Steve Berkowitz On Capturing Jeff Buckley's Magic

When Steve Berkowitz first saw Jeff Buckley perform at Sin-é coffeehouse in New York, the producer/A&R Executive estimates he was part of an audience of only "five or six". "As we walked across St Mark's Place, [Hal Willner, producer] went, 'Oh, yeah, you know, Buckley's kid plays in here sometimes'... And we walked in and Jeff was playing in the corner." Berkowitz stresses this night was "special" because "by the first or second song it was like, 'Wow!'" he laughs in disbelief. "'What am I hearing here? What's this?' It was not too unlike what you hear on this record, You And I."

"I didn't like bidding wars; winning is the artist doing what it is they could do, should do, wanna do..."

Berkowitz signed Buckley to Columbia Records and admits, "It was clear as day how talented he was and how much music was in him". Although there were "other A&R people" sniffing around, Berkowitz confesses, "I didn't like bidding wars; winning is the artist doing what it is they could do, should do, wanna do... Jeff and I hit in a really real and honest way right from day one based on a musical level, not that I show up and I'm the benefactor or, 'I'm gonna help you out, kid' — it was none of that... It's almost like we became friends first."

Berkowitz remembers one night out when the pair wound up visiting three different open mic venues. "He played the Billie Holiday song Strange Fruit in each of the three locations and in the first place he played it on his guitar in a major key, and the next place he played it on his guitar in a minor key, and the third place we walked in and there was a guy playing — I dunno if Jeff knew him or not, quite frankly — and he was playing an acoustic guitar in Open D tuning. And Jeff goes, 'Can I play that?' and he borrowed the guy's slide... The same song, three completely different ways within about two hours. Just 'cause it's what he felt like doing!"

According to Berkowitz, Buckley "wasn't out to be adored... I mean, he hated more than anything when People Magazine named him one of the 50 Most Beautiful people... He hated it. He sorta stopped combing his hair and he didn't shave, and maybe he could've taken a few more showers; you know, he wanted to totally dispel this rumour that he was Mister Pretty Boy. Of course he couldn't really help that, could he?"

All but two You And I tracks were cut at Steve Addabbo's Shelter Island Sound studio in February 1993; the opener and closer recorded later that year at Bearsville Studios. Both of these studio environments were designed to make Buckley feel at ease. "Since Jeff was natural and organic and improvisational, you needed to just be ready," Berkowitz explains. "And then part of the job was how can we make this seamless so he can just come and play and sing?" The idea was that Buckley could set up and play wherever he felt comfortable "and the engineer would be ready". Within this You And I collection, Buckley covers songs by bands such as The Smiths and Led Zeppelin. When Berkowitz first heard Buckley's Eternal Life, he divulges, "I thought it was a Led Zeppelin song I didn't know. And it's kind of similar to Night Flight, as a matter of fact; they're reminiscent of one another."