| "Jeff Buckley's two visits to Sydney left an enduring impression. He came twice within six months, first in August of 1995 and then in February of last year. That first brief trip came on the back of an extended European tour. "I was getting tired of it in the last moments of playing in Europe, but it's entirely new here and I've had time to convalesce," he told a reporter on arrival.
Over the next few days, he gave two unforgettable performances: one at a small club called the Lounge in Melbourne and the other at Sydney's Metro nightclub. To those present, the Metro show on August 28 rates as one of the greatest musical performances ever witnessed in this city. In a magical 90 minutes, Buckley and his three-piece band delivered a remarkable set of light and shade featuring much of the Grace album as well as the aggressive covers of MC5's "Kick Out the Jams" and Big Star's "Kanga-Roo". Buckley's pure, acrobatic voice sounded all the more extraordinary in the flesh. "You could hear a pin drop," recalled tour manager John Pope. "He held the audience in the palm of his hand. He'd take you on the ride with him. He'd lift you and take you down. He paced his gigs with finesse. When he walked on to a stage, he felt a responsibility, but it wasn't to the audience. It was to something else. God knows what."
"There was high anticipation which was rewarded tenfold when he played, added Jen Brennan, manager of the night's local support act Crow. "He just moved a lot of people. It was quite extraordinary. It's not often that you get a crowd at the Metro that's so silent and still. It was serene and very powerful."
Indeed a couple of nights later at the Lounge show in Melbourne, the venue's management found it necessary to turn off the cash registers because their collective clanging messed with the ambience.
That first visit was meant to be a simply a quick promotional trip to push Grace, but such was the impact of the Metro show that Buckley was persuaded to return to Sydney and play two extra gigs at the Phoenician Club to quench the city's sudden fascination with him." -- (Tribute article, "The Last Goodbye", Dino Scatena, Sydney Telegraph, 6 June 1997) |
