It’s rare to have a moment of chrysalis on camera for a musician, but Jeff Buckley’s time at the East Village cabaret Sin-é Café was a haven for artists of all stripes and filmed in black-and-white, the singer-songwriter who up to that point hadn’t yet recorded his first album “Grace” could be seen performing one of his originals “Mojo Pin” in front of a crowd for the first time.
“He didn’t write a lot of his songs until after he got signed,” says Amy Berg, who knew she had a most remarkable moment to build to as Buckley was finding his footing. “They were already percolating, but those early moments at Sin-é were primarily cover songs and that ‘Mojo Pin’ moment is really a beautiful one. We just love the vocal performance in that and it seems to speak to what was actually going on there.”
The song became the lead-off track to “Grace” and it occurs midway through Berg’s “It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley” and cuts through like a knife, both in terms of before and after and also in how it transcends the trappings of what either a song or a movie should be able to do when Buckley’s achingly beautiful voice has the power to take audiences into another realm. While it’s hard not to think of Buckley in relation to the tragedy that ended his life way too soon, drowning in Memphis during a break from early recording sessions for his second album in 1997, he’s rarely spoken about in the past tense in Berg’s biography when that voice echoes throughout and it’s clear he remains as big a presence in the lives of those around him as he discovered who he was, especially in the enormous shadow of his father Tim, who became a legend following his own premature death, but with whom Jeff never had much of a relationship.
While Buckley had it in his bones to mix musical genres, when his father became known for scrambling folk and jazz, it’s revealed by his mother Mary Guilibert, who took on the responsibility of raising him that it was his stepfather who introduced him to Led Zeppelin and could admire the vocal stylings of Robert Plant in the same way he was fell in love with Judy Garland from watching “The Wizard of Oz” as a kid. Although it would take working through others’ music to find what suited him – ironically first making a name for himself with a cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” at a tribute to his father at St. Ann’s Church in Brooklyn – Berg shows how a mix of influences yielded a true original who would be inspiring to so many others, with his manager recalling that Radiohead went to one of his concerts and left to record “Fake Plastic Trees.”
However, that tenderness that was a trademark in his voice ran throughout his life as Berg is careful to depict, seeking out deep connections and offering them in return and while it appears he could be fickle in his relationships, disappearing for long stretches of time without a word, the people in his immediate circle from his mother Mary to his girlfriend Joan Wasser at the time of his passing are shown to have made as much of an impression on him as the other way around. After a premiere earlier this year at Sundance, “It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley” is now heading to theaters where one can experience the same flood of emotions as Berg did opening up Buckley’s long-protected archives and as the filmmaker behind “West of Memphis” and “Janis: Little Girl Blue” said, it’s a film she’s been wanting to make for nearly 20 years and she spoke about how she was able to present such a multifaceted artist in all his dimension.
From what I understand, you’ve actually wanted to take this on since you started out. What kept that drive alive?
Just my love for Jeff Buckley. I was just so stunned and saddened by his passing. There were a lot of different kind of story beats that didn’t sit right with me, but especially hearing over and over again that he probably OD’d. I knew that he had drowned, so I wanted to tell it from that standpoint, but I also was very interested in his relationship with his family, his mother and his father and how difficult it must have been for him to live his life as an abandoned son and to be somebody introduced as Tim Buckley’s son over and over again because of their similarities in their career. I was just interested in all different aspects of the story and the music being so powerful. And it did take a while. I first reached out to [Mary Guilibert] after “Deliver Us From Evil,” but I didn’t actually get in touch with her until a few years after that. She said no then, but she gave me a bit of hope, so I reached out to her every time I finished a film after that. [The estate] gave me a thumb drive [where] there were some elements like the voicemails that I was very moved by initially and I saw that as a big part of what I would want to tell in the story. [Mary] finally said “yes,” so I guess she was ready in 2019.
It’s exhilarating to experience the archival material as it’s brought to the screen – not only the voicemails but the drawings in his notebooks. Was that actually what you felt looking at it for the first time?
Yeah, his journal and his drawings are so unique to him obviously and I had this incredible relationship with Sara Gunnarsdóttir, an Icelandic animator who I collaborated with from the beginning on how to really keep the mood in Jeff’s world, but also make it visually stunning. The whole thing was a surprise because I didn’t know his inner world, so just having access at that level to somebody’s whole life, there’s a certain responsibility that you take on there. But I saw the complications that he experienced, like how difficult it was to continuously hear about his father from people that knew him better than Jeff did. I saw how challenging it was to have a young mother who was in his business a lot, you know, and then I just saw how deep his relationships were and that was beautiful. He wanted to make sure that people really understood where they stood with him and there was just a real clarity in how he connected with people.
