God Bless the Child - Part Three

By Sue Peters

Buckley is also taken with Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn's qawwali, the devotional music of India and Pakistan, for its "open-heartedness," and he'd like to follow the qawwali tradition of making songs from poems. "I'd like to put Rimbaud to music," he says. When he discovers that the poem he is contemplating is an innocent one, written before the poet's famous "season in hell," he murmurs subversively, "Maybe I'll sing it like a whore."

To Buckley, the craft of writing great songs remains his most important hurdle. He still defers to the work of his songwriting heroes, Cohen and Bob Dylan, as examples of "a great balance of a writer and a songsmith." Calling his own words "idiotic," he says, "The words should be essential. I wouldn't say I'm an great shakes in either department yet -- the muso-lyrico-thing. I just don't think I have a handle on it yet. I've been doing it lackadaisically since I was 14."

"But you'll see," he adds cryptically, "Next year."

When his KFOG recording session ends, Buckley coughs fiercely. The L.A. air has given him a nasty souvenir. When it's suggested that he could work the cough into his act, Buckley smiles. "Course I can. I can work *anything* in." And he promptly invents a new category for his style of music : "Punkadelicalternative -- with phlegm."

"I saw a man in Antwerp in a suit rocking out. He had long white hair -- Einstein-y. He moved very well. He was beautiful. I hope one day to be 85, 90..."

Later, in a small Thai restaurant in San Francisco's shady Tenderloin district, Buckley asks distractedly, "What's the name of that French award?" He means the Grand Prix du Disque, whose past recipients include Leonard Cohen, Bruce Springsteen and Edith Piaf. "Guess who won it?" He nods solemnly. "Me. Me and my bar band. I got the fucking award!" He laughs at the absurdity. It makes sense, though, that the French would love a moody American rock poet maudit who sings Edith Piaf's Hymn To Love in her own hometown of Paris.

Buckley mulls over the effect that all the honors and attention will have on his next recording when he returns to the studio at the end of the year. "Next time won't be the same," he promises. "People will be calling me up and saying, 'How's that baby cookin'?!"

He's pacing himself. Buckley doesn't want to become an overhyped, overnight smash who finds himself dumped and forgotten a year from now. But as he's finding out, there are certain things he can't keep under wraps, like the seductive quality of his voice or his looks. Buckley may be a "bastard," but he wants to ensure his musical presence is entirely legitimate.

"I saw a man in Antwerp in a suit rocking out," he recalls of his recent European tour. "He had long white hair -- Einstein-y. He moved very well. He was beautiful. I hope one day to be 85, 90." These are fighting words, a subtle declaration that the one romance Buckley has no time for is that of the poet-artist who dies young.

On the way to soundcheck, Buckley suddenly remarks, "I hope Mark Kozelek won't be there tonight." He's afraid the singer of San Francisco's Red House Painters, whom he admires, might show up. "I don't care what rock critics say," he says bitterly, "but when someone I like walks out of my show, I can't take that."

Freelancer Sue Peters last appeared in Issue 43 with a piece on David Sylvian.

Originally called OPtion, Option - along with Sound Choice - were the dual successors to the earlier music magazine OP, published by John Foster and the Lost Music Network and known for its diverse scope and the role it played in providing publicity to DIY musicians in the midst of the cassette culture.

When Foster ended OP after only twenty-six issues, he held a conference, offering the magazine's resources to parties interested in carrying on; attendant journalist David Ciaffardini went on to start Sound Choice, while Scott Becker, alongside Richie Unterberger, founded Option.

Whereas Sound Choice was described as a low-budget and "chaotic" publication in spirit, Option was characterized as a "profit making operation" right at the start, meant to compete with the newly founded Spin.

Source - Wikipedia