by Chris Price
One of them – a debut album by a then unknown singer I had read about in the NME – was staring up at me from the CD wallet as I thumbed through it, Memphis-bound, on I40 east. In the time since its release by (and from) Sony in 1994, it had broken my heart, fixed it and then broken it again so many times it was hard to remember a journey, relationship or break-up soundtracked by anything else. Paris '95, summer '98, break up twenty-four, Jeff Buckley's Grace was a record which more than any other had scored my twenties, and I still hadn't tired of it. Grace is a 'break glass in case of emergency' album which goes with me almost everywhere, reassuring like the Lambert & Butler tucked behind the ear of the 40-a-day brickie; you just never know when the craving will strike.
When Manic Street Preachers first appeared in Britain's music press they were acclaimed for their music, their self belief and their manifesto of releasing one great album and then quitting. A very short, very sharp shock.
Of course there are thousands of artists who have released only one LP, but I daresay Hear'Say's first essays won't be troubling the greatest albums lists any time soon. (Equally, there are many who have made one great album and then stuffed it up by releasing a string of duffers off the back of it. The 'difficult second album' is such an oft-lamented jinx that some rookie bands even try to bottle the energy of their first sessions by recording two at once. Few succeed.) The list of great one-album artists is short. Really short. Probably only Scotty Moorhead can truly claim to have done it.
Or could claim to have done it had he (a) not died, and (b) recorded under that name. But tragically he did die, and he didn't find fame as Scott Moorhead. In the mid-seventies he changed his first name, took the surname of his biological father Tim (a folk musician who died of a heroin overdose at the fabulously unhip age of twenty-eight), and some years later seeped into the Los Angeles music scene as guitarist-for-hire Jeff Buckley. So to the distinction of being one of few artists ever to make a solitary, debut album of quality we can also add the curious footnote that Buckley is one of even fewer artists in the modern era to have remained genuinely undiscovered for the better part of a decade before gaining the recognition he briefly enjoyed.
Grace is a staggering record. It might just be the most perfect record I've ever heard. (Nick Cave's The Boatman's Call comes close, but then he uses the C-word in the final song and, well, you can't have a perfect album with the C-word on it, can you?) The musicianship, production, sequencing and artwork are all impeccable, but really that's so much muso flim-flam. What it comes down to is two things – the songs and the singer, and in those respects Grace is absolutely bulletproof. It rocks like The Deftones, and tinkles like Sigur Ros. It grooves like Queens of the Stone Age, soothes like Kate Bush.
And all the time it has its shapely American hand grasped firmly around your heart. Testimony to the perfectness of the record is that the greatest cover version of all time, 'Hallelujah', manages to be the centrepiece of the album without overshadowing it. (Some people will try to tell you that 'Hallelujah' isn't the greatest cover of all time. They are the same people who bought Hear'Say's debut album.) And any artist with the courage – and the voice – to pull off Benjamin Britten's 'Corpus Christi Carol' on their first record deserves every ounce and more of the critical acclaim that Jeff received for Grace.
After three years of touring and slowly swelling record sales, Buckley wrote songs for a second album, provisionally entitled My Sweetheart the Drunk. On 29 May 1997 his band flew to Memphis to start recording them with him. That evening Jeff and his friends headed to Wolf River for a drink and a swim. He stepped into the river singing Led Zeppelin's 'Whole Lotta Love' and never came back.
Wolf River was not what I had imagined when I heard that Buckley had been drinking and listening to music with friends by the banks of a Tennessee river. The vision was of moss-covered trees dipping languid limbs into a lazy, muddy swell as cicadas chirruped and birds roosted. In fact, Wolf River was apparently nothing more than the edge of Memphis which proved too wet to build on. Overshadowed by brutalist transport bridges and what looked like grain silos, it was unexceptional in almost every way – about as romantic as the name of the peninsula it skirts before being swallowed by the Mississippi: Mud Island.
