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

the addiction- it's yet another vampire movie

Did you see The Addiction, the new film from Abel Ferrara? No? It's yet another vampire movie, but it's vampirism as an allegory for the Nazis and also for high society. [Laughs] The theme or the motif is that people are victimised by vampires only because they don't resist evil. Time and time again in the movie the evil one comes up to the victim and says “I just want you to tell me to go away like you really mean it.” And they always say, “Please, please don't hurt me,” and that's when they get their necks chopped off. You've gotta see it. It's really great.

interview for juice magazine - 1996 - toby creswell

i appreciate that, and i'm happy

I'll always be a slobbering idiot for people I love: 

The Grifters, Patti Smith, the new Ginsberg boxed set, MC5 totally pulled out that one. I listen to Sun Ra. I listen to Kiss. Anything. Led Zeppelin. Bad Brains. Shudder to Think. Tom Waits. Lou Reed. De Niro.
And Dylan. 

People who have had an actual life, have come through flame after flame, either on their own flame, or other flames of people hating them, or completely elevating them to god status, and them still being around. The last two things Dylan did are great. He is beautiful still. I appreciate that, and I'm happy. He hasn't lost any of his...shock.

Interview with Toby Creswell for Juice Magazine - February 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