, uh, through those tracks, but I'd forgotten how completely awesome he is because he is Unbelievable voice, a voice like a velvet fire. What is he? He says on. Shinnok. He says, this guy's my Elvis.
Speaker 4:Oh, wow, that's so cool, absolutely.
Speaker 1:So, moving through these songs, we've talked about Dreambrother a bit already, but Mojo Pen, again, one of my other issues is is that it yes, there were three covers, but it wasn't three covers and as sort of as you implied earlier sort of seven of his songs? I think there are like two, literally two songs on the album that are written by jeff buckley. It's like the others are all co-writes.
Speaker 1:That is so true mojo pin and grace were both brought with him from the previous band Gods and Monsters, which was Gary Lucas, Gary Lucas' band yes.
Speaker 1:And Gary Lucas wrote all of the music for both of those songs and sort of gave it to Geoff Buckley and then Geoff Buckley sort of stuck the stuff over the top and again, you know, part of the issue I think I had at the time as I say again, I don't have it now but was people are like oh, jeff Buckley writes such great songs. And I'm like these are the same people that are going oh, you can't say Robbie Williams is a songwriter. You know, guy Chambers writes all the music and then just gives it to him and he just writes some lyrics and a melody over the top and I'm like why are you complaining about that? And then going Jeff Buck, that's literally just what happens with these songs, many of these songs from Grace, and it's always so amazing. It's like, is that what you're actually saying?
Speaker 2:There's a lot of crossover chat with Robbie Williams and Geoff Buckley on the forums. I find that the chat groups I go on whenever I bring up Robbie, I get Geoff chat and whenever I bring up.
Speaker 1:Geoff, I get Robbie chat. They're pretty much synonymous.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's true, but you're absolutely right, like there's, there's, I think there's any you're right, there's only two songs, aren't there? There are three songs that are so solely jeff buckley's, yeah, which are eternal life, um, last goodbye, and a lover you should have come over, yeah, and that's why it's an eclectic, even more eclectic album. Obviously, virtuosity makes it so, but there's a lot of different writers on this.
Speaker 1:There's a lot, which I had a problem with. There's no way around that. I found that problematic.
Speaker 4:Do you still find it problematic Because I wasn't sure?
Speaker 1:No, I don't now because I understand, as I say, I understand the story now and I understand that when they signed him, they said we don't know who we're signing or what we're signing here. We're signing it because he's doing this shinae stuff and and and bigger and bigger people came to see him and said we've got to sign this guy. And when they signed him, it was a completely unusual signing, because when you sign someone, you go we've signed you on the back of your demo tape, we've signed you on the back of these songs. And they were just signing him on the back of him.
Speaker 1:And there's the guy in one of the documentaries said we didn't know what we were going to get. We didn't know if we're going to get the jeff buckley big band or, you know, could be jeff buckley hip-hop album. We didn't know what we were going to get. Um, because, because he, we were signing him on the back of his name and this buzz and and these and this voice and and. So it wasn't a fully formed package. And so what it is is this incredible mixture of original material and original music that's been given to him and he's put things on top of and covers, and that all makes sense in the context I now understand. At the time I just thought he couldn't get his shit together to write enough songs, which is what you think when you're 21 and a bit of a dick.
Speaker 2:Right, what are we voting for? I'm going to go for mojo pin uh me too.
Speaker 4:Okay, well, I I'm just going back to your point. I just on the songwriting, for I I think if someone gives you the music and you write some words and lyrics over, I think that is very much still writing the song. I agree, I do agree. I just wanted to state that for the record, I'm gonna vote for dream brother because I still I mojo pin, I love but dream brother, I think, just as it's going out, I'll give it some more, some more praise before it gets kicked out the door, but no, mojo pins going through.
Speaker 1:But before we say goodbye to dream brother, I just want to talk. We haven't talked lyrics at all yet, and I think one of the things is, you can say what you want about him as a singer or an interpretive singer, but he is a singer in the jagger mold, not in the sinatra mold, by which I mean he is not foregrounding lyrics by any means. You know he's doing that. He's taking more the jagger approach of you know, there are definitely lyrics here, but you're going to have to dig if you want to hear them. Um, and and so inevitably, me being me, I did some digging and I would say that dream brother easily contains the most on the nose lyric on the whole album. Uh, do you know the story of what the song's about?
Speaker 1:no, tell me okay, so the basically a friend of his had got a girl pregnant and he essentially wanted to uh warn said friend against making some of the mistakes that perhaps Jeff's father had made. And there and there is a lyric which is as on the nose once you know that, as it could possibly be. He says don't be like the one who made me so old, don't be like the one who left behind his name, because they're, they're waiting for you, like I waited for mine and nobody ever came. And and it's like that's on the nose and you don't hear it because it's all in the middle of all this.
Speaker 1:Jeff Buckley you know, mercurial sort of sound that's going on, but if you look it up and you know what it's about. It's like whoa, that is direct.
Speaker 2:And you wouldn't know, because the lyrics are not in the liner notes either, which you'd usually expect in an IT CD You'd get the lyrics.
Speaker 1:Right, so Mojo Pen goes through, which takes us to the next quarterfinal, which is Eternal Life for the first time, versus Lover. You really should have come over and had some nookie with me.
Speaker 5:Racist Iron man. What have you done, man? What have you done, man? You made a killer of your own bloodstone. Ground my fear. You're a king at the point of a gun. At the point of a gun. All I want to do To just break free and run. Sometimes a man gets carried away. He feels like he should be having his fun, but much too blind to see the damage he's done. Sometimes a man must wait to find a Billy who has no one.