When you were able to make a film about Janis Joplin (“Janis: Little Girl Blue”) between when you first wanted to make this and now, did that experience of bringing a musician’s life to the screen inform this?
Yeah, “Janis” was a great teacher. That was one of her big issues was that she was ahead of her time and didn’t have any female role models, but she was my teacher for sure because that film was very difficult. I learned about how to work with an estate and an archive and how many when you think you’re done, you’re actually not done because there’s legal issues and licensing issues, so there was a lot to learn. And there are a lot of similarities between the two of them. They both were very sweet, intimate people who had really interesting artifacts like Janis’ letters and journals that really gave me a dive into who she was inside of her head.
It’s all female role models in Jeff’s life. Did you know pretty immediately your three main interviews would be with his mother and his girlfriends Rebecca Moore and Joan Wasser, who seem so crucial to his development as musicians in their own right?
I always loved how much Jeff was a feminist and how he spoke about the women in his life and women in general, so it just made perfect sense. It was very organic and true to how the story was told but I always wanted to include those three women, which was a feat in itself to just get everyone on board.
Rebecca has never really spoken before publicly about this time in her life. What was it like to get her onboard?
Yeah, that took a while. It was a trust-building experiment, but thank goodness because I think she really brings a lot of heart to the story. It’s really incredible now to see how she’s embracing the film and her history as a result of this process.
What’s it like to place the music in a movie like this when each song has to do a lot of things? It seemed like throwing the gauntlet down by opening with “Last Goodbye” when you wouldn’t likely return to it.
That was a really tough decision to figure out what song to start with, but fortunately the other big songs for me had already found their place in other parts of the film, so it just became obvious we had to do something that people have heard before. There’s a lot more to hear and learn about Jeff besides “Last Goodbye,” but that was the first hit song that the label put out.
Was there anything that happened that changed your idea of what this was?
I didn’t really want to make a music business film, so I wanted to keep it very personal, and there were a lot of things that were very interesting about the business, his control of his career and everything that went along with that. But I tried to stick to the film I was making so that was an important turn there. There were a couple of folks that died early in production, so we didn’t get to speak with them unfortunately. With Hal Wilner [who produced the legendary St. Anne’s concert where Buckley sang “Hallelujah”] I had met with him just a few months before he passed away and then the pandemic hit and he was an early casualty unfortunately. But he had so many incredible things to say about Jeff and I was really looking forward to his involvement.
A moving part of this becomes Jeff’s connection to other artists, including Chris Cornell, who I understand you’re making a movie about now too – did one lead to another?
There’s definitely overlap, but I have to say I did reach out to Chris Cornell’s estate in 2017 right after he passed away and I never heard back from them and then it was brought to me during this production. I had to show the widow the letter that I sent her from 2017 because she had never received it. But I really love music and music docs, so I’m happy to live in this world a little bit longer. We already started the edit, so I hope it’s not five years [like this].
Ben Harper also seems quite connected to Jeff, leading to a sequence I wouldn’t want to spoil, but how did you find out they were friends?
I was making “West of Memphis” in the summer of 2010, and Ben Harper, along with a host of other singers — Eddie Vedder, Patti Smith, Johnny Depp, Natalie Maines all came down to Little Rock to do this concert for the West Memphis Three to raise money and awareness. And after the concert, I ended up sitting next to Ben in a hotel bar in Little Rock, Arkansas in the hotel bar and he told me that story. I was spending a lot of time in Memphis at that time because that’s where the story [of the West Memphis Three] took place, so I was already in Jeff’s world and this story just motivated me [to keep pursuing the film].
After all this time, what’s it been like to get this out into the world?
It’s exciting. I’m just holding my breath until [the opening] because I really want people to go see this in the theater. That’s why we formulated this distribution model and I just hope that people find their ways into the theater because it really feels like the kind of film that you should experience with other people in the room and to be able to go talk to your friends about afterwards. And it’s like this love that people had for Jeff was held in their hearts and now it’s being shared with the world, so that is just beautiful. That’s the ultimate goal as a documentary filmmaker. You want something like that.
“Jeff Buckley, It’s Never Over” opens on August 8th in theaters across the U.S. A full list of theaters and cities is here.