Alison Stewart: This is All Of It from WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. It's biography and memoir week here on All Of It. Later in the show, we'll hear about the life of the late activist Marsha P. Johnson. Tomorrow, Jonathan Gluck joins us to talk about his new memoir. It's about what happened after he was diagnosed with terminal cancer nearly 20 years ago. On Thursday, author Mark Kriegel will be here. His new book is called Baddest Man: The Making of Mike Tyson.

First, a quick bit of business. As you've been hearing, public media is being defunded by the federal government. For New York Public Radio, this means a loss of nearly $6 million over the next two years. We need listeners like you to help fill this funding gap. Join us at wnyc.org/donate. Now, let's get this hour started with a look at the life of singer-songwriter Jeff Buckley.

[MUSIC – Jeff Buckley: Grace]

There's the moon asking to stay

Long enough for the clouds to fly me away

Well, it's my time coming, I'm not afraid, afraid to die

My fading voice sings of love

But she cries to the clicking of time, oh, time

Wait in the fire, wait in the fire

Alison Stewart: That was Grace by Jeff Buckley, the title track of his 1994 debut album. Before then, Buckley was performing in a tiny East Village spot called Sin-é. His voice was unique, and so was his presence. He was in love with music like Nina Simone, Édith Piaf, and Led Zeppelin. The influence could be heard, and he created something entirely his own. That was especially important to him because early on, people tried to tie him to his father, singer Tim Buckley.

Just as Jeff was rising to fame and dealing with the pressure from it, he accidentally drowned at the age of 30, leaving behind a single studio album, a trove of unreleased material, and a legacy that only grew in his absence. A new documentary called It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley takes a close look at his artistry, relationships, and the questions that remain. The film will be released in theaters on August 8th and will be available to stream on HBO Max this winter. There'll also be a screening tonight at the IFC Theater.

The director of the film is Emmy and Oscar-nominated filmmaker Amy Berg. She's here now to talk to us about the film. Hey, Amy, it's really nice to meet you.

Amy Berg: Hi, Alison. Thanks for having me.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, we want to hear from you. What does Jeff Buckley's music mean to you? Did you ever see him perform live? What do you want to know about him? What's your favorite Jeff Buckley song? Our phone number is 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. When was the first time you heard about Jeff Buckley?

Amy Berg: I heard about him in 1994. I was a young woman in Los Angeles, and I was going to see all sorts of live music at the time. It was all pretty and heavy and grungy. Suddenly, I heard Grace, and it was just like-- Look how you just breathed in. That was it. It was just like, "Oh, my God, I can feel it's just--" It settled me and it opened me up in so many ways.

Alison Stewart: I know, fast forward to now, you really went after this story. This is one of the stories that you had to pursue, to get, to do. What did you have to go through to get to the Jeff Buckley documentary?

Amy Berg: Well, I've been wanting to do it since after I finished my first film, which was in 2006, 2007 era. I ultimately got in touch with his mom. We had a good connection, but she said no initially. Every time I finished a film, I reached out to her again, and she said no many times. Then in 2019, she said yes. I really did think it was going to be my last time reaching out to her. It had been 10 years of pursuit, and she just said yes instantly, and was ready. I insisted on having final cut. That, obviously, had to go into her decision over those 10 years. She gave me, basically, the keys to the storage, and here we are five years later.

Alison Stewart: What were her initial concerns?

Amy Berg: I don't know if it was anything specific or tangible, but I think that she just wasn't ready. I know they were really pursuing a scripted film, which has been still circling around, I believe, but she just wasn't ready. Now she's 10 years older, and she feels like she trusts me.

Alison Stewart: Well, I guess you came around more than once.

Amy Berg: Yes, I kept knocking on the door.

Alison Stewart: That's important, though. I think that shows that somebody's got commitment to a project.

Amy Berg: Totally, totally. It held me up throughout my career as well. I spent about four years working on this film, West of Memphis, and it was very close to where he died and where he lived. I had a lot of Jeff Buckley stories that came to me at that time. I've come in and out of talking to the people in his life.

Alison Stewart: You've done other music documentaries. How did those help you make this film?

Amy Berg: It's really hard to make a music doc. There's just so many extra layers, and it's just tedious. It's very fulfilling to me because I feel a certain obligation to the person that I'm telling the story about to make sure I get it right. It's a little bit different than making a film about something that's live and unfolding because you have to be so reactive, whereas this is more of a pontification path during the edit. I just learned to let the story find itself in the material that existed. Then I spent many years editing and decided how to tell the story.

