Over the following two years, the band toured widely to promote the album, including concerts in the U.S., Europe, Japan, and Australia. In 1996, they stopped touring and made sporadic attempts to record Buckley's second album in New York with Tom Verlaine as producer. In 1997, Buckley moved to Memphis, Tennessee, to resume work on the album, to be titled My Sweetheart the Drunk, recording many four-track demos while also playing weekly solo shows at a local venue. While awaiting the arrival of his band from New York, he drowned during a spontaneous evening swim, fully clothed, in the Wolf River when he was caught in the wake of a passing boat. His body was found on June 4, 1997. Buckley's autopsy showed no signs of drugs or alcohol in his system and the death was ruled as an accidental drowning.
Since his death, there have been many posthumous releases of his material, including a collection of four-track demos and studio recordings for his unfinished second album My Sweetheart the Drunk, expansions of Grace, his Live at Sin-é EP. Chart success also came posthumously: with his famous cover of Leonard Cohen's song "Hallelujah" he attained his first No. 1 on Billboard's Hot Digital Songs in March 2008 and reached No. 2 in the UK Singles Chart that December. Buckley and his work remain popular and are regularly featured in "greatest" lists in the music press.
Early Life:
Born in Anaheim, California, Buckley was the only son of Mary Guibert and Tim Buckley. Buckley was raised by his mother and stepfather, Ron Moorhead, in Southern California, and had a half-brother, Corey Moorhead. Buckley moved many times in and around Orange County while growing up with a single mother, an upbringing Buckley called "rootless trailer trash". As a child, Buckley was known as Scott "Scotty" Moorhead based on his middle name and his stepfather's surname.
His biological father, Tim Buckley, was a singer-songwriter who released a series of highly acclaimed folk and jazz albums in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Buckley said he only met him once at the age of eight. After his father died of a drug overdose in 1975, he chose to go by Buckley and his real first name, which he found on his birth certificate. To members of his family he remained "Scotty".
Buckley was brought up around music. His mother was a classically trained pianist and cellist. His stepfather introduced him to Led Zeppelin, Queen, Jimi Hendrix, The Who, and Pink Floyd at an early age. Buckley grew up singing around the house and in harmony with his mother, later noting that all his family sang.
Buckley began playing guitar at the age of five after discovering an acoustic guitar in his grandmother's closet. Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti was the first album he ever owned; the hard rock band Kiss was also an early favorite. At the age of 12, he decided to become a musician, and received his first electric guitar — a black Les Paul — at the age of 13. He attended Loara High School, and played in the school's jazz band. During this time, he developed an affinity for progressive rock bands such as Rush, Genesis, and Yes, as well as jazz fusion guitarist Al Di Meola.
After graduating from high school, he moved north to Hollywood to attend the Musicians Institute, completing the one-year course at the age of 19.
Buckley later told Rolling Stone the school was "the biggest waste of time", but noted in an interview with Double Take Magazine that he appreciated studying music theory there, saying, "I was attracted to really interesting harmonies, stuff that I would hear in Ravel, Ellington, Bartók."
Musical style:
Buckley's voice was a particularly distinguished aspect of his music. He possessed a tenor vocal range, he had a vocal range of between three and a half to four octaves. Buckley made full use of this range in his performance, particularly in the songs from Grace, and reached peaks of high E in the tenor range at the culmination of "Grace" and "So Real". These high notes were unusual for a rock musician in that he sung them with his head voice, rather than in a falsetto, and that he sung them for sustained periods. "Corpus Christi Carol" was sung entirely in a high falsetto. The pitch and volume of his singing was also highly variable, as songs such as "Mojo Pin" and "Dream Brother" began with mid-range quieter vocals before reaching louder, higher peaks near the ending of the songs.
Buckley played guitar in a variety of styles ranging from the distorted rock of "Sky is a Landfill", to the jazz of "Strange Fruit", the country styling of "Lost Highway", and the guitar picking style in "Hallelujah". He occasionally used slide guitar in live performances as a solo act and used a slide for the introduction of "Last Goodbye" when playing with a full band. His songs were written in various guitar tunings which, apart from the EADGBE standard tuning, included Drop D tuning and an Open G tuning. His guitar playing style varied from highly melodic songs, such as "Twelfth of Never", to more percussive ones, such as "New Year's Prayer".
Equipment:
Buckley used several guitars, but mainly played a 1983 Fender Telecaster and a Rickenbacker 360/12. When touring with his band he used Fender Amplifiers for a clean sound and Mesa Boogie for overdriven tones. He was primarily a singer and guitarist; however, he also played other instruments on various studio recordings and sessions, including bass, dobro, mandolin, harmonium (intro to Lover, You Should've Come Over), organ, dulcimer (Dream Brother intro), tabla, esraj, harmonica.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Buckley
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