Elizabeth Fraser of the Cocteau Twins:
“I’d love to sing with Jeff Buckley … 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.”
https://jeffbuckley.com/quotes
Elizabeth Fraser on Jeff Buckley: https://youtu.be/X7G90ZylP6g
Teardrop (1997 song)
While recording the song in 1997, she found out that Jeff Buckley, with whom she had formerly been involved in a relationship, had disappeared—later discovered to have drowned. In 2009, she said, “That was so weird ... 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://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teardrop_(song)
All Flowers in Time Bend Towards the Sun (1994 duet)
After parting from Guthrie, but still in the same band, Fraser struck up an intense relationship with Jeff Buckley after they became infatuated with each other's voices. Again, emotion produced music. A sublime duet they recorded called All Flowers in Time Bend Towards the Sun is floating around the internet, to her irritation.
“Why do people have to hear everything?” she complains. I tell her it's wonderful. “But it's unfinished, you see. I don't want it to be heard.” There's a pause. “Maybe I won't always think that.”
Buckley died in 1997, by which time they had lost touch – Fraser had grown frustrated with his constant touring, a reaction that weighs heavily on her. “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.”
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/nov/26/cocteau-twins-elizabeth-fraser-interview
Milk & Kisses (1996 Album)
“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.’ And I just thought that was really brilliant! It’s beautiful, isn’t it? I kept hearing it and feeling so good about it, it seemed right to use it.”
https://cocteautwins.com/milk-and-kisses.html
Twinlight (1995 EP)
“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.”
https://cocteautwins.com/twinlights.html
Rilkean Heart and Half-Gifts (Liz)
Rilkean Heart was based on her connection with Jeff Buckley who, along with herself, was a fan of he poet Rilke.
...present in ‘Rilkean Heart’ and the deeply moving ‘Half-Gifts.’ The intense sadness of these songs may not be entirely unrelated to her rumoured break-up with a young Cocteau Twins fan called Jeff Buckley.
https://cocteautwins.com/1996-milk-and-kisses-mojo-magazine.html
Morning Theft (Jeff)
“Morning Theft” is generally understood to be a song for Elizabeth Fraser, lead singer of The Cocteau Twins, with whom Buckley shared an intense but doomed romantic relationship. It may contain references to other romances as well; the lyrics alone do not tell a specific story. But together with the instrumentation and tender vocals, a haunting sense of affection, longing and regret is created.
https://genius.com/Jeff-buckley-morning-theft-lyrics
“Widely thought to be about Liz Fraser of the Cocteau Twins, this wistful, tender love song about “unexamined failure” inhabits the lower registers of Jeff's voice. Despairing (“gifts for boot heels to crush, promises deceived”) and hopeful (“we come together making chance in the starlight”), the melody moves in slow circles around an almost Elizabethan structure, a kind of deranged minuet which finally settles into resolution and peace. This lovely solo performance, given to a small New York crowd just before Jeff moved to Memphis, is both wilder and warmer than the studio version included on Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk.” — Web Article, Clare O'Brien
http://flowersintime.org/show.php?songid=102
Vancouver (Jeff)
The lyrics were supposedly written in London in August 1994 (hence the line 'Now, smell the rain of London...'), and potentially inspired by Liz Fraser. The name probably comes from the fact that the music was composed during some studio time the band took in Vancouver, November 1994.
http://flowersintime.org/show.php?songid=161
Lady, all the troubles are my fright, I disgust you
I need to be alone to heal this bleeding stone
Now, smell the rain of london, it still insists
I am your failed husband contender
I'm your loan shark of bliss (Vancouver)
-
But what am I still to you
Some thief who stole from you?
Or, some fool drama queen
Whose chances were few?
You're a woman, I'm a calf
You're a window, I'm a knife
We come together
Making chance in the starlight
You know the meaning fits
There's no relief in this
I miss my beautiful friend (Morning Theft)
-
I know you are a woman by the way you burn below
Like thieves, my bad luck grows / ... like emeralds I stole (Jewel Box)
-
Just like the ocean, always in love with the moon
It's overflowing now, inside you
I am a railroad track abandoned
With the sunset forgetting I ever happened
That I ever happened (Opened Once)
-
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.
There ain't a star born that brightens
More than you, you always should have known,
I'll illuminate your question,
Long time ago I'd died and gone. (Thousand Fold)
milk and kisses for the first man
my old man
love and a thousandfold rose for Buckley
my Rilkean Hearted friend
Internet Archive – Milk & Kisses (Booklet p.8)
Rilkean heart I looked for you
To give me transcendent experiences
I became a junkie for it
I came looking for the next high
And I'm sorry (Rilkean Heart)
-
Well I'm still a junkie for it
It takes me out of my aloneness
But this relationship cannot sustain itself (Half-Gifts)
-
Is it like a dream? / Or does it seem grounded and real?
I feel a connection / A deep connection
But it’s not reflected / In time spent together (Tishbite)
-
You are a woman just as you are a man (Seekers Who Are Lovers)
-
What woman can sing
Without loving the primitive heart
Midnight he'll sing blue
Cuz he's silly (Primitive Heart)
-
Long-term scares us when we're down
I really need to know if you are in love (Smile)
-
Little flowers in the dirt
And gladness will fill me in your hand
You hold and surround me in gold (Golden-Vein)
-
Sing, and touch me
With sad lust and revealing dreams
Cover me in Sublime light
Come back now, put sunlight on
The sunlight will touch me
sublime me and I'll... come back to you (Flock of Soul)
⭐
Oh, you left some stars in my belly (Jewel Box)
Stars in my eyes / Stars at my feet / Womb in the belly (Shallow Then Halo)
🌊
Wait at sea for waves of light
Always stars see what, once you're free,
He hopes will be the very last time (Orange Appled)
Stay with me under these waves, tonight / Be free for once in your life, tonight (Nightmares by the Sea)
☁️
Purified love / Constancy purifies mistakes (Treasure Hiding)
That we beg for our purity / As if we are pure in the reign of our contentment (Vancouver)
🎁
Shame casts her face / I will be just what I am (Summerhead)
Feel no shame for what you are (New Year's Prayer)
Steal more treasures, steal more gifts (Summerhead)
The gift is shining through the troubled dark (New Year's Prayer – draft)
Jeff interpolating Ivo by Cocteau Twins, 1993 & 1995
https://www.reddit.com/r/JeffBuckley/comments/1aws8qh/two_instances_of_jeff_interpolating_ivo_by
https://jeffbuckley.com/personal-stuff
Jeff Buckley – Vancouver | MTV's Most Wanted (London, England) 3/3/1995 https://youtu.be/kfqa-PvVy5w
Flower Telecaster
https://sweetdreamsjeff.tumblr.com/post/141489027240/flower-telecaster
Lyrics reference:
https://lyrics.cocteautwins.com
https://cocteautwins.com/cocteau-twins-lyrics.html
https://www.liquidgnome.com/JeffBuckley/lyrics.html
