The Jeff Buckley Cover That’s Better Than His “Hallelujah”
After appearing on his only studio album, 1994’s Grace, Jeff Buckley’s cover of “Hallelujah” overtook Leonard Cohen’s original—and countless other attempts—to become the definitive version of the song. It demonstrated Buckley’s talent for taking lyrics whose genius was arguably being a little underexploited by their original performer, and squeezing a whole new spectrum of meaning and emotion from them with just a voice and a 1983 Fender Telecaster. In many people’s eyes, it is not just the definitive version of that song but the best cover of any song ever performed by anyone, ever.
So it is with no small amount of trepidation that we use the recent release of the documentary It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley as an opportunity to draw your attention to another cover of Buckley’s—one that was cut from the original release of that same album but can be found hidden away on on disc 2 of its “Legacy” version—and to tell you that it is, in fact (please don’t freak out), an even better example of Buckley’s talent for covers. That example is Buckley’s cover of Bob Dylan’s “Mama, You Been On My Mind”.
Firstly, some credit for Dylan. As is the case with Cohen’s “Hallelujah”, the recording of his own song is an impressive one in its own right, and if the cover didn’t exist, it would be deservedly praised for bringing the poise and elegance of its lyrics to life with beguiling simplicity. Dylan wrote himself a fantastic set of lyrics here, and he sings and plays in such a way as to ensure that there is as little obstruction as possible between the feeling those lyrics are putting out into the world and the one a listener gleans from hearing him. He almost speaks his words, and that makes sense, because they’re very good words and the main focus should be on people hearing them (not always Dylan’s highest priority, it must be said).
Buckley’s superpower was his ability to charge a vocal performance with all of the feeling and force of, say, a Janis Joplin or a Bruce Springsteen (or indeed a late-career Dylan), while maintaining the clarity of an elocution teacher. He could do feeling without sacrificing meaning, and that’s a rare skill indeed.
Dylan only allows for a bar and a half of nondescript strumming before launching into the song’s opening lines: “Perhaps it’s the color of the sun caught flat and covering/The crossroad I’m standing at/Or maybe it’s the weather, or something like that/But mama, you been on my mind.” It works pretty well, because the lyrics themselves drop us in hot with little explanation (the second word is an unexplained “it” and that mysterious “it” is speculated about for a further two lines before the final one finally gives us something in the way of exposition), so the impression being created here is pretty unambiguously one of intimacy between the speaker and “Mama” (who is of course an ex-lover, not a mother), which we as the listener sort of feel like we’re intruding on. It’s like we’re reading a letter between two people with a lot of history.
