River's Edge

"It just wasn't around," says Bowen, who kicked five years ago. "My drug of choice was heroin -- that's what took me down, and that's what took his father down. And he always said, 'I'll never end up like my old man.' " Buckley was the age his father died at when he said in an interview that "drugs are like Vegas: The house always wins."

The singer would make knowledgeably sardonic references to drugs, as in his description of Grace's "Mojo Pin" in a 1994 interview: "Plainly speaking . . . it's a euphemism for a dropper full of smack that you shoot in your arm." In any event, despite early reports mistakenly saying that the autopsy itself had scotched the drug rumors, final confirmation that Buckley died clean was still pending the Memphis medical examiner's toxicology report, not completed as of a month after his death. (The ME is Dr. Jerry Francisco, who controversially ruled that Elvis Presley's body had shown "no evidence of any abnormal illegal-drug use" when Presley died, in August 1977.)

Bowen insists that there were no drugs present on the night of Buckley's death. "The police grilled us," he says, "and we handed over the keys to the truck and said, 'Have fun -- we have nothing to hide.' "

He just wanted to go in In Memphis, Buckley apparently spent much of his time alone in his house, laying down demos and struggling to get his songs perfected. (One standout cut was called "Nightmares by the Sea.") Both Buckley and punk legend Tom Verlaine had guested on Patti Smith's Gone Again, and from their acquaintanceship emerged two sets of sessions: first in Manhattan, in the summer of '96; and later in Memphis.

None of Buckley's closest colleagues and confidants admits to hearing the results, which now, sadly, are the major part of the recorded legacy. What did result is a ripe fondness for Memphis, home to Buckley's old pals the Grifters (especially leadman Dave Shouse and his wife, Tammy). When the sessions were done, Buckley stayed, moving from dreary corporate apartments to a small, funky cottage on a quiet midtown street where he let the grass grow wild and set up shop: a front room for his four-track, a pair of spare bedrooms in the back for the band when it would arrive. Buckley had a regular Monday night gig at a hole-in-the-wall club called Barrister's. With the band due in, he was eager to begin recording. "Everything's in black and white now," he told Bowen. "The band's coming down, and then . . . and then we'll have color."

He'd vowed to get a car but was getting around by bicycle and the kindness of not-quite strangers. Music writer Robert Gordon had met Buckley at Easley Studios during the Verlaine sessions; Buckley's cottage was Gordon's find, on the street where he and his wife, Tara, lived. "If you've moved somewhere by yourself, you know it's a time to shed an old skin," says Gordon. "I think he came here to woodshed." But Buckley would come to dinner at the Gordons' house wearing suspenders and green sharkskin; he'd sing to their newborn and drink his big coffees: "He had this energy inside of him, this excitement about everything. That vitality came out in his music. That he wanted to get into the river was totally characteristic; what my wife says is true --the thing that killed him is also what made him who he was. Most people talk about the river, but they don't go to it."

Andria Lisle, a Memphis record-store manager who lived around the corner from Buckley and became a steady, platonic companion during the singer's five months in Memphis, remembers him as existing there "like a kitten that would go from house to house, and everyone would do for him. He'd just show up and then go to the next house and get fed there, too. He lived for the moment -- spontaneous, very flirtatious, full of whimsy, mischievous. But he knew he was so blessed, and he was so committed to life."

Lisle went with him to Al Green's church. Afterward, Buckley ate two massive soul-food platters while the restaurant staff watched. The last time she saw Buckley was about 7:30 on the night he died. "Jeff and Keith [Foti] drove up, and Jeff was so excited," Lisle recalls. "He'd gone to open a bank account, to get a car; he was going to buy the house he was living in, and he was walking on air about his boys coming in. We'd planned to go to a casino, but he wanted to go play the drums."

Instead, he went to the river. Standing above the channel 10 days later, Gene Bowen considers it all: "The objective originally was just to go down there and -- you know, the sun was setting; it's beautiful here, with the breeze -- and play some music and sing. And then he just wanted to go in."

"He was unpredictable," says Keith Foti. "That was the beauty about Jeff. Every moment was an expression."

[From Issue 766 — August 7, 1997]