Speaker 4:So I wait for you Two very different 100% Jeff Buckley songs. Right, 100% Jeff Buckley yeah.
Speaker 1:Oh you see what Brett was doing there with the straw.
Speaker 4:Yes, exactly, he's the architect of some proper producing going on here.
Speaker 1:I mean, had it been left to me, it would have been even better. Of course, Of course.
Speaker 2:Well, we'd have had either six quarter finalists or my particular favourite is when you managed to contrive five semi-finalists, which is fucking amazing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean in my defence A I haven't done it for a while and B sports. He's an afric, he doesn't play by the rules and maths.
Speaker 2:These are very much blind spots for me.
Speaker 1:These were the original drafts of the draw that Steve sent us and we had to point out I do realise that in the word quarter of quarterfinals there is some implication of number there that I perhaps should have taken into account, but that's okay. Anyway, thanks for doing the draw, brett. That's what I'm trying to get to Tell us about Eternal Life and Love. You Should have Come Over.
Speaker 2:I love both of them and they're both. Yeah, they're both solo songwriters from him, but they're both incredibly different. The vibe I mean they're only they're three songs apart on the album. They've got Corpus Christi in the middle and they're so different. I mean what a different three songs you've got there. I love. I mean Love. You Should have Come coffee. Everything's just amazing the feel on that. And then Eternal Life is. I love it. It's so heavy. It's when he gets into you can tell he's liked punk, you can tell he likes heavy metal on this, because that's a song you can really hear it. To me, eternal Life is the most 90s sounding song. It's the most.
Speaker 1:It's the most. Zeppelin one, easily, it's the most of its era, isn't it? Do you think the?
Speaker 4:intro sounds a little bit like the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, the bass. The bass is so foregrounded on Eternal Life, it's so heavy.
Speaker 4:We haven't talked about lyrics properly, like Steve just said, but on Love you Should have Come Over. That's the one I'm going to vote for, because I think it sounds like a song that's been around since 1960-something.
Speaker 1:It is timeless.
Speaker 4:The lyrics on it are when a lyric really just works with a voice and a melody and you just get swept away with it. It just creates a mood and you just go with it. That's what this song is to me. For someone in their early 20s to write a song like that, I'm quite astounded by, and I think that's why he works so well as an artist amongst all these other legends and these other covers, because he can write songs like this that go in between them and then you're like oh yeah, that goes between whatever Lilac Wine and Corpus.
Speaker 2:Christi characters.
Speaker 4:It's that good.
Speaker 2:It's a definition of bittersweet, isn't it? It's fantastic and a bit of the crescendo of it.
Speaker 4:it builds and builds, and the little choir he does at the end of it, where he does this faux gospel choir. It just builds and builds and his little ad-libs and his little ad-libs. No his big ad-libs even.
Speaker 2:Little or big, they're all good. All his ads are good. I'm going to vote for Eternal Life and give Steve a problem because he's got to choose one.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm going to begrudgingly vote for Eternal Life. What Are you mad? Well, the thing about Love you Should have Come Over is that I I didn't know Eternal Life before, so it's really fresh to me and I always found Love you Should have Come Over to. It's like I found it felt like it was being conventional and then did unconventional things with the structure. That I found irritating because it sounded so conventional In something like so Real. It was being so unconventional. From the beginning I was like, yes, get more jazz, I want this, but with Love you anyway. But I have to say the reason I'm begrudging you voting for eternal life. I say begrudgingly because even I really like it. I love its heaviness, I love the foregrounded bass. Shit on me.
Speaker 1:There are some points off for some of these lyrics. Here you are. These are, without fail, and I mean, easily the worst lyrics on this album. We're talking sixth form poetry. Gone rogue. Are you ready? Here we go racist. Every man. What have you done, man? You've made a killer of your unborn son. All I want to do is love. Everyone points off there, jeff, but even that's not even a as bad as this. You ready for this? This is great. There's no time for hatred, only questions. Here are the questions, gents. What is love? Where is happiness? What is life? Where is peace, um?
Speaker 4:no good questions no no no, no, if you read them out then they sound like that, but when he sings them, it it works.
Speaker 1:It's like mother of god.
Speaker 2:That's sixth form poetry, I think well, he was 20, he was 26 when he wrote it. I mean I love it. I that's, you know, and everyone who would have listened to it would have been about that age probably, so they'd have identified. I mean I just, yeah, what can I say, steve, it's got a great big, fat bass sound, so I love it so, yeah, yes, I know, I know that you were pouring over the lyrics, as you always do well, he said it was about yeah, it was about um a reaction to kind of you know, faceless men behind desks and masks kind of racist angry, men I think ruining other people's lives.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that on the basis of of things like income, color class, religious beliefs. You know he, that was what he was trying to get to with that, um, but you voted for it which is hang on, hang on.
Speaker 1:Can you imagine if you went to any any of us went to like a, an open mic night or an acoustic night, and sang a song with the lyric racist, angry men. What have you done? They throw fruit at you. They throw fruit at you. Oh, there are so many questions. What is peace? What is life?
Speaker 2:fuck off dude, he did do a lot of open mics. He played a lot, a lot of and you've done a lot of open mics steve, I have tell me about open mics. I've not done many guy. Have you ever done an open mic? I couldn't think of anything worse yeah for myself.
Speaker 4:Terrifying places.
Speaker 1:I haven't got the stomach for it no, I mean, it's basically just drunk people getting drunker and talking.
Speaker 2:Uh, what you're doing isn't it, but not when he would have played. I mean, he would have just silenced her, wouldn't he In?