For me, it was pretty much from the beginning, I wanted to tell a story about women and Jeff's relationship with women. Maybe it was because I got the archive in 2019, and the language was very amplified at that point with the Women's March. I just found that Jeff had this feminist bent to all of his interviews. He was like a feminist before men were feminists. In the '90s, it was very misogynistic. Not that it's not now, but it was a lot more so in the music scene. I found that voice in Jeff, and that's how I decided to tell the story.

Alison Stewart: Did you find that voice in Jeff, I think, because, in part, his relationship with his mother, who only had him when she was 17? She was pregnant, and it was just the two of them for so long.

Amy Berg: Yes. It was like they were raising each other in a way. He definitely was a protector of women from his very early days. She's a strong woman and has a strong mind, and so he sponged a lot of that off of her and her musical influences as well.

Alison Stewart: I'm speaking with director Amy Berg about her new documentary, It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley. The film will be released in theaters on August 8th and on HBO Max this winter. There'll also be a screening tonight at the IFC Center. Listeners, we want to hear from you. What does Jeff Buckley's music mean to you? Did you ever see him perform live? What do you want to know about him? What's your favorite Jeff Buckley song? Our phone number is 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC.

We got a text here that says, "Warmed up for him and other bands at Sin-é. Amazing times. A true talent that reached you quickly." That's a really interesting statement, that it reached you immediately as soon as you heard him sing.

Amy Berg: Yes, Jeff had this ability to tap into the room. Not only was he a great singer-songwriter, but he was also a great performer. He just was able to connect and zoom in. It's one of his amazing skills, I believe.

Alison Stewart: The film includes never-before-seen footage, letters, voicemails that Jeff Buckley left throughout his life. What did you learn about him by going through all of these archives before you even started filming or putting together the story?

Amy Berg: I learned a lot about him. I only knew about his music, obviously, when I first started. The thing that really struck me was the idea that you could be introduced as a performer, you could be introduced as the son of another singer-songwriter, and not have had a relationship with your own father. That was just always something that he had to constantly contend with in his career. It was a real battle for him. I mean, he wanted to love his father's music and dive into it and embrace who his father was, but also felt totally abandoned by him. It kind of tricked him at various points.

In certain instances when he was being introduced in that way, you could see his demeanor change. Music was the thing that always pushed him through all of those situations. He had a relationship and love affair with music that was massive. I mean, it was like he was music.

Alison Stewart: I want to split that into two different parts. His father. Would you explain to people who maybe don't know who Tim Buckley was?

Amy Berg: Tim Buckley was a famous cult singer in the '70s. I shouldn't say he's a cult singer. He had a cult following in New York is what I mean, sorry, and played in the village and was around in the Andy Warhol, Janis Joplin folksy era. He and Jeff's mom met in high school, and he took off while she was still pregnant. Jeff didn't really get those moments with his father. He only actually met him once after a show in California. Tim had a real go, especially here in New York, and died very young, which also impacted Jeff. Just knowing that his father didn't live to be 30 was a big-- The fact that Jeff made it to 28 was a big deal for him.

Alison Stewart: It was interesting because someone asked him like, "How are you related to Jeff Buckley? How is Jeff Buckley an influence on you?" He had an answer that was like, "Neither of us really have this voice. This is a voice of our ancestors. This is a voice that comes from somewhere else." I thought it was really interesting.

Amy Berg: The men in this family all inherited this voice. That was his way to justify it in his own being. Because when he was younger, I was reading through his journals when he was still at guitar school in California, and he was very against being a singer initially. He wanted to just play guitar and write songs, and that was going to be his contribution. Then, after singing at St. Ann's Church, when Hal Willner brought him out here, it was kind of undeniable. I think that was a real challenge for him to overcome.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to John, who's calling in from Bradley Beach. Hey, John, thank you for making the time to call All Of It. You're on the air.

John: Thank you, Alison. Love this show. I saw Jeff Buckley at a little place in Asbury Park, New Jersey, on the Grace tour. It was called T Birds, the venue. I missed them the first time they came around. It was packed. You couldn't get in. Then they must have come around again later in the tour. They swung back and got in, and you literally could have heard a pin drop at times when-- some of those quiet moments when his voice is just quivering and there's no music and every single person on the stage was quiet. I mean, it was a small place, but it was still an unbelievable musical experience that I will never forget.

