Jeff Buckley delivers a sensual, cathartic live performance of “Mojo Pin” in a previously unreleased video from March 10th, 1994. Columbia/Legacy Recordings released the clip in honor of the 25th anniversary of the late singer’s gut-wrenching debut Grace.
Filmed at the Gleneagles Hotel in Scotland where Sony had thrown a convention, Buckley performed the funereal album opener as well as other Grace tracks that wouldn’t be released for another five months. “If only you’d come back to me/If you laid at my side,” he sings, his tortured vocals soaring through octaves. “Wouldn’t need no mojo pin/To keep me satisfied.”
Performed solo on electric guitar, the intimate performance clocks in over five minutes as Buckley rides an emotional wave, rising and falling with each line. He repeatedly belts the final lyric while feverishly striking his guitar: “Black, black, beauty, I love you so.”
“This is a song about obsession,” Buckley said a year later, performing onstage at the London Astoria. “Sometimes if somebody you feel you need…the whole universe tells you you have to have her. You start watching her TV shows all night, you start buying her the things she needs, you start drinking her drinks, you start smoking her bad cigarettes, you start picking up her nuances in her voice.”
On August 23rd, the Jeff Buckley estate will release a reissue of Grace that includes the bonus track “Strawberry Street.” Buckley’s catalogue will also be digitally expanded for the first time, including four live albums and the rare demo “Sky Blue Skin,” one of the last songs he ever recorded before his tragic death in 1997.
Video courtesy of Sony Music Entertainment