Speaker 1:fairness. I mean, you saw me back in the day when the style I developed to shut them up. As far as I was concerned, I had two options, which was shout at everybody and lose my temper, which wasn't really an option or be the loud, loudest, most aggressive thing in the room that they couldn't avoid looking at. So I used to come off stage bleeding, uh, with a, with a broken vocal cords, because I was shouting and screaming and it was. It was awful, I mean, I was terrible, but I did get them to shush and I suspect, the point being that I suspect that, um, jeff Buckley was doing something similar in that, you know, he knew damn well that people were going to talk and it's like well, this is great if they're just here to drink coffee and chat. It's a great test to see if this material is any good, if I can hold their attention, because that's what open mics are all about he loved it.
Speaker 2:He actually, uh, in the year before before he passed away, he went back on a secret tour doing unannounced open mics or small coffee shop gigs, and he loved them because it took away the pressure. He felt the pressure of being this. You know, the new great singer-songwriter. It's like when comedians do that. He loved them because he knew he could fail. He said you know you can either entertain or irritate them, but you know there's no expectations when you go in like that and it's great. He loved that. He was fearless.
Speaker 1:He's absolutely fearless yeah, but that's what. That's what comedians do. Big, you know, big comedians will go and play small venues to try out jokes, to see if people laugh or not, and that that's the way to develop the material. Musicians don't tend to do that. Once they're at stadium level, they'll play stadiums. They're not going to play tiny theatres, because it doesn't work like that. Right, let's move this on, because we're going very slowly. That's because Geoff's an interesting chap and there's lots to talk about. So the third quarterfinal is and this is going to be easily the hardest for me is for the first to fly on their way.
Speaker 5:Oh, it's my time coming. I'm not afraid. Afraid to die. My fate and voice is a fire. This is our last goodbye. I hate to feel the love between us die, but it's over. I'll just hear this and then I'll go. You gave me more to live for, more than you'll ever know. More than you'll ever know, guy, come on.
Speaker 4:Why did we have to do this?
Speaker 2:You're the one who suggested it.
Speaker 4:No, but not the album. This. These are, like I mean, along with Love. You Should have Come Over. These are my three favourite songs on the record, so you basically have only one left. I'm pissed because one of my favourites is gone and now I'm going to lose another one, and we're not even in the same bloody finals OK.
Speaker 4:Yes, come on, I think these are. Yeah, this whole album is. The sound of these songs on this album, and these two in particular, like we said, is incredibly 90s. It has that dynamic sort of. It's a beautiful kind of reverb, sort of soaked vocal. The chimey guitar, the drums have this very clean, crisp, clinical, and you know that's Andy Wallace who is the producer of this record, but also mixed, nevermind by Nirvana, and has mixed many records and produced some as well. He's just got a very technical ability to make whatever it is in the room sort of gel and, I think, sit and sound full. Even though this album sounds very sparse and kind of like it's in a big cathedral, it has this really reverb, tastic, um, decay to every every sound and a real spatial feel to it. Um, and these two are the sort of, maybe sort of two of the bigger fully formed pop. You know productions, perhaps, along with lovely, you should have come over in terms of.
Speaker 4:You know, last goodbye's got amazing string arrangements on it and grace just has this incredible sort of I don't even what. They're just kind of chords that you haven't quite really heard before together, but they still sound majestic and beautiful and lovely. I mean, I'm not going to vote yet because I'm still livid about these being up against each other who did this draw?
Speaker 2:It's rubbish.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is Well my issue here. I mean, I think these are both wonderful. I love the fact that Last Goodbye he's playing a slide on a 12 string. You shouldn't do that. No one plays that sound at the beginning. It's only because I watched one of the documentaries and I saw him. I'm like he's playing a slide on a 12 string. Rickenbacker. That's really not what you should do. Oh, that's that sound at the beginning of Last Goodbye Brilliant. Obviously, under normal circumstances, I would vote Last Goodbye because that is a song he properly wrote on his own, and a lot of the stuff that I love about grace is those incredible guitar riffs, uh, which are gary lucas. However, I have to vote for grace, uh, because, a I need to get over myself with the whole original music thing sometimes and b it's just just unassailably magnificent.
Speaker 2:So grace gets my vote I love both of them as well. So hard, it's so hard to choose. Um, I'm gonna vote for last goodbye because it's just the most elegant, beautiful way.
Speaker 2:That's wonderful it's true artistry to say basically, basically, he's dumping someone. Let's, yeah, make no bones, yeah, that's what's so great about him. He's like he's sent some answer. I mean, he, he is breaking up with someone and it could be like I'm gonna dump you or sling your hook and it's just the most beautiful romantic way of saying goodbye. It's like the, the perfect way to break up with someone and still make them feel amazing, like it's just extraordinary. How do you do that?
Speaker 1:and he's how do we know he's not being broken up with? Is that clear in the lyric?
Speaker 2:I think. I think it's. He is the protagonist in it, I think yeah, he says, but it's over it's very much from his perspective.
Speaker 4:I hate to be the one to say this or whatever it is I hate.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, that's fine, I think, if we're going to analyze it with a legal fine tooth kind of no, I just don't have the lyric in front of me.
Speaker 1:I don't remember the specifics, so I'm not to question you. I won't question you I think he does.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think he does um, but like every.
Speaker 4:Buckley song. It kind of flips between personal perspective and sort of a poetic kind of. Yeah. The state of a relationship broadly speaking as well. It kind of goes back and forth.
Speaker 2:It's all in the detail, isn't it? The message or the overarching things you want to say are just that.
Speaker 1:You know, know, if you want to write a story, it's all in how you detail it. It's also also that, also the bass line, also the bass line. That is true, that bass line is amazing.
Speaker 4:I really want to sing it now to prove the food oh, I've given into it.