A footpath ran along the river's edge about ten metres from the water. We stepped off it, clambered through thick undergrowth and over some empty whisky bottles presumably left by previous Buckley pilgrims, and made our way down to the water. First things first: a text to a mutual friend and Buckley fanatic in London to say we were on the banks of Wolf River and thinking of him. Eden Blackman might very well be the biggest Jeff Buckley fan in the world. He owns a watch made out of Jeff's leather jacket. There are thirteen in existence, and it cost more than I spend in a year on food. He was once offered five times what he paid for it by the singer in a band (I won't say who, but you've heard of them), and turned him down.
Instantly a response beeped back: 'If you can find a flower, throw it in. And don't go for a swim.'
Finding a flower in the damp, dark thicket along Wolf River wasn't easy, but after a long search I plucked a single solitary daisy from the mud and placed it into one of the discarded bottles. A few words to Eden on camera, then we tossed it in.
Joe sighed. 'This is weird.'
'It's grim, isn't it. Why would you come here to just... hang out?'
'And why would you go for a swim in that?'
'It's like taking a dip in the Mersey.'
Joe went silent for a few seconds. 'Makes me think he did it on purpose.'
'Don't let the Buckley estate hear you say that. His mum is adamant it wasn't suicide.'
'Well I'm not so sure.'
'Can't say I am either. You know he was wearing heavy boots at the time?'
'Really? How ironic,' said Joe.
'What do you mean?'
'They should have taken him to Boot Hill.'
'You've lost me.'
'I'll explain later. Let's get a drink.'
Jeff Buckley was a beautiful man with an angelic voice who died in a grubby waterway ill-matched to his sensitivity and dazzling talents. Pondering this thoroughly depressing thought in this thoroughly depressing place made us, well, thoroughly depressed. We were hungry, thirsty and wanted to take our minds off Jeff. So we went to Hooters. It seemed like the appropriate thing to do, being as he was such a notorious tit man.
28 OCTOBER
THE SHAWSHANK INTENTION
We drove south out of downtown Memphis to Graceland – located, appropriately, on a street named after its most famous resident: Elvis Presley Boulevard. Nothing unusual about that, you might think. Naturally the people of Memphis would want to commemorate the city's most celebrated and beloved citizen by naming a street after him. And what better than the one he had lived on? A perfectly normal thing to do when a figure as loved and revered as Elvis pops off.
But get this: it was given the name Elvis Presley Boulevard while he was still alive. This we learned – and it was news to me if it wasn't to everybody else there that day – because displayed among the exhibits of the Graceland Automobiles Museum were copies of receipts for his huge collection of cars. Name: Elvis Presley. Address: 3734 Elvis Presley Boulevard, Memphis, Tennessee.
That may not seem surprising to you, but it is to me. For one thing I'm pretty sure it wouldn't happen in Britain. We would want to know someone is one hundred per cent, categorically and certifiably dead – and therefore at no risk of going off the rails – before we named a street after them. To my knowledge, and I'll say now that I'm no authority, the only time this has ever happened was shortly after the Sarajevo Winter Olympics, when the roads of a newly-built housing estate just outside Reading were all given names relating to Great Britain's ice-dancing sweethearts Jane Torvill and Christopher Dean to commemorate their dazzling victory in the finals of the figure skating championship. Witness Bolero Close, Torvill Way, Dean Dene and so on – I've made those up, but you get the idea.
All
very well, but how do we know, for instance, that they aren't going to spend the twilight of their days on a Bonnie and Clyde-style killing spree? Before you know it you've got a cluster of semis celebrating a pair of figure-skating serial killers. Best to play it safe and wait until they've popped off.
The second – and I'll admit much less far-fetched – eventuality to bear in mind when naming a street after a famous but as yet not dead resident, is that it makes life very easy for stalkers. Or does an awful lot of the leg work for them. Quite apart from taking all the fun out of it by robbing your prospective stalker of the need for proper research, privacy is an obvious issue. Then again, if you've bought a large house less than fifty yards from one of the busiest highways in Memphis and erected a set of showy gates outside it, privacy probably isn't your primary concern.
