'It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley': How new documentary captures musician's time in Memphis

In 1995, musician Jeff Buckley — whose angelic voice was matched by a similarly seraphic, even Pre-Raphaelite visage — found himself at No. 12 on People magazine's list of the "50 Most Beautiful People in the World."

His only studio LP, the now revered "Grace," released a year earlier, had peaked at No. 149 on the Billboard album chart. 

Such metrical disconnects and misplaced emphases, irrelevant to art, were frustrating to the singer-songwriter, whose musical idols included Nina Simone, a poetic political activist, and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, a Sufi mystic.

Discouraged by music-industry expectations and the stress of touring and encouraged by his friendship with members of the Grifters, the arguable éminences grises of the local postpunk scene, Buckley moved to Memphis in 1997, in search of anonymity, inspiration and rejuvenation. 

In Memphis, he "felt safe," according to Buckley's girlfriend at the time, New England musician Joan Wasser. But on the evening of May 29, Buckley disappeared after entering the Wolf River Harbor, near Mud Island, for a swim. His drowned body was discovered June 4, "at the foot of Beale Street" — a music-themed morbid irony that television and newspaper reporters found irresistible. He was 30 years old.

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Buckley's Memphis residency occupies most of the final half hour of director Amy Berg's years-in-the-making "It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley," a documentary feature film that opens Aug. 8 in 128 theaters nationwide, including the Malco Ridgeway Four in Memphis .

The 7 p.m. Aug. 8 show at the Ridgeway will be followed by a discussion and question-and-answer session featuring "It's Never Over" editor Stacy Goldate , a Los Angeles-based veteran filmmaker and former Memphian. (It's easy for Goldate to return here: Her parents, Craig and Kathy Goldate, live in Germantown.) The moderator will be Memphis author-filmmaker Robert Gordon , who was acquainted with Buckley. 

With a title that alludes to the singer-songwriter's posthumous influence, "It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley" offers further evidence that Buckley's popularity and celebrity have escalated almost exponentially since his accidental death. More evidence: One of the movie's executive producers is actor Brad Pitt (who previously had hoped to portray Buckley in a biopic).

A Memphis Magazine story referred to Buckley as "a budding superstar." Since 1997, the bud has bloomed. "Grace" has now sold more than 2 million copies. Buckley's cover of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" has been streamed close to 405 million times. Sony/Columbia has released more than 20 Buckley compilations, expanded reissues and live albums.

Peers and critics also are enamored. In the documentary, singer-songwriter Aimee Mann calls Buckley "literally the best singer that I've ever heard." 

A 1990 graduate of St. Mary's Episcopal School whose family moved from Philadelphia to Memphis ("which I do consider my hometown") when she was 12, Goldate is one of two credited editors on "It's Never Over." The other is Brian A. Kates, who had to leave the project before it was finished to work on "Kiss of the Spider Woman," with Jennifer Lopez.

Both editors spent months on the movie with the director, Amy Berg, crafting the final 107-minute cut from countless hours of archival content (performance video, phone machine messages, and so on); new material (including footage of the house Buckley rented at 93 N. Rembert in Midtown, which is now an Airbnb , and a site of pilgrimage for fans from around the world); vivid animation (Buckley's journal entries come to hallucinatory life); and interviews with significant figures in Buckley's life. Some of these include his mother, Mary Guibert (who required some 20 years of convincing before she approved the project); girlfriends Wasser and actress/musician Rebecca Moore; and, in Memphis, Dave Shouse of the Grifters and his wife, Tammy Shouse.

The story is roughly chronological, from Buckley's childhood in Orange County, California, to his slow ascent to recognition, in New York, as a distinctive singer-songwriter with an ethereal yet soulful voice. "My main music influences? Love, anger, depression, joy — and Zeppelin," he says, in a vintage interview in the film.

Conspicuously absent in that list of influences is Buckley's father, acclaimed singer-songwriter Tim Buckley, who abandoned the family before Jeff was born and died nine years later, at 28, of a heroin-morphine-ethanol overdose. In another vintage sound bite, Jeff Buckley says thoughts of his father fill him with "pain and anger," but also "love and compassion."

Certainly, Berg is no stranger to such strong, challenging emotions. The director's previous documentaries include "Janis: Little Girl Blue" (2015), about Janis Joplin, and "Deliver Us from Evil" (2006), which explored sex-abuse scandals in the Catholic Church. Memphis also was not unfamiliar territory: Her 2012 documentary "West of Memphis," produced by the "Lord of the Rings" Oscar-winner Peter Jackson, examined the case of the "West Memphis Three."

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With Berg at the helm and Goldate and Iceland-born animator Sara Gunnarsdóttir as major contributors, "It's Never Over" is a movie largely built by women. In addition, the film opens with interviews with women: Guibert (also an executive producer), Moore, Wasser, and also Mann and singer Alanis Morissette. Goldate said this strategy was intentional, not only because "the women in his life were so important to him" but because Buckley's art offered a contrast to the "aggressive voices" of so many male artists in the 1990s. 

"Here was this man who could channel Nina Simone, and who had this beautiful voice," said Goldate, 52. "My feeling is that he transcended binaries in general. Music spoke to him on such a high frequency, such a high level, that it was above all the categories that people place themselves in.

"There was such a sweetness in him," she added. "When I was deep in the edit, I kept saying over and over again, 'He is such a sweetheart!'"

Goldate — a veteran editor with degrees from Vanderbilt University and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago — said her Memphis history and love of indie rock music ("I used to try to sneak into the Antenna club with a fake ID when I was 16 years") helped her connect with Buckley, who performed regularly at Barrister's, a Downtown dive that was a successor to the punk-era club, Antenna.

However, "Somehow, I missed 'Grace' when it came out," Goldate admitted. "So I didn't come into this from a place of fandom." But by the time she "locked" her final edit into place, "I was madly in love with him. Now I'm obsessed with Jeff Buckley."

She said she hopes the documentary — distributed in theaters by Magnolia Pictures, and set to air on HBO later this year — will have the same effect on those who watch it. "One of my biggest hopes for this film is that people will come to appreciate his music. There's so much more than 'Hallelujah.'"

'It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley'

Opens Aug. 8 at the Malco Ridgeway Four

The 7 p.m. Aug. 8 screening will be followed by a public discussion and question-and-answer session with Stacy Goldate, the movie's co-editor, and author/filmmaker Robert Gordon.

For tickets and more information, visit malco.com .

For more about the movie, visit magpictures.com/jeffbuckley .

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: New Jeff Buckley documentary opens in Memphis: What to expect