‘Sketches’ for Her Son

Every time the late Jeff Buckley read a profile or review about him or his music during the boldly original singer-songwriter’s tragically brief career, he found himself linked with one of his parents. Somewhere in the article would always be a mention of his father, Tim Buckley, a richly talented songwriter who died of a heroin overdose in 1975 at age 28.

The difficult thing for Buckley in seeing his name constantly tied to his father is that the two had almost no personal connection in life. Tim Buckley’s year-plus marriage to Mary Guibert ended before she gave birth to their son in 1966 in Anaheim.

“Everything I know about him was secondhand except for about a week, and even then I don’t remember much,” Jeff Buckley said in a 1995 interview with The Times. “Genetics be dammed. . . . I have completely different musical choices.”

Ironically, Jeff’s mother is the parent who will now be most often mentioned in articles involving the posthumous release of “Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk,” a two-disc collection of her son’s music. It’s a captivating work that extends the enormous promise of Buckley’s 1994 debut, “Grace.” (See accompanying review.)

Having his mother’s name in stories would have made sense to Buckley. Guibert, her maiden name, put her acting dreams on hold to raise Jeff and his younger brother, and the two remained close throughout his life.

In the months after her son died in an accidental drowning in a Memphis marina last May, Guibert, 50, listened for hours to his unreleased tapes to select the tracks that would be included in the new set.

On the eve of the album’s release Tuesday by Columbia Records, Guibert, who lives in Santa Ana, spoke about her son, his music and how she hopes he’s remembered as a positive force.

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Question: How did you feel when Jeff told you he was going into the music business? Given the way Tim’s life ended, did you worry about what might happen to him?

Answer: From the time Jeff was an infant, I knew he was musically inclined. Even when he was in those little infant seats, he would vocalize with the music on the radio in a way that you could tell he was trying to follow the melody line. It was amazing.

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Q: But did you feel any fear that he, too, might end up tragically?

A: No, not that. The fear I had was the same fear Jeff had . . . that people wouldn’t give him an opportunity to express his own music . . . that they would never be able to shake the comparisons with Tim Buckley.

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Q: When did you start thinking he might actually be able to have a career . . . that he was truly talented?

A: It sounds like a mother talking, but I really knew early on that his love of music was so profound that it was going to put him somewhere in that world. I hoped that he would become a good songwriter, someone whose work was often performed by other artists, which might be an easier life . . . rather than being a star.

And, I think that’s what he originally had in mind. I once said to him, “Watch out, ‘Grace’ might get a Grammy nomination.” And he said, “No, mom, that’s not the kind of artist I am.” He didn’t see himself as a pop star. I think he even went out of his way to avoid that mold. Look how long it took him to make the second album. He didn’t rush back into the studio after “Grace”--to cash in on its success.

He was thinking of a long career. He didn’t want to be the flavor of the month. He wanted a stable life.

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Q: That’s interesting . . . the “stable life” part because it’s easy to think of him, especially after his death, as a tortured artist. There was such a restless, soul-searching quality to his music. But that wasn’t him?

A: No, Jeff hated that [stereotype] of songwriters. He hated how this society seems to glorify negative issues. If artists are drugging themselves to death at an early age, then something is wrong with the psyche of those young artists. But that wasn’t Jeff.

Jeff was a very positive person . . . very much a seeker of truth. He was into a Sufi way of thinking, that we do not need a [go-between] between us and God, and that love is the highest power.

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Q: What about Tim? Was he more troubled?

A: It may sound strange, but I only knew Tim so briefly. It would be unfair to make any comparison. I was only married to Tim about a year and two months. Jeff was born after the marriage broke up. I was 5 1/2 months pregnant when I filed for divorce. . . . My biggest regret in life was that Tim couldn’t have lived and they could have had a relationship. I’m sure Tim would have been so proud of him.

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Q: Why did you agree to put the album together? It must have been hard to listen to his voice for all those hours.

A: I knew I wanted to be the one to sort of monitor what was going to happen to his music, though I had no way of envisioning how difficult it would be. There were tapes from the different sessions . . . the early ones in Chicago with Tom Verlaine producing, which Jeff was not happy with, and the four-track demos. . . .

At the moment that Jeff walked into the water [before he drowned], he was ready to finally go in and make the second album. He knew exactly what he wanted. He and I had a long conversation just previous to that. We talked about everything about his life. We even covered some stuff that we needed to clean house on as a mother and a son.

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Q: What has it been like now that you’ve “surfaced” in Jeff’s life. Do you hear from his fans? What do they say?

A: His fans are some of the neatest people. They came from all over the world on their own money to the memorial in New York. Some slept on borrowed floors and bus benches. They wrote some of the most beautiful poetry. I’ve received CDs and cassettes from musicians all over the world who were inspired by Jeff.

They always want to say how Jeff touched their lives. A lot of them mention that they had lost loved ones and “Grace” helped them heal. That’s the most beautiful thought to me because it’s exactly what Jeff wanted with his music. He wanted to touch and inspire people. That was his dream.