Saturday, July 11, 2015

My hero / Jeff Buckley by Benjamin Wood


Jeff Buckley in Atlanta, in August 1994 Photograph: David Tonge


My hero: Jeff Buckley by Benjamin Wood

I never had the chance to see Buckley perform but his matchless gift remains an inspiration and a medicine – when I feel estranged, the sureness of his voice in “What Will You Say” is what I return to
Benjamin Wood
Sat 11 Jul 2015 12.00 BST


T
here is a moment, six minutes 45 seconds into Jeff Buckley’s live recording of the song “What Will You Say”, that leaves splinters in my blood. The melodic tension that’s been simmering in the verse and chorus escalates into a jagged instrumental break, with Buckley jouncing his guitar strings till they squeal and blur. And then, as if punching through a door to strangle you, the song reaches a crisis point: “Father, do you hear me?” Buckley screams. “Do you know me? / Did you even care? / What will you say / when you take my place? // Well, it’s so funny now, / I just don’t feel like I’m a man / What will you say?” These last four words he sings in an octave so high that ordinary vocal cords would snap under the strain. The purity of the note he hits seems as impossible today as it did the first time I encountered it. Against the context of Jeff’s childhood (he barely knew his father, the cult folk singer Tim Buckley, from whom he inherited an extraordinary vocal range), these few seconds of his music resonate with agony and beauty, as only great art can.






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I never had the chance to see him perform this song or any other. He drowned in Wolf River Harbor, Memphis, in 1997, a year before I’d even heard his name, when a friend gave me his album, Grace, and said: “Thank me later.” I was 17 then, writing heartfelt songs of my own, and struggling (as my friend intuited) with the aftermath of my parents’ separation. After Grace, I did not so much wish to be Buckley as I hoped to wander in his shadow and have some fleck of his talent fall on me. He had a matchless gift that remains an inspiration and a medicine. When I feel estranged, it’s the sureness of his voice in “What Will You Say” that I return to.
• Benjamin Wood’s second novel, The Ecliptic, is published by Scribner



2009
001 My hero / Oscar Wilde by Michael Holroyd
002 My hero / Harley Granville-Barker by Richard Eyre
003 My hero / Edward Goldsmith by Zac Goldsmith
004 My hero / Fridtjof Nansen by Sara Wheeler 
005 My hero / Mother Mercedes Lawler IBVM by Antonia Fraser
007 My hero / Ernest Shepard by Richard Holmes
008 My hero / JG Ballard by Will Self
009 My hero / Alan Ross by William Boyd
010 My hero / Ben the labrador by John Banville
011 My hero / Vicent van Gogh by Margaret Drabble
012 My hero / Franz Marek by Eric Hobsbawm

2010

017 My hero / Jack Yeats by Colm Tóibín
018 My hero / Francisco Goya by Diana Athill
019 My hero / Max Stafford-Clark by Sebastian Barry
020 My hero / Arthur Holmes by Richard Fortey

036 My hero / Robert Lowell by Jonathan Raban
037 My hero / Beryl Bainbridge by Michael Holroyd
038 My hero / Charles Schulz by Jenny Colgan
039 My hero / Oliver Knussen by Adam Foulds
040 My hero / Annie Proulx by Alan Warner

041 My hero / David Lynch by Paul Murray
042 My hero / Edwin Morgan by Robert Crawford
043 My hero / Anne Lister by Emma Donoghue
044 My hero / Jane Helen Harrinson by Mary Beard
045 My hero / Edmund Burke by David Marquand
046 My hero / Shelagh Deleaney by Jeanette Winterson
047 My hero / Christopher Marlowe by Val McDermid
048 My hero / Gwen John by Anne Enright
049 My hero / Michael Mayne by Susan Hill
050 My hero / Stanley Spencer by Howard Jacobson

051 My hero / William Beveridge by Will Hutton
052 My hero / Jean McConville by Amanda Foreman
053 My hero / Alexander Pushkin by Elaine Feinstein
058 My hero / Cy Twombly by Edmund de Waal

2011
079 My hero / Gene Wolfe by Neil Gaiman
087 My hero / Alberto Moravia by John Burnside
096 My hero / Isaac Babel by AD Miller
097 Lucian Freud by Esi Edugyan
100 Thomas Tranströmer by Robin Robertson
102 My hero / David Hockney by Susan Hill

2012

190 My hero / Iris Murdoch by Charlotte Mendelson
194 My hero / René Descartes by James Kelman
199 My hero / Albert Camus by Geoff Dyer

2015
2016


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