| I found this incredible memory of a guy who met our beloved Jeff
just read, it's about the "hippie" guitar, in Chicago Michael Tighe played it and on GATW Jeff plays with this guitar the "Vancouver" song (videos):
"JEFF ...."
I believed I had lost this text I wrote a February evening in 1995 ... but no, I found it again, it's back ...;
It was beginning 1995, I lived close to the "Theatre des Celestins" and I went every day for a coffee, a beer or fourteen tequilas, depended of my state of mind, in a bar where worked pals and called "Rock in Chair", a whole programm ... Contrarely to my meeting story with John Lennon, which was only a dream, this story is true and paradoxically I have the impression to have lived both fully ...
I arrive about 2 p.m. for my coffee, at that time I didn't work often ... This bar, which was also a restaurant, was quite empty after the lunch rush. I arrived with this look of an unemployed emerging from his long morning bath, rocked by the sensual voice of Mahalia .... Rodolphe was behind the bar, impeccable as ever, shirt perfectly ironed, tattoos and piercings well visible and the innate class of the "real" barman. At his lost hours he was one of the best harmonicist I knew, we played together at that time. We were discussing a moment and after a while he says:
"We are having a little show with Fabio, Ben & Juan, opening for an American. Would you be OK to come with us and make "the roadie", drinks and food will be for free."
Immediately I give my OK. My girlfriend at that time (becoming my wife later) went with friends to a show sounding like Rap, The Roots & Urban Species and so I decided to have an uninteresting evening in front of the TV screen ... Then I asked him to speak about for "WHO" they are opening.
"I don't know, I don't remember the name, It's rock, at the B52's".
"Fuck you" or "Damned " or "Shit"
(exactly my expression) (in french: "Putain de merde" Whore of shit)
I look at the calendar of the day with the today's menu "Tuesday 10th February, 1995": Chicken Legs with Honey Dressing"
"Fuck You" (again)
(I didn't exclaim myself because of the way these stupid galiceanous are cooked, but more about the date : 10th February, B52's, an American !!)
but to explain this rough language, we have to go back at least to 1975 ....
I was a 5 years old boy and my father, about thirty, listened to all kind of music: Hendrix, The Doors, Led Zeppelin ... and recently he had discovered Tim Buckley, folk rock singer, with a very high voice (as his son), a quite unknown talent, because he was fully in the US underground following the steps of Dylan, Bert Jansen, ... so I listened to him since my childhood and during the following 20 years. Tim Buckley died in 1977 and had a son: Jeff. The Jr. released in 1994 an album called "Grace" and perforce my father run to buy the CD. After having read the magnificent review in "Rock & Folk" music magazine we were kind of obliged to own this disk, the honour and history of our family was depending from it.
Rapidly I played endlessly this CD, I founded in it all what seduced me by Led Zeppelin, Television, his father and in the same time a modern sound, a bit like Nirvana but with the vocal class of Bowie and compositions absolutely full of genius, 10 tracks which didn't stop to haunt me ...
Around October 1994 I learn that JB performs in Lyon in February. Waiting a bit to find the money, I rushed to ... the FNAC, buying my ticket, noone of my friends wanted to come with me ...
Shit, no more tickets, nowhere, FNAC, Bouldingue, Le Progrès ... nothing ! Fucked !
the B52's has 400 places, kind of place, everybody close and straight to the others, so I understand why it was full so rapidly, he will perform 4 months later in the Antik Theater of Fourvières, full too ....
Brief, since November I gave it up to see the handsome Jeff ...
And now, here, my friend Rodolphe, on the real day, brings me Jeff on a tray, free concert, back stage, foods & drinks, the rebounds of life...
We arrive at the B52 about 6 p.m. with the staff, cabling two, three things on the stage, the famous multi effect pedal board of Jeff, we scotch the cables ....two good hours of work and then we have our sandwiches, chips, beer ....
Opening of the doors: a crowd of young excited girls are squatting the first range. Rodolphe and his friends came on a place where they were not awaited, doing a short 45 mn set of gipsy jazz, colored with blues with an enormous skill, but unsuccessfully, the audience are not there for them ... But it doesn't matter, they had had a good time on stage and are leaving rapidly, without even waiting the coming of Jeff ...
For myself, I'm in the DJ room with an old friend: Jean- Marc, fully employed here. On the wall of the room hangs an imitation of a Telecaster guitar, Corean model, a shit, but it's sweet with its flowers, hippie look ....
Jeff arrives backstage, shakes hands with us, discussing with us: we are talking about Led Zep, music, our respective fathers ... mine listening to his makes him laugh, we have a good time, without this relation "star-fan", I hate the fans and try not to be like them ..; his musicians are sympathetic, his drummer is completely stoned ....
As they arrive on stage, I watch them from the side, I don't miss anything from the show, not close and straight like the girls on the first range. Cool. Jeff asked me to bring him from time to time some red wine glasses, he drinks a bit much, but his voice, his guitar playing and what emerged and happened in this tiny club, this evening, was magic, perhaps one of the most beautiful show I have ever seen in my life ... During the show, Jean-Marc tells me that during the sound check at the beginning of the afternoon Jeff flashed on the "hippie" guitar, even if it was hard to play with, he liked his look, so Jean-Marc asked me about the idea to offer him this guitar before leaving the venue.
Jeff ended his show in triumph and we were arriving with the "hippie" guitar to give it to him. He is moved and happy, he found that the french are sympathetic and so on ...
Later, as I waited the arrival of my girlfriend to take me with her car, I saw Jeff again with his staff going to the bus. He thanked me again and said "See you next time" ... I never saw him again and he drowned in the Mississipi two years later, kind of irony of fate, exactly two months after the death of my father ...
End of the story ? No,
this could have been a story which arrives every day to roadies, I know some amazing.
7 years are over, I just split with my ex-wife (the girlfriend I had in 1995), and living with 2 friends and buy the DVD of the concert of Jeff Buckley filmed in May 1995, at Chicago (three months after the B52) and at a moment, Jeff's guitarist, Michael Tighe, perform on a song with this famous guitar ...."
Amazing story, thought could be a sweet introduction for my coming here ....
Bisous
DS
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