JEFF BUCKLEY ONLY MADE ONE ALBUM. IT PEAKED AT #149. IT SOLD 175,000 COPIES WHILE HE WAS ALIVE. THEN HE DROWNED AT 30 — AND THAT ALBUM WENT ON TO SELL OVER 2 MILLION COPIES. DAVID BOWIE CALLED IT THE GREATEST ALBUM EVER MADE. IT TOOK THE ROCK HALL 29 YEARS TO NOTICE. Jeff Buckley met his father once — at age eight. Tim Buckley, the folk singer, died of an overdose less than a year later. Jeff carried that name like a weight he never asked for. He moved to New York, played a tiny café in the East Village, just a Telecaster and a pint of Guinness. Record labels came running. He signed with Columbia and recorded Grace — one album, ten songs. Radio ignored it. The charts barely noticed. But Jimmy Page called it his favorite album of the decade. Bob Dylan named him one of the great songwriters. His cover of “Hallelujah” now has over a billion streams and sits in the Library of Congress. On May 29, 1997, Jeff waded into the Wolf River in Memphis, fully clothed, singing Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love.” He never came back. No drugs. No alcohol. Just the river. And what the world did with his music after he was gone is something Jeff Buckley never got to see.
Jeff Buckley Made One Album, Then Time Finally Caught Up Jeff Buckley’s story still feels impossible to tell without a…