Jeff Buckley's Grace

It is a healthy testament to the addictive 33 1/3 series that the volumes have all been so different -- Colin Meloy's enchanting teenage wildlife engaging the Replacements' "Let It Be," as well as the brilliant sociological analysis of NYC underground rock, the philosophy of camp, and postmodernism found in Nicholas Rombe's "Ramones." But the one that seems like a perfect mixture of literature, musical analysis, exploration of aesthetic epiphanies, and technical information is Daphne A. Brooks' exciting extrapolation of Jeff Buckley's "Grace" -- and album I never owned until I read her writing about it. (And it is the only one in the series to actually make me go out and buy the album, too -- though I admit having most of the records that have been written about.) I don't understand the criticisms here -- they're not delighting in her balance of rock criticism and personal writing, her hunger for the investigating the inspirational forces behind Buckley's drive, her ability to bring depth and magic to the subject matter. Again, this book is the only one in the series to actually make me TAKE ACTION -- to feel as Brooks felt about an amazing record. If you've been on the fence about buying this book due to the puzzling negativity of a couple of these reviews, please trust me -- I read everything I could about Jeff because I adored his father's work, and her book game me many new insights into his life and aesthetics. If I was teaching a course on effective, enriching rock write, "Grace" would be in the list of books I would use. It is an essential purchase for either a Buckley fan, or a fan of the 33 1/3 series.

Thomas Lhamon's review (July 5, 2005) criticizing GRACE for its technical inaccuracies and flowery prose is misguided and evinces the writer's immature taste. To be more direct, it's just plain wrong. I am a musician--a guitar player to be exact--of the worst kind. At rock shows, I'm the guy who stands next to the stage passing judgment on everything from the year an amp was made to the gauge of the strings a guitar player uses (Blackface Twin reissues don't sound as good as the originals; .09s are just terrible). I feign a kind of meta-expertise that permits me to shrug off other people's opinions about the music I listen to. Ever want to recommend a new record to me? You'd better expect a response in line with, "Oh, that?!? It's okay." The more I like the record, the more apathetically I talk about it. As such, you might expect a person like me to share Mr. Lhamon's opinions, the reviewer is no doubt a card-carrying member of my pseudo-club (after all, no one but a club member would harp on the differences between a Mexican-made Telecaster and a American one). We're both musicians, we both fiend for those obscure factoids that we can feel cool dropping at parties with our arrogant musician "friends." We should be besties. Too bad he completely misses the ball. Daphne Brooks is not a member of our club. She's not even a musician. Rather, Ms. Brooks is a scholar of literature, and her writing is beautiful, nuanced, and evocative. Somewhere along the way, she shared in the experience that many of us musicians hold close to our hearts--Jeff Buckley's transfixing swansong entered her life and she fell in love. With exquisite clarity, brutal honesty, and language so awesome the word "transcendent" underestimates its power, Ms. Brooks' writing redefines Buckley's astral soundscape using an arsenal of metaphors and images that humble even the most diehard club members. I'll let her speak for herself. Here are a few lines from a description of the one and only night she saw Buckley perform: "The voice of movement and metamorphosis, disruption and reinvention, transgression and collaboration, revolution and cultural hybridity rearranged the landscape of our tiny rock universe in the hall that night.... Summon every rock and roll cliché that you like--the d.j. who saved my life last night, the boy who strummed my life with his words--Jeff Buckley destroyed and rebuilt my musical world in one fell swoop" (11). I love "Grace," it's as simple as that. I've listened to the record more times than I can count. I know it so well I can tell you exactly how many seconds elapse between each song. And yet, Ms. Brooks' book gave me an entirely new way of loving "Grace," a work of art that has defined, to a great extent, the way I listen to music. Read it with an open mind, it will do the same for you.

As a relative newcomer to Jeff Buckley's music, I was thrilled with Daphne Brooks' excellent book on the genealogy of his album Grace. Well-researched and passionately-even lovingly-written, her book 33 1/3 Grace offers long-time and would-be Buckley fans a way to make sense of the musician's wildly diverse musical influences, which include Led Zeppelin, Mahalia Jackson, Judy Garland, and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, to name just a very few. Combining description of how Buckley developed his singer-songwriting craft with close readings of individual songs, Brooks shows very concretely how Buckley drew from these influences to create a music that was simultaneously an homage and entirely new. Not only did this make me listen to Grace a wholly new way, it also sent me back to Led Zeppelin, Leonard Cohen, and even Buckley contemporaries like Nirvana with a new ear to their music. One of the things I most appreciated about Brooks' book is its attentiveness to what it means to be a fan of Buckley's music. Too often writing on rock musicians like Buckley-especially those who die young as he did-plays on the tired clichés of tortured genius, a la Kurt Cobain, or mystic masculine rock god, a la Jim Morrison. This kind of cliché-driven writing does little more than offer the fan-constituted as young, male, and white-the opportunity to vicariously live out the fantasy of a mythological rock stardom. Brooks, in contrast, not only avoids those clichés but begins and ends with a meditation on what it means for her, an African American woman from the Bay Area with a PhD, to be a fan of Jeff Buckley's rock music. This self-reflexive intro and outro, combined with the way she traces Buckley's diverse influences, challenges the dominant paradigms of rock criticism and rock history and serves as an important reminder that rock fans are not a singular monolithic mass. That Buckley's album Grace provokes such a challenge to the way we might think about rock music is ultimately is what makes it such a great album, and is what makes Brooks's book about that album so terrific.

Jeff Buckley's music is a relatively new discovery for me, but within the last year I have become passionate about his music. This book is a guide through the "Grace" album--it provides wonderful insights into Buckley's musical influences, and how he has influenced other musicians. For most listeners, it should be easy enough to hear the Plant/Page influence on "Grace," but not as easy to pick up on the influences of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Edith Piaf, or some of the others discussed in the book. The song by song narrative was particularly satisfying if you are interested in the whole album, not just the most well-known song, "Hallelujah" (a Leonard Cohen cover that has turned up on a number of recent television shows, including "The O.C."). The author gives a brief etymology of the development of the music and lyrics of each song, relative to Buckley's own artistic journey (the title track is my favorite). If you want to know how and why Buckley wails as he does in strung out, pitch-perfect tones, you will find out here. In that way, the book reads like liner notes--but longer, more personal, and with footnotes. The evocative imagery of Jeff Buckley in the prime of his too-short life, performing in New York, and creating what would become his one and only masterwork, is what makes it a worthwhile read. On the strength of this book, I plan to read more of the 33 1/3 series.