Alison Stewart: Thanks for calling in. This text says, "Oh, my goodness, we saw him New Year's Eve in a club. Miraculous. We knew his father's work in the '60s. Two tragedies. I'm a New Yorker from Memphis and have several friends there that were close with him. A fun anecdote. The tiger enclosure at the Memphis Zoo is dedicated to him." Another text says, "I was a regular at Sin-é in those days, and Jeff's death is still a heartbreak. He was a lovely human."

Amy Berg: It's amazing how many people are reaching out. Since we announced the film at Sundance, we've had so many heartfelt stories coming through. It's just beautiful how deeply he touched so many folks.

Alison Stewart: I want to talk about his music influences quite a bit because he mentions Nina Simone, he mentions Édith Piaf as his influences. How did he develop this oeuvre of artists from all different ranges, from Led Zeppelin to classical music?

Amy Berg: Just to rewind a little bit, we didn't get into this a lot in the film, but he was definitely bullied as a kid in school, and he was always considered feminine. He had beautiful features. He was small, slight, so he got made fun of quite a bit. He also had this kind of ability to just transcend genre.

Alison Stewart: That's interesting, yes.

Amy Berg: He also had an ability to transcend gender. Two G-E-N words. I think he really knew how to just kind of relate on a much more universal level. The composer that some of your listeners might know, Karl Berger, who he hired to help him on the Grace album with the strings, said that his voice had such a dynamic range it could just go anywhere. Jeff had this ability to just go anywhere he wanted to. He also had the talent of being able to emulate anyone's voice across the room. He just embraced all of this.

The other one that you left off was Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, which is another incredible voice that people don't even try to imitate, yet Jeff embraced that.

Alison Stewart: Let's listen to him singing Forget Her by Jeff Buckley. You might be able to hear some of those female artists that I talked about.

[MUSIC – Jeff Buckley: Forget Her]

While this town is busy sleeping

All the noise has died away

I walk the streets to stop my weeping

'Cause she'll never change her ways

Don't fool yourself

She was heartache from the moment that you met her

Ah, my heart feels so still as I try to find the will

To forget her somehow

Alison Stewart: That's Forget Her by Jeff Buckley. We'll have more about the documentary, It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley. My guest is Amy Berg. We'll have more after a quick break. This is All Of It.

[MUSIC – Luscious Jackson: Citysong]

Alison Stewart: You're listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. My guest is director Amy Berg. Her new documentary, It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley, it'll be screening in theaters on August 8th and on HBO Max this winter. Let's talk about Grace. Jeff was given a lot of control by Columbia Records to make this album. How did that affect the creative process of making this album?

Amy Berg: In the beginning, I think he was signed off of a lot of cover songs. He did a couple of originals at Sin-é, but mostly it was cover songs. I think it was about how to get inspired, how to get his songwriting sea legs on. That took a while. Then he chose Andy Wallace to produce his album, who had worked with Nirvana before that. They chose Bearsville as the inspiration in the studio. You can see why he was there. I mean, it's nature. We screened at the Bearsville Theater last weekend, and it was just incredible. You could just feel the energy there. Yes, it was amazing.

You can see we have all this footage because-- Oh, I'm spacing. Ernie Fritz shot the footage. We have all this footage from that studio set, and you can just see Jeff playing every single instrument, Jeff conducting an orchestra, Jeff sitting in the room just like he's just dreaming it up. It became this masterpiece. That's how that happened.

Alison Stewart: It didn't really sell that great initially in the United States.

Amy Berg: That was the case with a lot of alternative bands in the '90s. I think Europe was a breaking ground for cool artists that weren't on the radio. He was one of those. That's actually where he met Ben Harper, who is also in the film. They met at Euracan in France. I think that was kind of typical. Jeff was so-- he was so smart about how he wanted to do his career that he was very much in the mindset that he didn't want to sell a lot of albums on his first record. He just wanted to go out there, get his feet wet, tour for a long time, and then come back and write another album.

Alison Stewart: We're going to listen to Hallelujah, and we'll talk about it on the other side. This is Jeff Buckley.

[MUSIC – Jeff Buckley: Hallelujah]

Well, I heard there was a secret chord

That David played, and it pleased the Lord

But you don't really care for music, do ya?

Well, it goes like this, the fourth, the fifth

The minor fall and the major lift

The baffled king composing "Hallelujah"

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Alison Stewart: That was on the album, a couple of other covers as well. Why do you think that song has really stood the test of time, particularly his version?

