The Untold Story of Jeff Buckley’s Soulful Rise and Sudden Loss Revealed in a Groundbreaking New Doc (EXCLUSIVE)
Amy Berg, director of 'It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley,' shares the charismatic performer's impact—and his connection to Brad Pitt
Few musicians have captured the heart of a generation quite like Jeff Buckley. The singer, who was known for his ethereal voice and charismatic stage presence, built up an underground following through his legendary club performances before releasing his acclaimed debut album, Grace, in 1994. While Grace didn’t top the charts, it made a major cultural impact, earning him praise from the grunge musicians of the day and ’60s rock gods alike.
Grace, which featured Buckley’s indelible cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” as well as original songs, was beloved for its atmospheric, romantic sound, and many a pensive Gen X–er kept the record on repeat. Sadly, it would be his only studio album, as he shockingly died in an accidental drowning at just 30 years old in 1997.
Prior to his untimely death, Buckley faced his share of challenges. His father, cult-favorite singer-songwriter Tim Buckley, abandoned his teenage mother, Mary Guibert, while she was pregnant with him, and died from a drug overdose at age 28 in 1975, leaving the younger Buckley with a complex relationship to his musical lineage, and he later struggled with his mental health.
Three decades after the release of Grace, Jeff Buckley’s tragic story is now the subject of a new documentary, It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley, opening in theaters on Friday, August 8. The film uses the musician’s personal archives as well as new interviews with his mother, his girlfriends and his musical contemporaries to paint a vivid portrait of just how gifted yet complicated this singular artist truly was. The documentary’s director, Amy Berg, sat down with Woman’s World to discuss Buckley’s too-short life and powerful legacy.
Woman’s World: How did this documentary come to be?
Amy Berg: I loved Jeff Buckley’s music so much. It really changed my life when I heard Grace. I didn’t know a ton about his story initially, but every time I dug into it, I was more interested. He had a really difficult relationship with his father. He had a complicated relationship with his mother, who had him very young, and they essentially raised each other.
What he was to music, he was as a person, and he felt like a feminist in the ’90s. I loved how he spoke about women’s issues and international issues and culture. He didn’t have many positive male role models. He always took the side of women and stood up for them. He’d been bullied for being effeminate, so he saw the world through that lens, and I wanted to tell the story through that lens as a result.
Everything I looked at made me want to do this documentary even more. Unfortunately, his mom kept saying no to me for 10 years, but eventually she said yes. Five years later, after she said yes, we’re now here with the film.
WW: The film makes use of a lot of archival material, including Jeff Buckley’s personal journals and answering machine tapes. What was the process of gathering those elements like?
AB: He always had his journal on tour with him, and in his formative years, he was writing a lot about his goals and who he wanted to be. There were these letters that were so revealing and showed a man trying to get his life organized despite the pain of being abandoned. He knew he wanted to be successful. He knew he wanted to be the best. He knew he wanted to let go of the pain that his father inflicted upon him, so his journey was all about that.
His mom, Mary, was really good about collecting everything that she could find about Jeff when he died, and then Brad Pitt helped with the archive. He was a super-fan, and he paid to have the archive preserved.
WW: There’s been so much nostalgia for ’90s music and culture in recent years. Why do you think that is, and how do you see Jeff’s music enduring across the decades?
AB: I remember towards the end of the ’90s, people were saying that no one was going to remember the decade, because it wasn’t like the ’60s and ’70s. It felt like a hodgepodge with so many different things happening so quickly. Today, the ’90s feels like the ’70s did for us back then, and there actually are some similarities between the decades in terms of rebellion and counterculture.
The ’90s were so loud and confusing, and where we’re at today is also very loud and confusing with politics and social media and all the ways that we can be reached by people even when we don’t want to be reached. I think Jeff Buckley resonates in both of these times because his music can center you.
WW: The documentary shows Jeff’s intergenerational appeal through his encounters with Paul McCartney, Robert Plant and other musical icons of the ’60s and ’70s. How do you think he was able to bridge the generation gap so successfully?
AB: A lot of that had to do with his father. These musicians knew his father and hung out with him, so that was really complicated for Jeff. Their music raised him, but they were also like parental figures in that they knew his dad. Jeff became every musician’s favorite musician.
WW: In 2015, you made ‘Janis: Little Girl Blue,’ a documentary about Janis Joplin. Do you see any similarities between Janis and Jeff, given that they were both brilliant musicians who died far too young?
AB: Janis was the feminist of the ’60s music scene. She had no female role models, and there were a lot of similarities with her and Jeff. They were onstage doing something a little bit different in a very misogynistic world. Jeff was of my generation. I was very young when I heard him, and in my 20s I really embraced his music, so I really wanted to make that film. With the Janis documentary, I was so excited when I found out that her estate was looking for a director. I went up for the job and learned so much about her, about feminism and about making an archive film about a music personality, which helped me to make this film.
WW: Jeff had so many diverse influences in his music. How did he come to create his unique sound, and how did influences like classical music and world music impact his work?
AB: He listened to what his mother played, and it broadened his knowledge of music. Bringing on a composer to do strings on a rock album in 1994 was kind of an aggressive move, and that just shows you where he was going with it. A big part of his legacy was that he brought everything together, and I think that’s why his music is so timeless. It doesn’t really have a genre, and you can hear the essence of all different forms of music in one.
WW: What kinds of considerations did you have to make in covering Jeff’s untimely death?
AB: I wanted it to be balanced. It had been 30 years since the album came out, so there was the passage of time and knowing that his legacy was much greater now than it was right after he died. I wanted to make sure people knew that he didn’t commit suicide and that he wasn’t on drugs. He wasn’t part of the 27 club. He went out with a blast of joy. He was singing Led Zeppelin in the water, and what he left us with continues to grow. He gave us a gift, and I wanted to show all those different things, as well as how conflicted he was at the end of his life.
WW: What do you think Jeff would be doing now, if he were still with us?
AB: I think he’d be following his own path, like Bob Dylan. I picture him living somewhere like upstate New York and having a family and a big property with lots of animals, and touring once a year.
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