A voice like a cathedral with the doors thrown open. Ten songs — borrowed, broken open, made to ascend. The most haunted debut of its decade.
A Tudor carol, a Broadway torch song and Leonard Cohen, beside seven songs of his own — made with a band he had found only weeks before the tapes rolled.
Seven originals sit beside three borrowed songs: a carol first written down by a London grocer in the early 1500s, a 1950 Broadway number, and Cohen's Hallelujah — the running order only makes sense heard from start to finish.
Buckley drowned in Memphis in May 1997 while making its successor, so Grace is the one complete statement he signed off himself.
Mick Grøndahl and Matt Johnson joined just weeks before the Bearsville sessions began on 20 September 1993; Dream Brother took shape at their very first jam, so the record catches a trio finding itself in real time.
Grace missed Columbia's hopes on release, yet it reached its highest UK chart position twenty years later, in 2014, and Rolling Stone now places it at No. 147 of the 500 greatest albums.
Jonathan Wingate spent years as the spokesman for David Bowie and Sir Bob Geldof before turning to journalism. He writes for The Times, the Daily Telegraph, Mojo and Rolling Stone, and has interviewed everyone from Sir Paul McCartney, Sir George Martin and Robert Plant to Björk, Smokey Robinson and Tony Bennett. A regular voice on BBC television and radio.
He opens every record up — then sits down with the rest of the room to hear it whole.
Fifty-five seats, a chair, a screen and the record, in a small theatre on Heath Street in Hampstead. The station is thirty seconds from the door.
Three months, a trio only weeks old, and more than twenty takes of Hallelujah.
He first sang in public at a tribute to the father he had met once. Six years later he was gone, and the one album he finished had begun its long climb.
Jeffrey Scott Buckley was born on 17 November 1966 in Anaheim, California, and grew up in Southern California as Scott Moorhead, taking his stepfather's surname.
He met his father, the singer Tim Buckley, only once, aged eight; Tim died in June 1975.
He studied guitar at the Musicians Institute in Los Angeles and spent years in little-known rock bands, Led Zeppelin his touchstone, singing only backing vocals.
On 26 April 1991 he made his public singing debut at Greetings from Tim Buckley, a tribute to his father at St Ann's Church, and within weeks had moved to New York.
Guitarist Gary Lucas recruited him to his band Gods and Monsters in autumn 1991, and together they wrote what became Grace and Mojo Pin before Buckley left after their final show in March 1992.
A regular Monday slot at Sin-é, a tiny café at 122 St Mark's Place in the East Village, drew record-company limousines downtown, and he signed to Columbia in October 1992.
Columbia issued the four-song EP Live at Sin-é in late 1993, the year he took a brand-new trio up to Bearsville to begin the album.
Grace was released on 15 August 1994 in Britain and Europe and on 23 August in the US, credited as produced by Andy Wallace and Buckley.
On the long tour that followed, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant went to hear him play, and Page later called Grace close to his favourite album of the decade.
On 29 May 1997, in Memphis to make his second album and waiting for his band to arrive, he went for an evening swim in the Wolf River and drowned; he was 30, and his body was found on 4 June.
After a performance on American Idol in March 2008, his 1994 Hallelujah became the No. 1 digital song in the US — his first No. 1 anywhere, eleven years after his death.
Two weeks after Grace reached the shops, Oasis released Definitely Maybe. Britain was looking the other way.
On 12 March 1994 the Church of England ordained its first women priests — 32 of them — at Bristol Cathedral, five months before a record steeped in hymn and carol.
Nirvana's singer was found dead at his Seattle home on 8 April 1994; Grace's producer, Andy Wallace, had mixed Nirvana's Nevermind.
Three-time world champion Ayrton Senna died after crashing at the San Marino Grand Prix on 1 May 1994.
The Queen and President Mitterrand met nose to nose by train at Calais to open the tunnel on 6 May 1994.
Nelson Mandela was sworn in as South Africa's first black president on 10 May 1994.
Quentin Tarantino's film won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in May 1994 — the same Tarantino whose theme-song offer Buckley is said to have turned down.
In 1994, the year Buckley's Hallelujah came out, Leonard Cohen withdrew from touring to the Mount Baldy Zen Center above Los Angeles, where he was ordained a monk in 1996.
Oasis released their debut on 29 August 1994, two weeks after Grace reached British shops; it went straight to No. 1 as the fastest-selling debut album in UK history.
On 31 August 1994 the IRA announced a 'complete cessation' of military operations, a turning point on the road to the Good Friday Agreement.
Bristol's Massive Attack released Protection on 26 September 1994 — the group with whom Elizabeth Fraser, close to Buckley in 1994–95, would later sing Teardrop.
The National Lottery held its first draw, live on BBC One, on Saturday 19 November 1994.
Sony launched its first PlayStation console in Japan in December 1994, a year before it reached Europe.
Sleevenotes Nº.001 · Kid A — the house, listening
At Sin-é Buckley played a borrowed Telecaster through songs from Piaf, Billie Holiday and Judy Garland to Van Morrison, Bad Brains and the MC5 — the repertoire from which Grace's three covers were drawn.
He met bassist Mick Grøndahl after a gig in a crypt at Columbia University, and drummer Matt Johnson, then 22, came via Buckley's girlfriend Rebecca Moore — weeks before studio time was booked.