All right, I'm being a teeny bit obtuse. But it did make an impression on us. It brought home just how world changingly, cosmos-transformingly massive Elvis was at the height of his career. Graceland is America's Buckingham Palace, and privacy – the 'you-don't-know-where-I-live' kind at least – is not something that rock and roll royalty expects. Having a street named after you is the preserve of the great and the good, but generally they're great, good and dead. In order to actually live on a street named after you, you have to command the kind of recognition usually reserved for actual kings and queens. (Or, if you're Jane Torvill or Christopher Dean, relocate to Reading.)
Graceland was everything I'd hoped and feared it would be. The house was gloriously tacky, large but no bigger than many detached homes in affluent suburbs all over America, and the gardens were lush and inviting.
But it was Elvis's grave we were most excited about seeing. Sure, we wanted to pay our respects to the King, but more than anything we hoped to fulfil a long-held ambition to re-enact a scene from This is Spinal Tap. That is, stand next to the grave, a finger in one ear, and sing some barbershop raga for the King. Joe, with his now impressive cockduster, effected a terrifyingly accurate Derek Smalls whilst I attempted a tuneless 'Heartbreak Hotel' in the style of Nigel Tufnell. Too much fucking perspective.
We jumped on a shuttle which delivered us to the second Graceland site across the road from the main house. There we were invited to show the King just how much we loved him by unburdening ourselves of our pennies in the countless gift shops. And what a bounteous panorama of opportunities so to do. Elvis sunglasses, Elvis walking canes, Elvis drinks coolers, Elvis underpants and 'Love Me Tender' boxer shorts. Elvis licence plates, Elvis radios, Elvis talking clocks ('Uh-huh, it's two-thirty'), Elvis portraits bearing no resemblance whatsoever to Elvis, the list went on. Two exhibitions, Elvis After Dark and Sincerely Elvis, apparently existed for the sole purpose of providing something to attach a gift shop to; a refreshingly short but staggeringly uninformative traipse through Elvis's interest in, say, cigarette cards would spit you out into another bewildering array of King-related retail opportunities. In the case of Sincerely Elvis, the shop was three or four times the size of the exhibition itself.
Not only that, each attraction came with its own restaurant. To our utter astonishment, the one adjoined to Elvis
After Dark featured on its menu a Fried Peanut Butter and Banana Sandwich, as if to say 'Here's what finally did him in, why not try it for yourself?'
Joe looked up from his menu. 'Well, shall we?'
'No. No way. I hate peanut butter. I'll puke.'
His bottom lip folded up in disappointment, then broke into a coquettish smile. 'It's what Elvis would have wanted.'
'You go ahead if you want to. I'd rather chew tin foil than eat peanut butter.'
'But we're in this together. Aren't we?' The bottom lip again.
'Not when there's peanut butter on the menu. You're on your own now.'
Joe folded his arms and sulked like a seven-year-old deprived of dessert. 'You mean I've come halfway across America to celebrate the birthday of a man whose music makes my ears hurt, and you can't manage one measly sandwich?'
Oh God. I was going to eat a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich. 'OK, but don't say I never do anything for you. I'm doing this for you.'
'You're doing it for Elvis.'
A waitress took our order – 'Oh, I just lerve a peanut butter and banana sandwich!' – and left us to our Dr Peppers. Minutes later she returned carrying two faux-wicker baskets containing gingham greaseproof paper, 725 calories and 39 g of fat.
I stared at it. 'There's grease dripping through the holes.'
'You'll be fine,' said Joe, taking a bite. I watched as he chewed, rested, then chewed again, then swallowed. Mopping grease from his moustache, he announced: 'Not bad. But I think you should do it in small bites.'
