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Ethics of a Posthumous Legacy: The Jeff Buckley Vault

The curse of posthumous fame is an undercurrent which continues to rattle the music industry to its core. There will always be consumer demand for the release of cultural products which seemingly defy the length of a biological life; the ephemeral being that is music is what keeps this morbid curiosity very much alive. Whilst the attraction we hold towards art and the celebration of a name once departed is seemingly innocent if not benevolent, I often find myself comparing exploitation and hedonism in its wake. What I have found in this strange landscape is an enhanced authenticity, but at the cost of breaching the privacy of those who have passed away. Both original interests of image and content-release exist no longer under the jurisdiction of the musician, but of the administrator of their estate. Whilst we have been gifted as followers of musicians from the past, there comes a point where we have to weigh our ethical decisions against our consumer behaviour. Is there a point at which we stop buying products of a bygone era; how do we justify where the line, if existing at all, lies between selfish pleasure and privacy codes?


My original philosophy which still stands now, is this idea that once music is released into the world, it no longer belongs to the musician, but to the ears which hear it. Albeit in relation to work released after a musician has died, consent to the ephemerality of music is lost, and intention becomes a subjective concept. This reflective essay will map out the topography of my evolving ethical involvement in the consumption of Jeff Buckley’s posthumous legacy, and the philosophical justifications which underpin my self-inflicted responsibility to music.


There is a spectrum of validity in listening to music; aesthetic pleasure, entertainment, contextual analysis… however in defining where my consumer autonomy lies, I first have to define the purpose which Buckley’s music fulfils for me. As a music student, I understand the separation of artist from art to be extremely violent. This is the main reason that my ethical decisions pertaining to the Buckley legacy is one so convoluted; I value the interest of the musician equally to my enjoyment of their music.


When you google the name Jeff Buckley, we are faced with the same story; Jeff Buckley, 90s grunge musician, son of cult folk artist Tim Buckley, tragically drowned in circumstances foreshadowed in the artist’s only album, Grace. Plainly speaking, this is true. But as a person first, and musician second, my relationship with this story has changed over the past 8 years; in turn my behaviour in merely existing in this forever-evolving new media landscape has also bared the brunt of ethical realisations.


Grace was released in 1994, just three years before Buckley waded out into the Wolf River in Memphis, and drowned in the undertow of a passing boat. Signed to Columbia with just the one LP under his belt, he not only left this world with an aching loss which transcends generational and geographic boundaries, but also with a debt to the recording industry. Somewhere in between the allure of the finite and financial realities of what it means to be a musician, there is an enormous legacy which remains. Currently, his estate exists under his mother, Mary Guibert’s discretion, and what has since arisen from the vault of his art and ephemera is something quite astonishing. In many ways, this legacy garnered in a posthumous setting has relied on romantic tragedy to evolve, resulting in a career that has become more productive financially, in death. This narrative will forever cater to the widespread and collective appetite for more; everything that Buckley committed to tape when he was alive, is dribbling out of the vault and embraced by those who chomp at the bit.


I was 13 when I heard Grace for the very first time, and I suppose that’s where fan culture begins, with complete adoration. I remember being so depressed upon realising that Buckley had died 2 years before my life even began, and the weight of that finite road of creativity continues to be a heavy load to bare. Fervent loyalty and a strong musical diet saw my collection of Buckley’s posthumous discography grow, in an attempt to soothe this nostalgic intrigue. Albeit this decision was one initially framed in a welcomed ignorance; mortal intention was overlooked for the sake of my own pleasure. Philosopher Ernest Partridge describes this as un-affecting harm, the idea that what one doesn’t know, won’t hurt them.


As my love for Buckley’s music grew, so did a projected understanding of his personal values. I found myself at a moral crossroad; my connection with his career is one based off of compositional interest, and not a clairvoyant curiosity. I wanted to do my part in rectifying a ghostly image and refocus on the musical genius and social sensitivity that he embodied.

To an extent, I was able to accomplish this with a thesis on Buckley’s realisation of Abel Meeropol’s poem Strange Fruit and an ethnomusicological presentation on Qawwali structures within Dream Brother; research that aimed to run deeper than morbid or paternal allusions.


Through such research, the ethical frameworks which I based my musical enjoyment on, transcended a sense of selfish pleasure to a more attuned philosophical analysis of what I was actually hearing. I became more aware of where the content was coming from, and from here on, privacy rights of the deceased nestled its way into the forefront of my thought. As a result, I uncovered a hypocrisy in how I value the privacy of the famous.


Journalist Paul Chadwick writes that different types of fame have different relationships with privacy; fame by achievement is described as the exchange of privacy for wealth, and that fame by association is noted as "enjoyed or endured by those close to the famous", a reflected notion not always resulting in glory. Jeff Buckley exists as mixture of the two, albeit his acceptance of such glory was ambivalent; "I sacrificed my anonymity for my father, whereas he sacrificed me for his fame".


