. In 1997, while working on new music in Memphis, Tennessee, Buckley drowned accidentally in Wolf River, aged just 30.
Comparisons were made to his father, Tim Buckley, a countercultural troubadour who’d abandoned Jeff and his mother and died in 1975 of a heroin overdose at 28.
The compelling life and legacy of a miraculously gifted artist whose life was cut tragically short is expressed in It’s Never Over , the new Jeff Buckley documentary from director Amy Berg. But more importantly, the film shows how alive Buckley was.
Capturing Buckley’s spirit
A charismatic, handsome virtuoso abuzz with ideas, he could be gloomy and mysterious, but also goofy, self-deprecating, and intensely passionate.
“I think Amy really captured his essence,” says close friend and guitarist Michael Tighe.
“You feel the film more than you watch it. It emotes more than it explains. I really liked that because in this age of information … there’s this obsession with explanations and some things you can’t explain.
“That felt very in keeping with Jeff’s ethos. He always put feeling and heart before thought.”
It’s Never Over draws on extensive archival material.
Live footage showcases Buckley’s mercurial guitar and four-octave vocal range, plus interviews, family photos, and journals — some given animated flourishes.
The film humanises Buckley beyond the cliched portrait of tortured genius.
“He could be the most silly,” remembers Tighe.
“His impressions were incredible. He’d mimic other singers at sound check — like an amazing Chris Cornell [frontman for Soundgarden]. I still laugh about it.
“I’ve never met someone as funny … I really miss his humour and generosity.”
Watching the doco was a deeply emotional experience for Tighe.
“Of course, I listen to our music sometimes, but I don’t get to hear him talk that much. It was very powerful to be in a dark room and just hear him speak again,” he says.
Tighe was still in high school when he first met Buckley, who’d relocated to New York City and began dating mutual friend, Rebecca Moore.
“We hit it off instantly. We’d play pool, go to the movies, and take walks around the East Village. He just fell in love with the city so quickly and felt like he belonged there.”
Tighe has fond memories of coming home from school and being greeted by Buckley hanging out with his family.
Jeff Buckley and his mother Mary Guibert. Director Amy Berg spent two decades courting Guibert’s approval to make the film.
Supplied: Magnolia Pictures
They bonded over blues music and would jam in Tighe’s bedroom, where he played Buckley what would become Grace track So Real .
“I’d written [it] a few months before I met him. I didn’t have much experience playing guitar. But I played him that one, and he was really into it,” Tighe says.
A year later, Buckley enlisted Tighe to his band and asked at one rehearsal: “Remember that thing you played me on your bed? I started playing, and he provided a beat and started singing the melody of the chorus.”
So Real appeared on Grace alongside luminous originals like Last Goodbye and Mojo Pin , as well as influential versions of jazz standard Lilac Wine and Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah .
A feminine masculine
Tighe speaks candidly in the documentary, alongside fellow band mate Matt Johnson and musicians Ben Harper and Aimee Mann.
Rather than opt for a parade of celebrity talking heads, the film wisely prioritises the perspectives of women in Buckley’s life.
His mother, Mary Guibert, who is Buckley’s estate caretaker and an executive producer on the film, offers intimate insights.
A Panamanian immigrant, she was 17 and pregnant with Jeff when Tim Buckley divorced her.
Shamed by her family, she gave up her dreams to be an actress and concert pianist to raise Jeff alone.
“Jeff and I sort of raised each other … I sure was a flawed parent,” she confesses.
A convivial, candid presence that anchors the film, she had a deep, abiding relationship with her son, even as his success intensified their physical distance.
Expect waterworks over the scenes where she shares voicemails from her gone-too-soon son: laughing, crying, a complicated cocktail of emotions still present after decades.
“No-one has ever loved me more or better than he.”
Two of Buckley’s prominent romantic partners, Rebecca Moore and Joan Wasser, agree.
Both have been historically stereotyped as muses (Moore for Lover , You Should’ve Come Over and Wasser for Everybody Here Wants You ) or diminished as pitiful exes.
