Jeff Buckley’s manager Dave Lory has opened up about the sad connection shared between the 90s singer/songwriter and Nirvana’s frontman, Kurt Cobain.
While chatting with Alternative Nation’s new Desperate Times: 90’s Music podcast about his upcoming book Jeff Buckley: From Hallelujah To The Last Goodbye, Lory discussed how at the time of Buckley’s untimely death he connected with Kurt Cobain’s manager, comparing dealing with the public sharing of the tragedy to a “military operation”.
“It’s like a military operation, at first you don’t know what you are going to do, thank God there was no internet back then, so I could get the message out like I wanted. But Danny Goldberg, who I co-managed the Allman Brothers with, and Janet Billing handled Nirvana, and when Kurt killed himself, they called me right away.”
“That meant a lot, because there’s not a book written [about] rock star publicity artist dies. They also said, ‘You’re a part of a club you don’t want to belong to.’ They said I’d get that call one day, and I did when Michael Hutchence hung himself.”
He also discussed Andy Wallace who was responsible for production credits on Nevermind, as well as Buckley’s 1994 effort, Grace, reflecting on the enduring impact of Jeff and his music.
“It’s interesting, I talked to Andy Wallace the producer of Grace yesterday, who was going to produce the next record. I asked him if he read the book, he said yes, he participated. He told me a story, it’s in the book too, about how he mixed Nevermind by Nirvana”, said Lory.
He said that Wallace still sees as Grace as a “timeless record”, more so than Nevermind.
“Before Jeff, everybody wanted to work with him because of Nirvana. He said, ‘I don’t get Nirvana, I get Jeff Buckley.’ That’s because it’s a timeless record. You put it on today, you don’t know what decade, or even if it’s a new record, and that’s a pretty special accomplishment on just one record.”
Listen to the full interview below:
