❀ “All Flowers” Timeline: Smell the Rain of London
Ironically, the singer on one of the This Mortal Coil covers, “Song to the Siren,” was none other than the Cocteau Twins’ Elizabeth Fraser, with whom Jeff would later have a romantic relationship.
1990
He was, by then, deep into British pop—not surprisingly, the sulkiest and most sensitive of it, bands like the Cocteau Twins, the Smiths, and the Cure.
By 1990, he had already been in touch with and spent time with Tim’s widow, Judy, and her twenty-seven-year-old son, Taylor, whom Tim had adopted. When Judy Buckley gave him tickets to a concert by the Cocteau Twins, Jeff told a friend he kissed Judy on the mouth—partly, he said, out of appreciation, and partly to feel exactly what Tim had seen in this woman.
1991
- They’d been introduced when Cocteau Twins toured the US in 1991.
1992
August
What do you love about “Twelfth of Never”?
- I cover the Nina Simone version. It’s just the way she does it. I can’t get into Elvis’s version; it doesn’t capture my imagination, though he had a beautiful voice. Every time I hear “Can’t Help Falling In Love,” I cry. I can’t separate Charles Manson from The Beatles or the Clam Bake movie from Elvis, though. But I love all music. I’m the Cocteau Twins’ biggest fan. They allow their deepest eccentricities to be the music itself, and not just something they want to project. Liz Fraser is one of the only originals. They’re just regular people too. I got to meet her once. She was very shy, which puts a weird curve on that music as well. Imagine that sound coming out of her mouth when she’s in the kitchen scrambling eggs. I lose my mind when I’m washing the dishes.
(This is that first press interview, conducted on August 12)
1993
May
- He began to fill it with stacks of books and compact discs, the latter running the taste gamut from classic rock (the Allman Brothers, the Doors, Cat Stevens) to kitsch (Sammy Davis Jr., The Mighty Wurlitzer) to alternative rock (Cocteau Twins, Guided by Voices, Sebadoh) to nearly fifty qawwali discs.
Nov
- “I’d love to sing with Jeff Buckley—Tim Buckley’s son. He is currently making his first album, and if it’s anything like a radio session I heard by him, it should be amazing. He’s written this song called ‘Grace’, which literally makes the hair on my neck stand on end. I was sweating like a fucking June bride when I first heard him. Music has never done that to me before.
1994
May 2
- Talking of orgasms, did you and Liz Cocteau Twin ‘do’ it? Everyone thought you were an ‘item’ some months back. “Oh no. Oh no,” Jeff looks shocked. “We were just friends–very, very close friends. She’s such a good person, so sweet. Fucking her would be like fucking a sister–no, Liz and I were never bed buddies. That was all lies. “I am fucking Courtney, though,” he adds. “All those rumors are true, obviously.” Jeff is lying so much, his pants are on fire.
https://jeffbuckley.com/articles-and-interviews/orgasm-addict-by-caitlin-moran
May 29
- I was in the room when they met. It was at the Cocteau Twins' aftershow at the Royal Festival Hall in London. The Cocteau's manager Raymond Coffer introduced them to each other, right in front of me. They were both so animated to meet each other, both grinning like school kids. — @ElectricLabel
It is claimed that Fraser spoke about her relationship with Buckley on Cocteau Twins 1995 EP Twinlights. In a 1996 interview with Alternative Press, she teased this notion and revealed that when she went on tour with Cocteau Twins in 1994, in support of their album Four-Calendar Café, she fell in love with a man. She wouldn’t name him, and this had led fans to believe him be Buckley. She admitted: “My love addiction was worse than ever. I was maniacal.” https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/cocteau-twins/1994/royal-festival-hall-london-england-3bd2e8a8.html
August 19
Jeff flew to London by himself, where he spent time with one of his musical heroes, the Cocteau Twins’ Elizabeth Fraser. In addition to carrying on a brief relationship, the two wrote and recorded an impassioned paean to romantic connection, “All Flowers in Time,” at a London studio. The band reconvened in Dublin in late August and began a month-long European tour. (David Browne)
Jeff flew into London by himself in advance of the band and went to visit Liz Fraser again. It was during this visit, I think, that they went into the Cocteau Twins’ studio in Richmond and recorded a song they’d written together. (Dave Lory)
94-08-16 Wetlands
New York, New York, America
94-08-22 'Mark Radcliff Show', Oxford Rd Studios, BBC
Manchester, England
Jeff Buckley performing The Way Young Lovers Do (Van Morrison), Kick Out The Jams (MC5), and reciting a poem of his called, New Years Eve Prayer. Recorded at Sin-é, in New York City, on 31 December 1994.