Speaker 2:I've given into it. We've we've not sung many of the risks on this album because they're so blooming complex. It's just too hard. It's just too hard. It's just too hard to either sing the riff or sing the vocal. I'd like you now Brett quickly sing at least one of the riffs from Grace. I can't, that's too much pressure.
Speaker 4:You little Irish jig.
Speaker 2:How do you sing the intro to Grace? It's impossible. No, it's not what are you voting for? Brett, I have just voted and then spent two minutes explaining what I voted for which was.
Speaker 1:Last. Goodbye and you were too busy making a joke about it. I'm sorry. Who are we waiting for then?
Speaker 2:Wait for me, wait for me. Oh, ok, sorry.
Speaker 1:OK, let's cut that one out.
Speaker 2:No, keep that in the book Guy shush.
Speaker 1:Guy, what are you voting for?
Speaker 4:I'm going to talk quickly about Grace before I vote for Last Goodbye. No no, no, no, no, there we go. There's some karma for you For voting out a number you should have come over so this is like the hardest.
Speaker 1:So what you're saying is that you want to vote for Grace. You're just like punishing me for not voting for Grace?
Speaker 4:No, no, I'm not.
Speaker 4:So morally you're saying is that you want to vote for grace. You're just like punishing me for not voting. No, no, I'm not so morally, grace. Morally, grace is still going through because you're being petty. I would argue that this is the best. Uh tracks two and three of an album from the 90s, like the fact, the fact that they're back to back um and fighting talk. I think these two songs are so influential from music and bands that came after or discovered Buckley, like we all did, sort of turn of the millennia or after his death.
Speaker 4:So you've got Radiohead famously seeing him in 94 and hearing his falsetto and realising that Tom York realises he can sing falsetto and that's not a bad thing and he goes on to do a lot of that on the bends and I think a lot of his singing style beyond that is yeah it's either neil young or it's jeff buckley, really yeah they're the two influences muse for example yeah who actually now owns his telecaster from this album he bought it oh yeah, I saw a picture of him with that.
Speaker 4:What's that about? So, again, you, they're incredible similarities, and some would say too close at times, between his styling and and Jeff Buckley. But then the amount of artists that came out and have just it's weird. I've never experienced it. It's probably maybe the only one in my lifetime where there's been such a. I guess Cobain is the other one, but there is only they're the two artists that have just, like I say, there's just been this axis of they created everything that I loved sort of post their existence because, I was of an age where I kind of became a teenager at the back end of their lives, uh, and hugely influential yeah, and grace is that song that, when you discover it, you're like what is this?
Speaker 4:this is symphonic, this is beautiful, this is choral, this is soulful. This is again guitar playing and, like we talked about the riffs, you can't understand that it's so good so hard to play and he you know, he loves a weird tuning.
Speaker 1:He loves he, just he's a real just incredible yeah, he seems to hear it and just make the instrument do what he wants it to do, which is fantastic can I just ask you the question because my understanding was that, uh, grace was in open g tuning, but I saw um an interview with jimmy page, who said that one of the things that impressed him so much. He said oh, I thought I thought all these were in open tuning because they're so interesting and weird, uh, like I would have done it. And then I I discovered he was playing everything in standard tuning and I was even more impressed.
Speaker 4:I think it's in drop d, I think yeah, that's what I heard in it which is not really no, it's not much of a weird tune, but uh, yeah, and and last goodbye, I think is in open g or a variation of g like, okay, I always thought he was an open tuning guy.
Speaker 1:It was just because jimmy page said he wasn't.
Speaker 4:I was like, oh okay, I'll listen to jimmy yeah but it, like you say, that slide guitar sort of sonic at the start of Last Goodbye and the bass line and then the strings, it just. And then, like every Buckley song, there's always a bit of ugliness in it, there's a bit of tension, there's a bit of gnarliness, like you said. The zep kind of comes through and both of these songs have it in different ways. But then it relieves, the storm passes and you get this soaring part of the song. They're just two phenomenal songs.
Speaker 1:Oh, that bit sorry. Just to talk about soaring, there's that incredible did you believe this would happen to me? Line where I can't think I've just sung another bit. But there's that one line it always used to get me the hairs would stand up on my arms.
Speaker 4:Oh, the mid-late of Last Goodbye, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yes, it's incredible. It's incredible.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's I mean, it's a song that I think sneaks up on you when you first get into Buckley. You're all about Grace, but then I think Last Goodbye for me is the one that just gets to me in different ways beyond the first initial hit. Oh, it's incredible. Okay, well, last goodbye goes through.
Speaker 1:I'm absolutely mortified. So just very briefly, grace was um. He described as a, as a little prayer, um, which was, uh, about how he wasn't afraid, or you, you, someone who wasn't afraid to die because they had. I've got the quote.
Speaker 2:It's about not feeling bad about your own mortality when you have true love. It was inspired by saying goodbye to his girlfriend at an airport, which I can empathize with, those little, small moments of heartbreak. You know that that type of thing and that inspired him to write this and to explore. I think that was rebecca moore actually would have been. You know his love for her and and he had very intense romantic relationships.
Speaker 4:Yeah, he's an intense guy. I'm getting that. You do get that, don't you? And that distorted vocal bit in Grace as well, where it kind of just goes on like a megaphone sound. Again there's little hints of different weird quirky production things all over this record, but really clever and let's not deny it.
Speaker 2:He was an incredible musician of incredible versatility and power and I would imagine you know most ladies would have found him very attractive because he looks a bit like james dean, doesn't as well, he's like matt, yeah but he looks like he should have been in beverly hills 90210 at the time you know, and that was the one of the other things that he.
