It begins like the best kind of haunting. In the opening notes of “Grace,” Jeff Buckley’s voice still seems to levitate, barely tethered to the Earth, even after nearly 30 years. And in Dave Lory’s new book, Jeff Buckley: From Hallelujah to Last Goodbye, that ethereal weight finally has a companion story worthy of its spirit.
“It took two years to write the first chapter,” Lory confesses. And with good reason: that chapter deals with Buckley’s death. “I hadn’t opened the boxes for 20 years,” he says. “I cried for three days and realized I hadn’t grieved.” For Lory, writing wasn’t just documentation. It was excavation.
Jeff Buckley, the son of folk-rock legend Tim Buckley, first met Lory in an unassuming café. The two bonded over tea—and metal. “Jeff loved big metal and Pakistani singers and Edith Piaf. He was all over the place,” Lory says. There was no box to put him in. No proper demo. No well-worn hustle. Just word of mouth and a live show that felt like a divine visitation.
“That’s how he broke the mold,” Lory recalls. “He didn’t have a demo tape. He just played live—and people thought it was a religious experience.”
Somewhere between Grace and the myth of Jeff Buckley, there’s an unfinished sophomore album: My Sweetheart the Drunk. Or, as we know it now, the fragmentary Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk. Lory explains the heartbreak plainly: “The night he disappeared in the Mississippi River was the night the band was supposed to start rehearsing.” Fueled by ambition and unrestrained creativity, Buckley was already moving beyond the lush tonal palettes of Grace. “He wasn’t going to stay in one lane,” Lory adds.
Even in rough form, songs like “Everybody Here Wants You” showed where he might have gone—as an artist, and maybe as a star. “It would have been huge,” Lory says. “We’d have had singles.” But that version isn’t the one the world got. Nor is it the version Jeff would have wanted, if his message to Lory is any indication: “He told me, ‘This isn’t finished. I’m going to put the color in it.’”
After Buckley’s death, the business side scrambled. Lory and the original production team were fired. The estate had its direction. Lory had his own idea: bring in artists Jeff admired—Chris Cornell, Patti Smith, Elvis Costello—to finish the songs. Honor the unfinished by bringing in kindred spirits. But it wasn’t to be.
Speaking of Cornell, Lory acknowledges the sharper ache that comes from losing more than one kind of family. “When Chris died, I was writing this book,” Lory says. “Grief just kept echoing.” Cornell even wrote liner notes for My Sweetheart the Drunk—one more member of Buckley’s circle gone too soon.
Yet the music remains. Grace opened a new kind of emotional spectrum in 1994, one that felt especially radical during the height of grunge. “I told him, ‘Different is good. Different lasts,’” Lory says. Andy Wallace, who mixed both Nevermind and Grace, put it even more starkly: “Today, people come to talk about Jeff—they don’t even bring up Nirvana. Grace is timeless.”
Maybe that’s the real testimony. Jeff Buckley didn’t need radio dominance or stadium tours. He arrived with a voice that felt ancient and new at the same time—what Lory describes as “a whisper with strength.” As Leonard Cohen once told Lory, Buckley didn’t just cover “Hallelujah”—he transformed it.
Now Lory is taking Jeff’s story on tour—not the book tour circuit, but small rooms, music venues, the same kind of spaces Jeff used to break through. “Book tours don’t pay,” he says. “But this lets me connect. Fans can ask anything they want.” The shows are part storytelling, part communal catharsis. “I want to put a stamp on his legacy,” Lory insists. “Let people get what they want from it.”
Grief, like music, doesn’t have a clean ending. But if there’s a lasting note here, it’s one of preservation. Of pulling truth out from the myth. Of admitting that some songs, no matter how incomplete, still feel whole in the right light.
Because in the end, Lory didn’t just manage Jeff Buckley. He’s still carrying the torch. The book is his love letter, his eulogy, and his thank you. And it’s about time we listened, again.
Listen to the full interview above and then check out the video below.