https://tale.violaine.xyz/sin-e/ny-eve-poem
1995
January 13
Then Samantha saw Jeff, in his winter coat, with a flower in his lapel and carrying his ghetto blaster, looking like Paddington Bear, a lost creature from the other side of the world. “We got to our hotel and I said, ‘Do you want to eat, have a drink, or whatever?’” recalls Sam. “He said, ‘I’d really like to go and see a friend.’ I said, ‘Don’t do this to me. I’m supposed to keep you here.’ He said, ‘I’m not going to do anything outrageous. I just want to hang with a friend for the evening.’ He wanted to see Liz Fraser in Twickenham.
Just before this trip, he had been to England for a week over the new year, to visit Elizabeth Fraser, the singer with Cocteau Twins, whose voice, he told me, stopped him in his tracks. “It sounds like light,” he said. They’d met briefly a couple of times and had been talking on the phone since just before we first met. He’d gone to stay with her in Twickenham.
95-01-12 Columbia Records Radio Hour
New York, New York, America
95-01-14 Tivoli
Dublin, Ireland
95-01-15 Fleece and Firkin
Bristol, England
95-01-16 Robert Elms Show, Greater London Radio
London, England
95-01-16 ?
London, England
95-01-17 ?
London, England
95-01-18 The Astoria II
London, England
September
- “My love addiction was worse than ever. I was maniacal. Twinlights is about that man. My ‘last goodbye,’ as it were. I was too needy and he was too much of an avoidance person. Naturally.” (Twinlight EP)
1996
March
- “A friend was kind of comforting me on the phone and they were just being so sweet, really. They had empathy for what I was going through, and they said, ‘I wish I could get the poison out of you. I wish I could just take it out of you and replace it with milk and kisses.’”
milk and kisses for the first man my old man love and a thousandfold rose for Buckley my Rilkean Hearted friend
(Milk & Kisses liner note dedication to Jeff)
1997
May
- The news that Buckley had disappeared – he drowned, swimming in the Wolf river in Memphis – came while Fraser was recording Teardrop with Massive Attack. “That was so weird,” she says. “I'd got letters out and I was thinking about him. That song's kind of about him – that's how it feels to me anyway.” https://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/nov/26/cocteau-twins-elizabeth-fraser-interview
I have no desire to make contact with all the thought of “no, no”. I shiver now, to think of how this answer asked her, no. Long time gone. I run to my hide out. (Thousand Fold)
Known Performance
97-05-?? Sketches For My Sweetheart The Drunk Demos, Memphis, Tennessee, America
http://flowersintime.org/show.php?songid=155
I don’t know what happened there, but I knew later that they were lovers and saw that he went misty-eyed when he spoke about her. They’d been introduced when Cocteau Twins toured the US in 1991. In 1983, Liz and her fellow Cocteau Twin and partner, Robin Guthrie, had cut a cover of his dad’s beautiful, desolate “Song To The Siren” with This Mortal Coil, a version so arresting that Jeff would have no choice but to be attracted to it. She in turn had gone to check Jeff out, and remarked later that she had “sweated like a June bride” when she first heard him sing. She had separated from Guthrie by this time and was having an unhappy time in the band. “To meet Jeffrey was like being given a set of paints,” she said in a TV documentary. “I had all this color in my life again. I couldn’t help falling in love with him; he was adorable.” She noted that he had idolized her and she had fallen for the son of someone whose music she loved, and it felt a bit creepy. But they couldn’t help themselves. She also remarked that they had read each other’s diaries. I wonder now if he was writing about her then on that long drive.
“I just wish I'd been more of a friend,” she says, softly. “His career was everything to him, and I wish I had been more understanding – happy with a different kind of relationship. I missed out on something there, and it was my fault.”
Reference 1. Dream Brother: The Lives and Music of Jeff and Tim Buckley 2. Jeff Buckley: From Hallelujah to the Last Goodbye