Speaker 1:There was always this tension, it would seem, between do I, you know, I've changed my name to buckley, yeah, but I also want to push back against the buckley thing yeah I, I really want to be an independent weird artist. But I also want to, but I've signed to columbia because bob dylan's on it and springsteen's on it for a million dollars and there's a tension there.
Speaker 1:And there was a tension with I'm. I'm obviously very, very attractive, but I want people to take my music seriously and not come to see me because I'm attractive. There were all these, all these sort of tensions that he was um pushing back against, in the same way that I think there's a tension between him people saying, oh, you know, he's such a romantic and he was such this and that and and actually he was very prosaic in a lot of ways. He was just a bloic in a lot of ways. He was just a bloke in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1:I watched a thing where he was just walking around the streets of Paris chatting to someone and it was really interesting because you know, they're like oh, do you take any drugs, jeff? And he's like oh, yeah, I drink my ass off, but I don't take drugs generally. No, I do smoke a lot of weed though. He's like, do you not take anything else? And he's like oh, I don't like cocaine, I don't like cocaine at all. Yeah, because when you, when you, take cocaine, you all you want to do is fuck, but your dick doesn't work, which seems like a contradiction to me and it's just like it. Just, it was like every you know, with every step he was becoming, you know, less and less of a sort of demigod and more and more of just a bloke saying some slightly off-colour things about women and drugs, and it was like OK, fair enough. Actually, in some ways, I'm fine with that, it's OK.
Speaker 2:He wasn't totally immortal and godlike he was an actual human being. He was just a bloke and that's why he was an amazing musician, but I can imagine especially as he turned up to so many small venues as well just the stardust he must have. He would have just had such an impact on so many people, whether he was famous or not. He would have just been an incredibly memorable person to have interacted with right.
Speaker 1:Finally, for the first time, we're still in the quarterfinals. This is epic, sorry folks. Um in the or or uh, you're welcome if you're enjoying the length of this episode. So, finally, for the very first time, a little chap you might have heard of, called Hallelujah versus Lilac Wine. I think I can see how this is going to go.
Speaker 5:I heard there was a secret chord that David played and it pleased the Lord. But you don't really care for music, do you? Well, it goes like this the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall and the major lift, the baffled king composing Hallelujah. Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah. That white is sweet and hurting like my love.
Speaker 2:Two covers still, but this cover is so famous, hallelujah, it kind of dominates the album actually in a way that when you listen to it again and again, you really get into it. It almost sticks out a bit like a sore album, actually, in a way that when you listen to it again and again, you really get into it. It almost sticks out a bit like a sore thumb, doesn't it, in a way?
Speaker 1:Oh, yes, it does.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, it's had a very storied past, this song. It's an amazing song, beautiful, and his version is utterly beautiful. I love it. It's an incredible song and he just produces an incredible vocal and arrangement on it. It's wonderful. And this song has gone from strength to strength, hasn't it? I mean, guy, you must have some opinion on this. You might have even worked on it at some point.
Speaker 4:I've brought so many versions of it. Yeah, I don't think it necessarily sticks out as such on the record. I actually think it blends in beautifully. I think, post this album coming out and it becoming what it became um, which is out of his control. It it is. You know. You look on streaming services. I'm sure it's yes, the most obvious.
Speaker 2:Single is what I mean.
Speaker 4:It just posts out in that sense um, but again it goes back to his covers and his uh, you know, you look at famous cover versions that surpass the original and this is this is probably in the top three of all time.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's 100%.
Speaker 4:Yeah, you've taken a lesser known well to me and to, I think, many, many people, a lesser known, Leonard Cohen.
Speaker 1:Oh God, yeah. It came out in a Leonard Cohen album that they'd almost rejected, that they then didn't promote. Nobody listened to it, nobody bought it.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, it's like In my career. I mean it was part of the resurgence around that time when it had its resurgence and it got covered by everybody. It got played at everyone's wedding. It got played on it's on Shrek. Mauriam things.
Speaker 1:Shrek was a big one, yeah, but this is the interesting thing about this song, which? But this is the interesting thing about this song, which is that he's not really covering the original. No, it's the John Cale version. He's covering the John Cale version. There's a whole documentary and a book just about the song, because the song is such a thing. The original is a lot of fun, but it is like a 1984 synthesiser, very strangely, very Leonard Cohen-ly sung song. And and had it not been for john kale, um, I don't think that, uh, it would have been picked up by buckley.
Speaker 4:And had it not been for buckley, it wouldn't have been picked up by everybody ever, and that, for me, is one of the beautiful reasons for cover versions being so valid in society and on records, because not only do people discover that songs can go on to become things, it's amazing just how words on a piece of paper can be interpreted different ways by different types of people. And for some people it becomes amazing, like Louis Luet, for example. There's hundreds of covers of that, but the Kingsman is the version you know, because there's something about their version, something about it. Yeah, for the record, I do completely accept that version.
Speaker 1:You know, because there's something about their version, something about it, yeah um for the record for the record.
Speaker 1:I, I do completely accept that and and I also completely accept that this is one of the most brilliant. I think this, I mean, this is one of those times when, uh, this, this is clearly the definitive version um, I, I don't think anybody has topped this and there is even even in my, you know, early 20s muso dickery. I could see that, however stroppy I might be about about other aspects of this album, I could see that this was something incredibly special, um, and and that far surpassed you know its origins and reinterpreted it and made it his own. And you know, I mean, obviously I know that now, but even at the time that was obvious even to me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, ok, let's vote, because there's possibly more to say about it. I'm going to vote for Hallelujah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's Hallelujah for me as well 3-0, obviously yeah, ok, fine, which takes us to the semi-finals. So semi-final one is Amarjar Pinn versus Eternal Life. Don't wanna read for you, Don't wanna know I'm bloody tortured.
