Shooting Jeff Buckley: aninterview with Merri Cyr

Wed 9th Dec, 2009 in Features

It was the day we were doing the album-cover shoot in Brooklyn. I heard Jeff tell Merri, “I’ll be your muse. I want you to take pictures of me forever and ever.” He just loved the vibe that he had with her, and that just set the stage for the relationship those two were going to have. Now, whenever I see one of her pictures, I always think, “Yeah, he was definitely her muse.” And vice versa.
– Leah Reid, friend of Jeff Buckley.

When I am invited to interview photographer Merri Cyr ahead of the Melbourne photographic exhibition Jeff Buckley A Wished-For Song (based on her book) I leap at the opportunity. Often, interviewing rockstars is part of a promotion cycle and flirts with formulaic.

While admittedly on the promotion cycle, a photographer is something new for me. Merri has photographed hundreds of artists (including Joey Ramone, Coldplay, TV on the Radio, Tracy Chapman) and counts Sony, Columbia Records, Elektra, Verve and Rolling Stone as her clients. However, it is really Jeff Buckley who brings Merri and I together. As the clock ticks toward our meeting, however, I wonder, is there something fundamentally wrong with me for wanting to interview someone just because they knew someone else?

Luckily, it’s too late to cancel so before the interview I find myself at South Melbourne’s RAW Gallery where owner Kirsty Umback has been up until 2am hanging Merri’s images. As Kirsty’s sleep-deprived husband pads around barefoot in the background ensuring everything is ready for the VIP launch that night, Kirsty and I admire the works that Merri has flown over from New York.

Of all the photographs the Grace album cover shoot is particularly poignant with one image in particular drawing me in. Simply entitled Banana 2, the shot was taken between takes (if you will) and shows Jeff, wearing that sequined dinner jacket and eating a banana, smirking through the lens to Merri.

“Everybody loves that one,” agrees Kirsty, as we stand in front of it. Maybe because it makes him seem like the rest of us, I venture.

A half hour later, in a warehouse converted for tea and coffee (Merri’s husband Mark is a tea connoisseur who inspects the selection before going off to explore the neighbouring shops) Merri and I sip Burmese Oolong at a communal table: me in the end chair, she on a wall mounted booth to my left, legs tucked under her, hands free for talking with.

“In terms of being normal,” she says, after advising me to steep my tea for longer, “Jeff was that in a lot of ways. He was a normal person who had to work through their childhood issues and things like that.”

“The thing was, he had a tremendous gift. Along with being like a regular person, he had this amazing gift.”

Having arrived in New York as a model, Merri became a student of photography, then a photographer for publication Paper. An assignment for Paper led her to Jeff’s apartment to take a photo for a small article. She’d not heard his music, but immediately recognised him as a good artist. How?

“I recognized a bit of creative spirit in him,” Merri explains, hooking her finger through her cup handle. “He was a very charming and engaging person. Which doesn’t necessarily make somebody a good artist, but when we were doing the work I really had that feeling, because he was so engaged in what we were doing, that (the music) must be pretty interesting.”

Merri found out about his music the following week when she dropped by Sin-é to deliver a couple of photos from the shoot. He didn’t recognize her initially, but hunted her down months later to beg her to shoot the cover for the only record he ever released in his life, classic album, Grace.

Dragging her into the Sony offices to introduce her to the bosses, Jeff then rang the Sony photographer to excitedly sack them. From that day on Merri remained his photographer – and friend – until his death five years later.

“Jeff really liked to be photographed. And in different ways, too. He was open to the idea of doing conceptual ideas, but even when I just documenting him, we’d become friends so I think having a friendly presence around was good to him. He trusted that I was trying to make him look good. And not just good, interesting.”

“He ended up being interviewed so many times, he had a mistrust of what certain people were going to do with certain information and also with photographs, everybody’s always looking for gossipy stuff or trying to put people in compromising positions. I think he trusted that I was trying to show him in a good light.”

I wonder out loud about the juxtaposition of Jeff’s driving need to continually reinvent music and his acceptance of the finality of an image.

Merri hesitates briefly. By using the word – œacceptance’ I’ve nearly insinuated that Jeff had no control over a final image. It’s as though she’s assessing how to best represent Jeff while still being kind enough not to point out my oversimplification.

“There’s still an editing process,” she reminds me. “I’d show him the contacts [thumbnail images from a photo shoot] and sometimes he would find things… The image he picked for Grace was not a shot I was particularly interested in. But he picked that off a contact sheet and said, – œThat’s the cover.’”

“The reason was: when he looked at himself he knew he was listening to the music. And that was very important to him. That was something that was very personal to him.” She pauses, “Of all the shots we did that wasn’t my favourite but at the same time because it’s become the iconic image of his one album it’s hard to imagine that it would have been another shot.”

It was Patti Smith. The music he was listening to in that photograph.

Merri nods, “I remembered that later. It was funny because we both bought a pile of CDs to listen to during the shoot and we both bought our Horses album but it wasn’t ‘til later that I remembered that’s what he was listening to in that photo. Horses.”

By this point in our half hour chat, I have forgotten that it’s weird to be talking to Merri Cyr simply because her beloved, deceased friend was one of the most revered musical talents in the world. A woman who is passionately animated about her art, Merri is warm and expressive. She seems to have lost any nervousness she had prior to our meeting and we spend much time discussing her other work, and what drives it.

Of course, we discuss Jeff in depth; especially in comparison to the Jeff music lovers think they know.

“I don’t know how to explain – it’s like there was a part of him that was bigger than life. It was more of a persona. Jeff The Persona and Jeff The Guy. He would be either of those people at different times and it was hard to know exactly which one you were going to get on a certain day or a certain minute. But in a way, they were distinctive personalities in the one person.”

“Anybody who’s a big personality or performer, there’s a mythology that they cultivate. I’ve seen it in more than just Jeff, but it grew as he became more popular. That Mythological Jeff that he cultivated wasn’t like the regular Jeff The Guy. It was like,’ she drops inverted commas in the air with her fingers, “Jeff Buckley.”

Although compiling her book after his tragic drowning proved difficult – to say the least – it was the inverted commas Jeff Buckley that might have gone a way to inspiring it.

“I felt like I had to do something. It was a while later. It was a way for me to grieve in a positive way and to put the work we did together into one place. I felt like in the images there are so many different aspects to his personality. Some of them he’s pissed off, some of them he’s in musical bliss land. But I think to be able to see some of his emotional state come through in the images would be helpful for people to get to know him a little bit, you know?”

Later, having bid bon voyage to Merri and Mark, I retreat to my leafy backyard to read my signed copy of Merri’s book, A Wished-For Song: A Portrait of Jeff Buckley. It’s a collection of interview excerpts – from those close to Jeff -interspersed with Merri’s photographs. On more than one occasion, reading the disbelief from Jeff’s loved ones and peers, I feel tears prick my eyes at the tragedy of it all.

Looking at pictures taken as Jeff makes faces of silliness, sullenness and warmth through the lens to his friend Merri I feel incredibly lucky to have looked into her eyes too.

Merri Cyr’s exhibition “Jeff Buckley: A Wished For Song” is on display at The RAW Gallery, 250 Park Street, South Melbourne until Christmas Eve. Admission is free.