there's a lot of strength to the self-destructive soul

The kind of people whose songs you've covered from Leonard Cohen to Alex Chilton to Nina Simone are people who have a very fragile muse to them. They are people whose personalities have often been destroyed by their art.

I think that fragility isn't quite as accurate as sympathy, which takes a huge pain threshold. Some people are just born into bodies, born into lifespans that just don't fit anywhere else and they have very little to hang onto to validate and also it's a very lonely thing to notice a certain sense of life and be able to relate that to anyone. It's probably the onset of madness, or it must seem so to the person who has it at the time, who sees the world in a certain way and it usually has a lot of real meaning. Maybe they see spirits everywhere or maybe they divine information from certain happenings and certain peoples that are invisible to most of us, and as a result people deem those experiences not valid and not important, and crazy too, and that can damage a person. Those characters you named have a lot of strength to them even though...There's a lot of strength to the self-destructive soul. Not that it's wise to be self-destructive, but it is wise.

Jeff Buckley

"Grace under Fire," by Toby Creswell Juice Magazine, February 1996, Issue 36

that would be my response

Well, people came to him (Bob Dylan) with this...disbelieving hostility, and really stupid questions, really demeaning questions -- "Do you think people are really understanding what you sing?" "Fuck you!" -- that would be my response. His was, "Yeah, they told me [they understand]."

2-29-96 DoubleTake Magazine Interview, by Josh Farrar

something that wasn't totally pointless

Best fucking thing you can do, if you have the interest, is go to a private teacher, go someplace, some college, and learn theory. That was something I really enjoyed, actually, something that wasn't totally pointless. Theory meaning the meaning of the musical nomenclature. I was attracted to really interesting harmonies, stuff that I would hear in Ravel, Ellington, Bartok.

DoubleTake Magazine Interview, February 29, 1996

i like things to be more universal

The thing is that I also like to have lyrics that are inclusive, that give you space to be inside them, to put your experience on to them, so that they can move through moments.

There's a way of writing where you just include all the streets around your house and all the people you meet. You actually name them autobiographically in the song.

Well, that song is very hard to travel through time. It may not last in its meaning. It may not touch every time because those people and events fade away and they may mean something to your life and your understanding of that life. 

I like things to be more universal.

It's a balance between... Obviously it's got to grab some skin from me.

I like the way that songs sort of have light, and sort of travel around despite you. It's good. It helps to have songs that you love, that you can be inside. It's good. It's part of the invention. On the outside of that you can say that I find great joy in the things that are sad. That's the way emotions are in people. They fall down on you and there's no way to get out, except to go through it. There's no way you can control it, there's no essay you can write to answer yourself out of it. It just soaks you like the rain. There's nothing you can do. Then it's gone and then another comes around. But tears are not all I deal with. I'll leave that to the next album.

jeff buckley

"Grace under Fire," by Toby Creswell Juice Magazine, February 1996, Issue 36

and he's my elvis. that's my guy.

guy in audience: Play a Nasrat tune

Jeff: Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan?

guy in audience: Yeah, you know one?

Jeff: ... You saw him in the park, right?

guy: Yeah!

Jeff: That's why you mispronounced his name, 'cause-

audience laughs

Jeff: no no no no no because I have a friend named Penny and she uh yeah, I played her at the thing and she said "Nasrat". It's Nusrat, and he's my Elvis. That's my guy. I listen to him everyday.

girl in audience: He's playing at the World Music Institute.

Jeff: He's playing at the New Music Institute? World Music Institute. November 14th. But I really don't want to turn everybody on to him because then everybody goes, "Yeah, that Nusrat thing, yeah it's a cool hang. I saw you at Nusrat right? 6 from the left, clapping your hands"

girl in audience: Yeah, but you know what his nickname is.

Jeff: Yeah, you're right. I do. I know everything about him. Remember that movie "Diva" about that guy who like rode around on that motorcycle and just like knew everything about- that's the way I am with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. I know his nickname as a child. 

What did, can you, hey i'll see you later. do you remember anything that he did, because maybe i could do it, and blow you away with my acumen.

read what Jeff wrote about Nusrat for a magazine in 1997

read the DoubleTake Interview in 1996 which Jeff talks about interviewing Nusrat