Speaker 5:The white horses blow, Memories fire. The rhythms fall slow. Black beauty, I love you so Eternal life is now on my trail. Got my record in the car for a man Just need one last layer.
Speaker 2:Why are these ugly tears? Wow, okay, so, okay. So Mojo Pin is this very transcendental, beautiful, extraordinary piece of music and Eternal Life shows a bit of a grit, a bit of anger, and there's a story that he had to do this GLR session when he came to the UK and they got stuck in traffic. So the guy put on the guy he's the record company guy who was, you know, helping him out when he was in London. It's getting a bit quiet now with the chats. He's very quiet, quite introverted, you know really sweet guy, but you know really sweet guy. But you know it was quiet.
Speaker 2:So he put on the radio and they were listening to glr and then they're like oh okay, so come up later. We got tim buckley's boy coming in. He's going to sing us songs and I just kept referring to him, not ever as jeff buckley, just tim buckley's son. So he got more and more angry and he ended up kicking the radio in the car and breaking it. And then they they're in this traffic jam.
Speaker 2:Then late, um, and glr has been putting out all these traffic announcements for the for the time he's been doing it and they go oh yeah, nice of you to turn up as if they don't know what's going on with london traffic. And so he's really pissed off when he's doing the, the, the kind of the session, and he almost like the, the onr guy's like shit. I thought he really wasn't going to go and play, I thought he was just going to walk off and it's this really terse interview with the DJ and it's really awkward and he's kind of talking about record labels. She's like well, you've just got to play the game sometimes, haven't you? And she's really like, really like flippant. And then he just goes and plays this incredible version, acoustic version, of um of grace and just like blows everyone's mind and it's just spectacular the verse he does, just with an acoustic guitar, totally full, and you can just hear like the jaws dropping and they're like oh, that was amazing and as a result, he sells out.
Speaker 2:He's at his first ever london show, which is a club called bungees, so much there's so many people around the corner, so much so that, um, the anr person there or the record company person there, goes around the corner to another venue and says, are you empty tonight? Yeah, okay, good, can we use you? And they go. So yes, and she books that venue and everyone who's waiting. He then goes and plays another set of that second venue, literally around the corner, like pied piper, like leading them all around the corner to play, and he plays a completely different set than the first set he played and that's that's like classic jeff buckley, just to be able to do that. And they're all like, so they're very aware they're in like something very special is going on and it's just this incredible artist. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 4:And that's yeah, wow, that's incredible. I didn't know any of that.
Speaker 1:No, I'd never heard any of that before. That's a great story.
Speaker 2:These songs kind of represent the story really nicely, that kind of this mythic, beautiful ethereal music you can do. But also the anger that was in him which we've obviously his estrangement from his father and how complex that must have been. But I love Eternal Life.
Speaker 4:I really do, so I'm voting for it. Oh God, Guy, I'm probably going to go with Mojo Pin just because I like it a little bit more than Eternal. Well, I used to love Eternal Life a lot. I used to really like the punkiness of it all, and as I've gotten older I've just kind of got into the more subtler bits I still haven't grown up. I've just, I've just faded away into this, oh I like the soft airy bit. How about you steve? What are you voting for?
Speaker 1:oh, this is killing me, I mean, I mean, I don't think in some ways that either of these should be here. I'm really concerned about the other semi-final, because that should really be the final and Grace should be here. This whole thing is a disaster. Whoever did this? Who did this fucking draw?
Speaker 2:It's an absolute shit show. What an idiot. There should be at least five songs in the semi-final. For starters, there should be five songs in the final.
Speaker 1:Yeah, five songs in the final. Yeah, i'm'm gonna have to vote mojo pin, I think. I think it's a great opener, I think it sets up the story of the album really well and also I can't get past those racist, angry men. What is life, what is peace? Lyrics on eternal life and they're certainly not this far. So mojo pin is going through.
Speaker 2:I mean you've complained about this semi-final, but you did vote for eternal life in the quarter final, just saying it could have been over yes, I see that now.
Speaker 1:Okay, it's. It's rare that I'm just going to admit it, but just looking at the sheet I am wondering why.
Speaker 4:I did that, oh dear.
Speaker 1:And then the other semi-final is Last Goodbye against Hallelujah guitar solo.
Speaker 5:And I've seen your flag on the marble arch. And love is not a victory march. It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah. Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is very difficult.
Speaker 4:Let's try and ask her first, because I can't Hang on, hang on.
Speaker 1:Can I just say? Yeah too much pain. Hang on, hang on. Can I just say yeah, it is. It is for me a measure of how incredible hallelujah is that steve never votes for cover version. Sumner ever, who loves last goodbye, thinks it's wonderful and knows that it's one of the few tracks written only by jeff brookley on the album, is still struggling to know what to vote for here that is a measure of how good hallelujah is I'm going to cut through the whimsy, the flappy bits.
Speaker 2:I'm going to go straight to my vote. I love Hallelujah and he's a modern hymn. It really is a beautiful song, but it has become something that's owned. Not sound cheesy actually, this will sound cheesy, but owned by everyone. If it's a hymn, it's a communal event, and Last Goodbye is a song written purely by him and represents him more. I think if he would be voting here which I doubt he would be doing he would want me to vote for Last Goodbye, so I'm going to vote for it. So Last Goodbye is my vote.
Speaker 4:Guy, I'm going to make you two.
Speaker 2:Do the difficult bit.