'Good thinking.' I held it up and inspected one corner. Just the smell made me gag. I winced and put it down again.
'Stop being so melodramatic. The King would be disappointed.'
'OK, OK, I'm doing it.' I took a bite.
'See? Not so bad.'
Not so bad. It was the most foul-tasting, stomach-turning, complexion-despoiling, cholesterol-boosting abomination I have ever forced through my reluctant cakehole. It took whole minutes to finish that first mouthful, and several small eons to finish the whole thing. But I did it. I did it for the King. And of all our efforts to get closer to our heroes, this one unquestionably made the most lasting impression. Not only was the peanut butter appended immovably to the roof of my mouth several hours later, I was still digesting it three days afterwards. I can still smell it even now.
On the way out I overheard a husband and wife heading for the Presley planes collection:
'And that plane over there is called the Lisa Marie,' said husband. 'Ain't that neat?'
'Why, so it is,' said wife. 'Now why did she marry that Michael Jackson fella?'
'I really don't know. He ain't exactly marryin' material if you ask me.'
I wanted to tell them I knew exactly why she married Jacko. She was tired of being asked 'What was your daddy like?' whenever she met people. What better way to put paid to it than marrying the world's most famous oddball? Bingo – no longer is Daddy the first thing you're asked about, he's the second. Right behind 'So what's it like being married to Michael Jackson?'
Back to the car and on the road again. My turn to drive. While we're in the heart of America, with eight days and a thousand miles left to go, this seems like a good time to make a quick check on those to-do lists:
Chris:
1. Grow a formidable moustache: Lord knows he's trying.
Me:
1. Learn to love the music of Gram Parsons: Lord knows I'm trying.
2. Learn to play the ukulele: note to self – buy a ukulele.
3. Learn to play the music of Gram Parsons on the ukelele: ummm...
It wasn't supposed to be this hard. By now we should have bought a uke and I would have 'Happy Birthday' down pat. But we hadn't and I didn't.
'I've got eight days to learn an instrument. There's no way I'm going to do it.'
'You have to. One song. That's the rule.'
'Can't I pick something easier than a uke?'
'What is there that's easier than a uke?'
'They sell buckets and sticks in Walmart.'
'You'll be fine. A ukulele only has four strings. I'll teach you three chords and in three days, bingo! You're a ukuleleist. Ukulist. Uke player.'
'Can't we just drop the uke bit and play to our strengths? You do the music and I'll do the facial hair.' It felt pretty feeble confessing out loud that all I could bring to the party was the natural profusion of hair on my chin, but I was desperate.
'You sound desperate.'
'I am.'
'How desperate?'
'Sorry?'
'How desperate are you to learn the uke?'
'Pretty desperate. I've made a career out of listening to music, but I've never been able to play a note. I really want to learn, but if my efforts to date are anything to go by, I really don't think I will. Which is
bloody disappointing because I'd do pretty much anything to learn an instrument.'
'Anything? You'd do anything?'
'Well, not "nosh-off-a-tramp" anything, obviously, but within reason, yes.'
An ophidian leer crept across his face. 'In that case, I've got an idea.'
Oh God. 'Do tell.'
'I think we should go to Clarksdale and sell your soul to the devil in exchange for the gift of music.'
'Sorry?'
'It worked for Robert Johnson. Why wouldn't it work for you?'
'Sounds reasonable. Which way?'
'South.'
We pointed the Grievous Angel due south towards Clarksdale – ground zero for the blues and the town with, at its centre, a rather notorious crossroads.
Clarksdale, birthplace of the blues. It was at the intersection of Highways 49 and 61 – the crossroads – that Robert Johnson supposedly sold his soul to the devil. This legend, of a pact with Beelzebub on the promise of diabolical favours, had fascinated me in all its various forms for years. It had first come to my attention, as is so often the case with cultural motifs from religious folklore, via the work of teen idol and star of The Karate Kid, Ralph Macchio.