Jeff Buckley – ‘Eternal Life’ [Cubed]

There was a really cool internet project set up recently by two guys called Andy and Dave entitled ‘1000 Minutes‘. The idea was deceptively simple – what would you do if you were stuck on a desert island with an Ipod you could never update but had unlimited charge? Which songs would make the cut if you had to spend the rest of your life listening to them? This experiment was probably even more difficult for music lovers than the ‘Best of The Decade’ list we have coming up in a few days. Every time you think of a song, you realise you could fit two different ones into the same time frame, or that it wouldn’t be what you wanted after all. I don’t envy these guys narrowing down their extensive tune libraries – it’s a tough gig.

Early this miserable rainy morning, I had the brainwave that I could probably satiate three different types of music I loved with alternate versions of the same song. When you’re stuck on a tropical island and there’s no volleyball to talk to, reminding oneself of the human condition is probably one of the most important things you can do to stay sane. And if there’s anyone who mastered the art of demarcating the human condition, it was Jeff Buckley.

‘Eternal Life’ has been released and re-released so many times that I have no idea when it was first put on wax. The official, and first version for my Island Ipod was on Buckley’s only full LP, Grace. It’s here that audiences were first introduced to Buckley’s ability to marry heightened emotions of both anger and bliss into the same song. “Eternal life is now on my trail,” he sang wistfully (or perhaps not) “Got my red pleated coffin, man/Just need one last nail.” For all intent and purposes, ‘Eternal Life’ is a rock song. It has a heavy backbeat and some bitching guitar overlays, and when Buckley goes for the note, he really goes for it. But nobody can forget that brilliant bridge where Buckley croons and then snarls:

“There’s no time for hatred/Only questions….
What is Love? Where is happiness? What is life? Where is peace?”

1. Jeff Buckley – ‘Eternal Life’

However, when compared to the other two versions of the song, the studio ‘Eternal Life’ seems to be dead in the middle of the spectrum. The ‘road version’ of this track, included on the tenth anniversary of Grace, sees Buckley raging on a whole new level. This will be good release for when I realise that nobody’s actually coming to save me. This cut of Eternal life is messy, played twice as fast as the original, and features a new bridge that is downright Satanic. This is probably as close as Buckley wanted to get to cock-rock hedonism, and he likely never intended for this one-off recording to see the light of day. But I’m awfully glad it did, it makes you realise that while he was a demigod in terms of his musical ability, he was nonetheless human.

2. Jeff Buckley – ‘Eternal Life (Road Version)’

Finally, for those quiet moments under the coconut tree, looking up at the stars in a clear sky and pondering the meaning of existence, you can’t go past the live version of ‘Eternal Life’ Buckley recorded for his now-legendary EP, Live at Sin-é. Armed only with a single guitar and his voice, Buckley turned the tune into a exploration of emotion and wonder to an audience of very few people. This version is substantially different to the other two, as Buckley improvised and rejigged melodies in the corner of a little bar in New York’s East Village. It is by far the most beautiful of the three, if only for it’s rawness and the gambles Buckley takes with the tune. But then, this is probably the first recorded version, seeing as this EP preceded Grace by a year.

3. Jeff Buckley – ‘Eternal Life (Live at Sin-é)’

During the live recording, Buckley explained some of his reasons for writing ‘Eternal Life’:

“This is a song about…it’s an angry song. Life’s too short and too complicated for people behind desks and people behind masks to be ruining other people’s lives, initiating force against other people’s lives, on the basis of their income, their color, their class, their religious beliefs, their whatever…”

With this as an introduction and the three-headed ‘Eternal Life’ on constant rotation, I reckon I could live pretty contentedly on that abandoned island in the middle of the sea. I don’t know many other artists who can speak to me in multiple ways through the same song. This is, and will always remain, a cruelly under-appreciated epic.

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