Chadwick writes of these privacy relationships regarding the living, but in applying it to the deceased, there is an added ethical layer of respecting mortal interest; such interests which have been uncovered through research. The information available online is incredible. In an interview with Camelot Lounge owner, Yaron Hallis, this idea of the breadth of what’s out there was captured beautifully; "I was losing myself in his words and ideas… we’re not meant to have this much information at our fingertips"; the internet is a dangerous place to be for people wired like us, the nerds. The hypocrisy here lies in my quest to understand Buckley’s character in order to inform what I could listen to. Authorial intent was what I was looking for to ease the guilt of my enjoyment, but in searching for it, the hedonistic researcher reared its head.


Music is meant to be experienced, but only if that music had the intention to be heard in the first place. However in assuming these intentions via challenging my temporal disconnect with Buckley, it’s easy to find yourself in a paralytic state of anxious incapacity. The research conducted to paint a more authentic picture of Buckley’s interest, kind of goes against his values of musical independence and ambivalence towards the glitz of mainstream media; "You can’t leave it up to the media to feed you life, it’s somebody’s corporate fiction". Yet without it, I’d still be enjoying work that was not intended for me to hear. For example, the track Forget Her which appeared on the legacy edition of Grace in 2004. It was recorded at the same Bearsville session in 1993 but was scrapped by Buckley for being too personal a track to include on the album. It’s now a single with a music video.


This is a direct disregard of musical intention, and consent is gathered not through its authorship, but via Buckley’s estate — legally, this is all that is required. Privacy doesn’t die with the person, not in a legal sense anyway. However, American philosopher Joel Feinberg argues that although there is no legal weight ascribed to people who have passed away, there is still an ethical valuing of interests, as if they survived the death of the body which harboured them. This idea formed the basis of my decisions as a consumer of the Buckley discography, as they develop into a more informed and critical approach in justifying my behaviour. Upon being informed by this way of thinking, I am able to articulate the change in my consumer behaviour as the transition between Aristotelian thinking and Kantian understanding.


Aristotle emphasises an overt relativism, whereby good behaviour stems from circumstance; it’s a highly subjective way of thinking, rendering it malleable to a person’s sole interest. It allows for the justification of behaviour based on the way you read a context (Aristotle., Thomson, & Tredennick, 1976). This accounts for the ethical support to the overflow of posthumous Buckley content, allowing us to consume music and ephemera, under the guise of our own pleasure.

This subjectivity of ethics corresponds with Partridges argument that life is rotational, outlining that posthumous interest lies outside immediate experience, whereby the temporality of life also becomes subjective. We continue to live on after death in the memories of those around us. This concept supports to synthesis of the latest Buckley addition; 'In His Own Voice'. The book was released in 2019 and contains journal entries and other personal artefacts [birth certificate, shopping lists, letters etc.]. If this book came out a few years ago, perhaps I’d be all over it. However, the book sits on my desk unopened past the forward; whilst I acknowledge that it will be loved by many, the intimacy and invasion of privacy which it represents is what blocks me from delving into it under the pretence of enhancing an authenticity or educational dialect. Whilst there is a consumer demand for releases like this, my realignment with Kantian regulation steers me away from this content, no matter how sensitively it’s curated— in this case, pages from spiral-bound notebooks have been ripped from the spine, scanned and disseminated worldwide. It’s legal, but uncomfortable. Perhaps even more so that its authorisation came from Mary Guibert.


The treatment of this release is much the same as the Songs To No One album; in a piece I’m working on under the instruction of Gary Lucas, Buckley’s former collaborator and friend, I learned that the album intended to archive the musicological developments between the two musicians. However, Guibert’s overarching production choices left the album inauthentic, due to tracked overdubs and contemporary edits. These historical pieces were no longer true representations of grassroots demos, but commercialised songs; "I’ve learnt to leave the mother in other room and bring in the producer". The absence of public correspondence between Lucas and Guibert makes me think that I’m not alone in my unease.


Once the magic of fan culture fades below mindless loyalty, you have the ability to forgo your own interest for a greater ethical purpose. In this instance my consumer conviction was strengthened via an understanding of Kantian philosophy. Kant places importance on clear moral duties. Damaging the personal property of the deceased and releasing it worldwide seems at a basic level, a clearly immoral practice. My justifications lie in clear consent and purpose; evolving from Aristotelian avoidance on the face of personal pleasure, toward a Kantian respect for where content comes from. I used the internet to challenge theoretical notions of celebrity privacy in an attempt to critically engage with my forthcoming consumer behaviour, which reached the following conclusion; whilst I acknowledge the significance of Buckley’s posthumous content, and it’s ability to fill a void especially for new fans whom time is the unfair gatekeeper of authentic experience, and older followers whose grief welcomes his voice in any form, my consumer autonomy has developed such that original intention and consent rank higher than my own desire. I no longer pour over edited demos, album sketches and intimate journal entries. Which leaves me with Grace and live recordings; sources that I find utmost joy in listening to as they feed not only a sonic ecstasy, but a comfort in maintaining an ethical relationship with Buckley’s legacy.


At the end of all this, my choice is simple; to find comfort in celebrating that what was left behind had purpose. I’m probably always going to be interested in the next inevitable leak from the Buckley vault, a big part of me will want to know. But if my decision is to leave the next release alone, out of some internal presumption that I should respect a posthumous privacy, I know that the fear of missing out will always be remedied by listening to Grace in full, with the windows of my car all the way down.


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