The trio drove two hours north from the East Village to Bearsville Studios in Woodstock, about 90 miles from Manhattan, with Andy Wallace — the mixer of Nirvana's Nevermind — producing, engineering and mixing.
Wallace recalled two and a half to three months of near-continuous work on the bulk of the record, with Buckley full of ideas and Wallace's job partly to keep him focused.
Buckley recorded more than 20 takes of Cohen's song, alone with his guitar, and the released version was assembled from several of them.
A song worked up in the last days at Bearsville, Forget Her, made early test pressings and was tipped by the label as a single, but Buckley pulled it.
Merri Cyr photographed him in a Williamsburg loft with a duffle bag of unpressed clothes; the chosen frame shows him listening back to Dream Brother.
New guitarist Michael Tighe brought a chord progression to his first rehearsal; at a B-side session Buckley finished the song and sang it in one take, produced it himself, and it replaced Forget Her.
Overdubs followed at Quantum Sound in New Jersey and Soundtrack in Manhattan; Woodstock resident Karl Berger wrote and conducted the strings with Buckley, and Howie Weinberg mastered the record at Masterdisk.
Featuring a unique, specially created visual journey via The Screens — developed especially for these nights.
The screen on the night — a garden of light that grew across the record, drawn live.
Written with Gary Lucas from one of his Gods and Monsters guitar instrumentals; Lucas returns on guitar, and a solo version had already appeared on the Live at Sin-é EP.
Lucas's music, Buckley's words — written after a rainy airport goodbye to Rebecca Moore; the album's first single, August 1994.
One of his oldest songs here, already written before his 1991 New York debut; released as a single in 1995.
James Shelton's song from the 1950 Broadway revue Dance Me a Song, first made famous by Eartha Kitt and later recorded by Nina Simone (1966).
Co-written with Michael Tighe, the only track he plays on; Buckley produced it himself and sang it in a single take in spring 1994.
Leonard Cohen's song (1984), learned from John Cale's 1991 version on a friend's shelf; recorded solo, more than 20 takes, added to the US National Recording Registry in 2014.
A Buckley original, with Loris Holland guesting on organ — one of the two longest tracks on the record.
An anonymous English carol first written down by Richard Hill between about 1504 and 1536, sung in Benjamin Britten's setting from A Boy Was Born (1933).
Another song from before New York; the sleeve calls it a plea for emotional tolerance, and it became a single in 1995.
Credited to the trio, its skeleton came from the first jam with Matt Johnson; tabla by Misha Masud and Buckley, vibraphone by Johnson.
Gary Lucas's guitar on Mojo Pin and Grace is credited on the sleeve as Magicalguitarness.
Staff at Sin-é remembered Buckley turning up after closing time to wash the dishes because he enjoyed it.
A Newsday review pairing Live at Sin-é with Michael Bolton so incensed him that the Grace sessions reportedly stopped for two days.
Columbia executives thought the sequinned jacket made him look like a lounge singer — some said Adam Ant — and he argued for days to keep the photograph.
Forget Her, which the label wanted as a single and which had made early test pressings, was dropped from the album at Buckley's insistence.
Muse's Matt Bellamy bought the Fender Telecaster Buckley used on Grace — first lent to him by Janine Nichols, who programmed St Ann's — and recorded with it.
Alexandra Burke's X Factor Hallelujah was the UK Christmas No. 1 in 2008, and a fan campaign put Buckley's version at No. 2, with Cohen's own at No. 36.
Elizabeth Fraser of the Cocteau Twins, with whom Buckley shared a close relationship in 1994–95 and an unreleased duet, has said she learned of his death while working on Massive Attack's Teardrop, and that the song has come to feel to her as if it is about him.
Thom Yorke recorded his vocal for Fake Plastic Trees after seeing Buckley play the Garage in London in 1994; producer John Leckie said it showed Yorke a falsetto need not sound mawkish.
David Bowie named Grace a desert-island record, Jimmy Page called it close to his favourite album of the 1990s, and — by his mother's account — Bob Dylan named Buckley one of the decade's great songwriters.
The Library of Congress added Buckley's Hallelujah to the US National Recording Registry in 2014, alongside U2's The Joshua Tree and the Everly Brothers.
Grace sold modestly at first, was certified platinum in the US only in 2016, and climbed to No. 147 on Rolling Stone's 2020 list of the 500 greatest albums; in Australia it has gone eight times platinum.
Tuesday 6th October 2026
Voice & guitar
Took Lilac Wine · Teardrop
Two songs, and a thread between them. Lilac Wine was already old when Jeff Buckley found it — written in 1950, carried by Nina Simone and Elkie Brooks before he made it sound like his own. Betty-Lou sang it back to us, Matt on guitar, then followed it with Massive Attack’s Teardrop — sung on the record by Elizabeth Fraser, who had loved Buckley, and who has said that for her the song is about him. She was making it the year he drowned.
Ten worlds, one a track — a garden of light that lived one life across the side, every flower drawn live. For the length of the record the screen was the only light in the room.
Next issue · Nº.004Pink Moon — Nick DrakeTuesday 3rd November · £22 · 55 seats →Researched October 2026. Spot something wrong? Tell us at hello@circleandstar.com.