Tomorrow marks the 25th anniversary of Jeff Buckley’s iconic sole completed studio album Grace.
Today, we’re premiering a previously unreleased video of Buckley performing Grace track ‘Eternal Life’ at the Gleneagles Hotel in Scotland back in March 1994.
Buckley would go on to release Grace in August of that year, cementing his status as one of the most talented songwriters of the generation.
‘Eternal Life’ is something of an anomaly in Buckley’s catalogue. It’s easily one of the artist’s heavier cuts, with aggressive, overdriven guitar marking a departure from the more intimate tracks he’s typically associated with.
“It’s an angry song,” Buckley tells a crowd about the track on the Live at Sin-é EP.
“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 colour, their class, their religious beliefs, their whatever…”
Tomorrow, in celebration of 25 years since Grace‘s release, a number of rarities will be coming to streaming and download services via Columbia/Legacy. Four rare live concert albums will be arriving for the first time, as well as expanded editions of Grace, Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk and live album Mystery White Boy including bonus tracks and newly available material.
The huge expansion of digital titles includes the first-ever official release of one of Buckley’s final demos, ‘Sky Blue Skin’, recorded at his final 1996 studio session.
“The music industry has made a couple of sea changes since Jeff departed the planet. I don’t know if he foresaw even a glimpse of the current state of affairs,” commented Buckley’s mother Mary Guibert about the expansions.
“Since all we have of his true remains is what’s in ‘the vault’, I’m thrilled that we can finally fling open the doors of that vault and make as much as possible available to Jeff’s fans: the old ones and the new ones, and the ones who have not yet been born.”
Watch Buckley performing ‘Eternal Life’ in Scotland below.