Speaker 4:I am Look, we are really picking up fine, fine hairs here and I agree there is a potential overexposure to something like Hallelujah. For a number of varying reasons, most of which I think are still positive the fact that it is what it is is incredible.
Speaker 4:But Last Goodbye, it's like it's just we've got very little left in this race of, I thinkff buckley's sort of songwriting and artistry and these kind of classic songs that he writes um, and that's what I love about him. Ultimately, last goodbye, I think, is a worthy contender to win the competition based on what we've got left um hallelujah I love, but last goodbye is to be able to write that. Yeah, it's incredible, in my opinion I.
Speaker 1:I'm going to, I think, vote hallelujah for a number of reasons. I love last goodbye. I think it's important that I do vote at this late stage for a cover, because I never, ever ever do, and actually, I think it's a a statement of how great I think this album is.
Speaker 1:Now great I think he is, so I do that out of respect to him. Uh, rather than. You know, usually I would find the respectful thing to do would be to vote for the artist's original material, but it's it's a show of my respect for him that I'm voting for something he interpreted, rather than the other way around.
Speaker 1:Also, this idea I know you weren't necessarily implying a religiousness when you said the modern hymn, but I I do find that yeah I mean, cohen is a filthy man and um, he, he always kind of was, and it's very, very obviously to me as a lyric hound, a song about sex. Specifically, it's a song about orgasms and this idea that everyone has where they just don't listen to it and they're like, oh it's lovely, hallelujah. It's like it's a song about the orgasm. What are you doing? It's filth. It's a massive extended metaphor for sex. It's all there. It's all blindingly obvious. There's there's even some sort of some bondage in there, you know, and it's like.
Speaker 1:The thing is, what I love about his version is to me it doesn't sound hymnal, it sounds sexual, it sounds he makes it sound sexy in an interesting way. I mean. So I hear the sex in it when he sings it, uh and when and when. No defense to other people that covered it. No, actually, lots of offense. So they cover it as if it's, as if it's a hymn and I'm like what the fuck is wrong with people?
Speaker 2:it's a sex song um, you've just ruined it for everyone who's listened. Well it's just that's my fucking fault that people don't listen to songs if we're gonna, if we're gonna, if we're gonna tape anything up from this bombshell, it's a sex song I mean, it's not the thing is.
Speaker 1:The thing is people sing it so you can actually hear the lyrics, and people still don't get it and it's it's so. I never once listened to it and didn't think it was about any anything else but sex it's like. So I'm voting for it because he sounds like a man who understands that and I think it's the definitive cover version of my lifetime and I love it and I'm. It's fair enough that last goodbye is going through, but I think it is marvelous, which takes us to the final yes before we get to the final, I did say at the start of this.
Speaker 2:Um, how will we bring a trademark, uh, sense of irreverence and whimsy. So here's something that may well not work, but I had to try anyway. So, um, when he did a phantom tour of it's called a phantom solo tour of cafes in northeast of us in december 96, so very late on, he appeared under a series of aliases and they're all kind of crazy names. Um, and I've designed a game called I see where this is going. Yeah, is it buckley or is it buckles? So is this a title of his alias, a true alias, or is it a title of an Adam Buxton song from his song wars with Joe Cornish on Radio 6? Music.
Speaker 2:So is the crack robots? Did he appear as the crack robots or Jane's brain? One of these is Buckley and one of these is Buckles. Is it Buckley or Buckles?
Speaker 4:I reckon he went as Jane's Brain.
Speaker 2:Okay, steve Cracklebat 1-0 to Stephen Sumner. Yay, did he appear as Four Foot Club or Possessed by Elves?
Speaker 4:Possessed by Elves.
Speaker 1:Four Foot Club One all.
Speaker 2:Possessed by Elves was Buckley and Four Foot Club was Buckles. Okay, father, demo or Meatballs.
Speaker 4:Father Demo Steve.
Speaker 1:I'll go Meatballs. Then it was.
Speaker 2:Buckles likes him some meatballs. It was Father Demo for Geoff. Okay, smackro Biotic versus the Hours.
Speaker 1:I'm going to say Smackro Biotic is Buckley.
Speaker 4:I'm going to say smackrobiotic is Buckley, I'll go the opposite.
Speaker 2:I'll go the hours.
Speaker 4:It's too old. Oh, oh, tension, okay, the tension is ratcheting up.
Speaker 1:Hang on, which was which, though we don't find out who was which. Smackrobotic was Buckley and the other one was Buckles.
Speaker 2:Okay, is it Buckley or is it Buckles? Loop, that one was buckles. Okay, is it buckly or is it buckles? Loop that up. Go ahead and turn it into a jingle. Okay, uh, dirty robots. Or topless america for the win, for the win, topless america, or dirty robots got to be topless america for buckley and steve oh you can go for the same, you don't have to go.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna say topless america as well. It sounds like a buckley lyric. And Steve, you can go for the same, you don't have to go. I'm going to say Topless America as well.
Speaker 4:I think it sounds like a Buckley lyric.
Speaker 2:You're both right. We go to a sudden death decider A puppet show named Julio, a puppet show named Julio or Special Bath.
Speaker 1:I'm going to say Special Bath is Buckley.
Speaker 2:Guy.
Speaker 4:I'm going to say a puppet show named Julio is Buckley.
Speaker 2:It's just you and Julio down by the schoolyard Guy because you have won Buckley or Buckles.
Speaker 1:I'm very sad about that. Well, that's a lovely competition, brett. I enjoyed that enormously. That takes us beautifully into the final, which is possibly erroneously Mojo Pin, who's to say versus Last Goodbye, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, so, so, so.
