[Read the story.]
I very much enjoyed the essay about meeting Jeff Buckley in a poetry class. I have been, coincidentally, listening to Mr. Buckley's "Grace" quite a bit lately. Great record. I'm very sad we won't get to hear where he was going to take it next -- or what the next line would have been.
-- Steve McBrian
I was so moved by the article about being a fan of Jeff Buckley and actually attending a class with him. When I was a young hippie in Los Angeles, I was an avid fan of his father, Tim Buckley.
I was able to go to just about any concert I wanted in the '60s and '70s due to extensive record-business connections. (Ah, those were the days ...) Any time he was playing (and it was usually at a great little dive called Bido Lido's) I was there early, sat up close and stayed as long as I could to listen to his haunting voice. It was like listening to a voice from another world, and the feeling remains with me to this day. I have never heard another voice like it until I heard Jeff Buckley. So sad that they were both here for so short a time.
-- Marjorie Magidow
Thank you for Scott Cohen's article on his experience with Jeff Buckley. In the 1990s I managed a recording studio in Memphis and Jeff would drop by from time to time to speak with an employee there he knew. I was fortunate enough to get an introduction, and on subsequent visits we would always speak, however briefly. He was always gentle, sweet and genuine.
The day he was found face down in the channel of the Mississippi River was hot, sad and chaotic. My phone rang -- at work and at home -- from news services who presumed we were the studio he was using to record his project. I didn't have anything to tell them then about why he walked into the water. I still don't. Except for those few brief encounters, I wasn't fortunate enough to know more of him really than his music.
The world lost a precious soul, though, and it's sweet justice that his album "Grace" is being re-released. In these desperate times in which we live, a little grace is something we all could use.
-- Susan Hesson
The article about Jeff Buckley reminded me of a dear friend of mine who was a genius, a writer and an artist. We, his friends, hoped for great things from him, but he was gone at the age of 23 before his potential could develop.
There's a world full of talented people most of us never get to know because they are gone too soon for the promise of their talent to be realized. Sometimes the loss is inevitable because it's caused by unavoidable illness or accident. Sometimes the loss isn't inevitable because it is caused by an avoidable war.
My friend's name was Craig Larson. I still think of him often 29 years after his death. He and I were in high school and college during the Vietnam War. One of many reasons I hated that war was because of the lives of talented young men who could be enriching all our lives that were being thrown away in that useless war.
How many Jeff Buckleys are we throwing away in Iraq?
-- Glenda Keyworth
Shares