IT'S PROG JIM BUT NOT AS WE KNOW IT
JEFF BUCKLEY GRACE
(Columbia, 1994)
In the early
80s Jeff Buckley’s first band, Mahre Bukham, would tear into Rush’s The Spirit Of Radio and Yes’ Long Distance Runaround with precocious skill and teenage fervour.
The singer/guitarist called such songs “thinking man’s music”.
Born in 1966 and raised in Orange County, Buckley loved the good stuff like Rush, Yes, and Genesis, Led Zeppelin and Joni Mitchell. Later, studying guitar at Hollywood’s Musicians Institute, he would lock himself away and soak up the work of Al Di Meola, Allan Holdsworth, and Pat Metheny. He appreciated the rich harmonic language of Bartók, Ravel, Duke Ellington. So when he eventually upped sticks to New York to pursue his art, he was never going to make a conventional rock record.