Speaker 5:So, so, so, Kiss me, please kiss me. Kiss me out of desire, baby, no consolation. Oh, you know it makes me so angry, cos I know that in time I'll only make you cry Since our last goodbye.
Speaker 4:I mean all respect to Mojo Pinn, but how did it get here?
Speaker 1:It shouldn't have got this far, which is a bit of a spoiler as to where this is going, but it really shouldn't have got this far, I love it.
Speaker 2:I'm voting for it. Of course I'm not. Of course I'm not, but it doesn't matter. Here's me trying to bring it back. Ok, just get ready, steve. Every song's a winner on this album. How can we have one? They're all so beautiful, true?
Speaker 1:True.
Speaker 2:Did you like what I did there?
Speaker 1:I see what you did there, right? Are we all voting then?
Speaker 2:Yeah, he seems so depleted For someone who doesn't understand sports and bangs on about it, and also doesn't like covers.
Speaker 1:You voted for a cover all the way through and you're disappointed that the sporting format has fallen down.
Speaker 2:Me and my ADHD were thinking about Hallelujah and how it was filthy and I just got distracted for a minute. It's interesting you seem slightly glum. That's an interesting reaction.
Speaker 1:No, no, I was just mildly distracted by filth.
Speaker 2:Okay, oh well, good Well, thanks for not sharing. I would say there yeah, okay, so I'm voting for that. What are you voting for?
Speaker 4:I'm going to put a Mojo pin in Mojo pin and let that one down.
Speaker 2:Oh nice, what is a?
Speaker 4:Mojo pin. Is it a badge that came with the magazine?
Speaker 1:That is a fantastic answer. I thought briefly that it was something that killed your ability to write songs because it put a pin in your mojo and deflated it. But reading the lyric, that doesn't make any sense because it sounds like he needs one.
Speaker 2:No, it's a fix for an all-consuming desire. So if you fall in love with a girl, he said, you start drinking her drinks, watching her favourite TV shows and pick up all of her kind of nuances and has he made that phrase up, or is that actually a thing? That's what he said. He might have made it up, but yeah.
Speaker 1:Do you think there's like loads of Americans shouting at the radio now? Because this is like a really well-known phrase and it's like stupid Brits don't know what mojo pin means.
Speaker 2:Possibly, I mean. I would imagine people have been shouting at their radios.
Speaker 1:It's not my fault, you say it lilac. What's a lilac? Lilac wine, lilac wine. Stop saying lilac, it's lilac, for fuck's sake. There you are. Push back against those Americans.
Speaker 2:You tell them Steve, yeah, I Articulate stuff from me there, just put a podcast tariff on them. Yep, so are we. Are we all voting for? Yes, we're all voting for.
Speaker 1:Last Goodbye because we've all got ears and we're sensible. But it is brilliant and it should be in the final, so I'm happy.
Speaker 4:I'm happy that half the final is good, not that Mojo Pin isn't good it's amazing, mojo Pin's great, but it shouldn't be in the final it shouldn't be in the final. It shouldn't be in the final. It's a supporting character. It's not going to win Best Actor. It's a supporting actor at best.
Speaker 2:I mean, I would say, I think it opens the album. Well, yeah, I would say way to build narrative tension, you two Right what are we doing that one great Pug?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I'm going to go with five.
Speaker 2:Okay, well then me about this album. Then how do you so you? Have you been listening to it all the way through your kind of adult life then, guy, because I definitely had 10 years off for a brief period.
Speaker 4:It was all I listened to religiously for about two years and then I've come back to it, like you, in recent years. I actually listened to the sketches from my sweetheart the drunk and the live hna albums maybe more, to be honest with you, because they're so big and long and weird and, um, they always seem to find new ways to package his stuff because they've been. They've been talking about a biopic for the last 20 years and that's never happened. I think his mum is very, very protective is it his mother? I think it's his mother, um of his estate and how he, how it's portrayed and well, you say that, but there's.
Speaker 1:but there's a lot of material out there for somebody who made one album, yeah of course yeah, and I think that's just a yeah.
Speaker 4:it's never going to. You know, they're never going to let it lie, are they? Every artist, I think, passes away now. The further away from it, the more the control opens up to whoever. But for one, I'm glad that I get to hear Forget Her. I get to hear the legacy version of Grace. I think is fantastic. If you haven't heard it. The Bob Dylan cover of Mama You've Been On my Mind is phenomenal. And there's Screaming Jay Hawkins. I think there's a cover of him on there. There's Forget Her. There's reallyreaming Jay Hawkins. I think there's a cover of him on there. I forget how. There's really cool, crazy stuff and it's just him and a guitar in the studio playing around.
Speaker 1:I love his Kick Out the Jams cover oh so good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's so good. I mean, ok, well, let's end with A. It was a beautiful album, by the way. I kind of fell back in love with it again.
Speaker 4:I didn't ask you.
Speaker 2:And realized just what a spectacular piece of music is and what an incredible talent he was. But he was just getting going and I think when you listen to the sketches, really left sketches, I mean, they were quite fully formed. There were some songs that sounded like they could have been off grace. But I think when you hear everybody here wants you, it's like's, like wow, you get an incredible signal of what could have come.
Speaker 4:it's just there's a song called morning theft as well there's people it really is like. I think that is why it has grown.
Speaker 2:It's, it's the imagination takes hold of what might have been yeah, and you know, and he, he, he always said he wanted to live with grace and once you've felt true love, you can live with grace and without fear. And he did in his music, in every decision he made, and it was all too brief, but it left us something spectacular. Oh, oh no, this can't happen to me.
Speaker 5:Did you rush to the phone to call? Was there a voice on the phone or a voice in the back of your mind Saying maybe?