Amy Berg: That's such a hard question. It is the song that people know him for. I wanted to make this film because I was trying to understand how Jeff and his iconic enigma stood the test of time as well. It's kind of like this unanswerable question, unless you just immerse yourself in his music and you feel it and you understand it. He's kind of like everyone's favorite artist's favorite artist. Everyone has always attributed his version of Hallelujah to be the best. A lot of people that he respected have said that.

I think it's just a personal choice. If you look at TikTok nowadays, there is so much activity around Jeff. It's not just Hallelujah, it's more like Lover, You Should’ve Come Over is the song that all the Gen Z kids are listening to, because I think it cuts through all the noise of the world right now, and it just makes them feel. Jeff is a great artist to give you the feels.

Alison Stewart: This is a great text we got, and you have a great story in the film about this. This says, "I saw Jeff open for Juliana Hatfield at Roseland. He wore a gold sequin blazer over a white T-shirt and had a vintage microphone. It was a living dream." That T-shirt, that gold blazer, caused quite a stir within the record company.

Amy Berg: Oh, yes. They have a different memory of it right now, obviously. We spoke to a lot of people about their reaction to him. They thought it was too effeminate. They thought he was ahead of his time in that way. Jeff just did what he wanted to do. He defined his own image the way he wanted to do it. That album cover is iconic.

Alison Stewart: To his point, though, he had creative control. He could say, "Yes, I wanted to wear this. This is what I want. This is the photographer I want. This is the picture I want."

Amy Berg: Exactly. He was very smart. Even though he signed with a major label, he maintained this creative control that helped him in a lot of ways. He was definitely weighted down by the amount of money that was being spent on him, though. That was the other side of that.

Alison Stewart: Tell me about that a little bit more.

Amy Berg: [clears throat] Sorry, the air conditioning is killing me right now.

Alison Stewart: [laughs] I'm sorry.

Amy Berg: I'm so not used to it. I'm from LA. Anyway, the point is that he saw a royalty statement ultimately and was just like, "Wait, I owe them $2 million?" He didn't understand what that meant. Being a young artist and not having a lot of experience with a huge corporation, I think that really weighed on him. Ultimately, he really took that on. He made a lot of choices in his career getting to that point, despite the creative control to bring his friends, bands along with him. He paid for a lot of things. He was very generous and did things the way he wanted to do it. We had some footage in the studio when he was with--

Alison Stewart: I'm Alison Stewart. My guest is Amy Berg. We're talking about her new documentary, It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley. We see him struggle with fame. When you think about the thing that he really struggled with the most, what was it?

Amy Berg: I think he was his own worst critic because he loved so much great music, and he knew that he had the ability to be great. I think he was just hard on himself about being the best, and he wanted to achieve it in every single thing he wrote, and he did. He also had this very extemporaneous side to him, where he never played the same song live twice in the same way, so he was constantly reinventing the wheel.

Alison Stewart: Jeff Buckley died of drowning. Did you want to make that clear in the film?

Amy Berg: Yes. I knew he drowned because I did a deep dive back then, but I've noticed over the years that people just assume he overdosed. I thought that was really important because we show in the film how impulsive he is. Some of that is what led to his death, unfortunately, his very impulsive artistic behaviors. I think it's very important that he's not just a statistic, another one in the 27 Club, where he's been categorized many times.

Alison Stewart: What did you want to clear up about him aside from that? Was there something you wanted to clear up with this film? Were you very proud about this film getting to the heart of?

Amy Berg: I got to the heart of the complicated relationship he had with his mother, which I set out to do. I also just wanted to make a film that would allow people to immerse themselves in Jeff, like the album did for me back in the '90s. I wanted to get as close to him as possible and stay with him throughout the entire film. That was a gift that you and I both received back in the '90s when the world was less noisy. I just wanted to create that for the audience, and I hope it does that.

Alison Stewart: It's Never Over by Jeff Buckley. I've been speaking with its director, Amy Berg. It's going to be released in theaters on August 8th and HBO Max. We just found out it's sold out at IFC tomorrow, but there are tickets available at The Claridge in Montclair, New Jersey.

Amy Berg: I think that sold out as well.

Alison Stewart: That sold out as well.

Amy Berg: No, I know that the Angelika opens the film on August 7th, and it's going to keep going. That's the spot to start.

Alison Stewart: We'll start there. Amy, thanks for being with us.

Amy Berg: Thanks for having me.