The Joy & Pain of Jeff Buckley

NEARLY THREE DECADES AFTER HIS DEATH, A NEW DOCUMENTARY LOOKS AT THE LIFE OF A ’90S ROCK GOD—AND HIS TRAGIC DROWNING AT AGE 30

- EILEEN FINAN

When an unknown Jeff Buckley stepped onstage for his first New York performance, at a 1991 tribute to his father, folk-rock legend Tim Buckley, Rebecca Moore wasn’t expecting much. Moore, part of the crew that night, had grown up in the city’s avant-garde scene and wasn’t easily impressed by aspiring artists. Then Buckley opened his mouth: “He seemed to give in to a force,” says Moore, who later became Buckley’s partner and muse. “His essence was music.”

Buckley’s voice, a haunting, transcendent tenor with a nearly four-octave range, is most familiar from his iconic rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” which has more than 407 million Spotify streams. But for an artist who released just one album in his lifetime, he’s had an outsize influence: Adele, Radiohead, Lana Del Rey and Coldplay’s Chris Martin (who said Buckley’s music was “responsible for us being a band”) all point to him as inspiration. “Jeff cuts right to your heart,” says director Amy Berg, whose new documentary