“Society has a weird view towards women in these relationships,” Moore says early on. “There’s so much misogyny.”
It’s Never Over instead treasures their frank perspectives, fleshing out a captivating portrait of an artist who challenged traditional gender roles.
He was a “staunch defender of women”, says Wasser, recalling Buckley wearing dresses. He counted Judy Garland, Nina Simone, Edith Piaf and Joni Mitchell among his earliest inspirations.
“I wanted to be a chanteuse,” chuckles Buckley, who held an undying, far-reaching love of music and eclectic tastes.
“My main influences? Love, anger, depression, joy … and [Led] Zeppelin.”
Beyond Page and Plant, Buckley hailed Pakistani vocalist Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan as “my Elvis”, idolised jazz guitarist Al Di Meola, pioneering punks Bad Brains, Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich, and more.
Jeff Buckley is among the 2026 nominees for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
Supplied: Magnolia Pictures
The unfinished future
A mesmerising performer who could stop audiences in their tracks, Buckley was also a sensitive soul who struggled with fame.
The film explores a darker side to his artistry, suffering from manic-depressive episodes and wrestling with mortality in his music.
“… because when I’m dead that’s the only thing that’ll be around,” Buckley says in the documentary.
Those fatalistic feelings were exacerbated by the spectre of his father’s short life and the label breathing down his neck to achieve sales that matched the acclaim.
“I don’t see myself 10 years from now,” he remarks eerily in one interview clip . In another, he jokes grimly that if touring delays his next album “any longer, I’ll be hanging from a noose.”
“In retrospect, I can’t even imagine the pressure,” remarks Tighe.
“He was very aware of the greatness of Grace , more than anyone.
“Grace felt so pure to him, and I think he did feel this darkness in him, and felt conflicted about that. But also, at times wanted to embrace it and express that in his music.”
Buckley was “dead set” on making a grittier, polarising follow-up album, Tighe says. “He said to me often: ‘This is going to be a divisive record.’”
In 1997, Buckley had decamped to Memphis and refined material ready to be recorded with his band, jetting in from New York City.
“He did call me a week before we went down: ‘Michael, finally, this stuff is starting to feel right — the way the Grace songs did.’ I was so happy for him that he got to that point.”
But as his band were touching the Memphis tarmac, Buckley was taking an impromptu dip in the Mississippi river scored by his beloved Zeppelin. He never resurfaced.
Press-fuelled speculation of drug abuse and suicide followed, but It’s Never Over — and those closest to him — stress Buckley’s untimely death was nothing more than a tragic mistake.
Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk, a compilation of recordings released a year after Jeff Buckley’s death, topped the Australian album charts.
Supplied: Columbia Records/Sony
Eternal life
Buckley was correct that his music would outlive him. His intimate, theatrical falsetto was a huge influence on Radiohead, Muse, Coldplay and a wave of “noughties” bands.
“Jeff was really the only male rock singer [in the 90s] with that style,” notes Tighe. “Romantic crooners weren’t popular among the “jaded Gen X grunge space.”
New audiences continue to discover Buckley 29 years after his death.
In January, Lover, You Should’ve Come Over landed Buckley on the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time after going viral on TikTok.
Tighe credits the “healing quality” of Buckley’s otherworldly singing for his enduring popularity.
“It’s like the voice of youth, this ultra-romantic yearning. That’s something young audiences always connect with,” he says.
“It’s like Jeff is embalmed in that because that’s all he knew, and he was fully committed to that. He never grew old, became normal, or had a more measured relationship with love and romance. He was just all in.”
For Tighe, revisiting his own youth and caretaking his friend’s generational legacy into his 50s is often difficult.
“No matter how much time passes, you never really heal completely,” he admits. “It’s always laced with a certain amount of pain.”
“But it does make it all worth it when you see the music connecting with this new generation.
“He’s finally getting the flowers he deserves on the scale he deserves.
“Then, it all makes sense, and I’m here for him, and I’ll do however many interviews about it.”
It’s Never Over is now screening in New Zealand cinemas.
