‘Jeff Buckley was a once-in-a-lifetime’: Australia’s 30-year love affair with an enduring, tragic talent

Jeff Buckley at the Tribeca club Wetlands in New York in November 1994. He died three years later, aged 30. Photograph: Bob Berg/Getty Images

You had to see Jeff Buckley to believe him.

Jon Pope, a veteran of the Australian music industry, was tour manager for the singer on his first visit to Australia, in 1995. Three days after Buckley’s first show at the Metro in Sydney on 28 August, the road crew were preparing for a much more intimate gig at the Lounge in Melbourne for an audience of a few hundred.