Gee muses

Since the death of  her son, Jeff Buckley, 12 years ago on May 29, Mary Guibert has dedicated much of her life to his legacy – the unreleased work he left behind – and his memory. In her own words, she works hard, travels a lot and loves what she does.

For now that is talking about Jeff and the Legacy Recordings’ latest release, Grace Around The World, which celebrates the 15^th anniversary of the release of his seminal album, Grace, one of the finest records of the 1990s, and a pivotal album in rock music. And, yes, it has been 15 years.

Mary is much like her son. Warm and outgoing, she chats freely. “It’s mind-boggling how quickly time goes,” she says. “It robs you of your sense of reality when it goes by so fast. At the age of 61 it adds meaning to the phrase us older people tend to use ‘young people of today …’”

Grace Around The World revisits and restates Grace by taking providing the same tracklisting except that all the studio tracks are replaced by previously unreleased live versions. And there’s an additional two unreleased tracks added on as a bonus. The CD is accompanied by a DVD which features the videos of all the tracks on the CD – they are drawn from TV performances in the US, UK and Germany. A deluxe version adds a second DVD devoted to the 169-minuted award-winning documentary Amazing Grace: Jeff Buckley.

Like all the Buckley releases since his death, it contains a wealth of classic material that will be lapped up by his devoted fans. Buckley, despite the years, has never really faded away and his legacy today, in many ways thanks to the work of his mother and his record company, remains remarkably strong and compelling.

Grace Around The World began life as an act of faith according to Mary. “All we had to start with were boxes of VHS tapes,” she says. “Kids today will probably say what are they? Simply, every time Jeff performed live on TV, because of  the rights involved, the TV station would send the record label a VHS tape of the performance. So they were top performance tapes. As record company employees moved on these were boxes left behind.

“Twelve years later we had to go back to the television stations involved and see if there was an original master tape and people would come back to us.”

In most cases there was and the stations involved and the companies that own them were only too willing to let Mary and team have the tapes. There was the odd exception though.

“There was a really amazing performance of Hallelujah, Jeff did in France” she says, “just after he got back from Australia. He flew into France for one TV show and he’d just come off touring so he was all fired up but  the French entity that owns the master wanted to charge us thousands of dollars per second. That really amazing performance will stay with the people who have it – and they can’t use it without our permission. So it’s a silly stalemate. But as you can see and hear on Grace Around The World we found another amazing performance of Hallelujah.”

And she isn’t kidding. The version is stark, simple and beautiful. For those who saw and/or knew Buckley it is a reminder of his sheer ability to hold an audience in the palm of his hand.

The other problem Mary found was trying to find performances of the remainder of the songs outside the big two or three. “We had five versions of Grace, So Real and Lover You Should Have Come Over, but the question for us was where to find the other seven songs on the album because he’d typically play the same three songs for the TV shows.

“In the end the only song we couldn’t find was Corpus Christi Carol  - there was just one audio version at Sony party or something, but we did find a version of What Will You Say, which he also rarely performed, so that was the only substitution.”

Mary says the posthumous release schedule is slowly coming to an end. It has been her intention since the start of the Legacy series that only the “good stuff” should be released.

“I knew at the beginning of 1998 that it was matter of planning the legacy in such a way that it would stick,” she says. “I felt it should be sensitive, it should be cohesive , it should have a concept and it should be the best of Jeff.

“We have the live soundboard recordings left – which are only good for Internet downloads so we are about to do those and make them available. People will be able to get a copy of a show they attended with a bit of luck as we have quite a lot of them.

“Then it’s radio shows, and then I think we’ll have seen it all in terms of what Jeff recorded.”

But there is more. At least a little more. Mary says that was is done with Jeff’s music is another matter entirely. She is working with Professor Michael Kimmel at Fordham University in New York who has just put on a piece called The last Goodbye at Joe’s Club in the city. It is basically Romeo & Juliet set to Jeff’s music.  Initially the cast was students but now all the leads are professional actors.

“It is enjoyable meeting new people and taking on new projects,” Mary says. “And exciting things happen with the Legacy. It’s been very fulfilling. But my younger son, Gary, has provided me with two grandchildren and sometimes I’d much rather be gardening and playing with them.”

She laughs, happily. Jeff’s mum is doing just fine.