Trinity Ball is a college institution. Though its reputation wavers each year depending on the line-up and the exorbitant prices of food and beverages, all can agree that it is a unique social phenomenon in Ireland –one that seems more like a celebration that an Oxbridge college would hold than an Irish one. The experience of being attired ostentatiously under the campanile as music booms from the huge centre stage, and tattered students falling willy-nilly around you on a mild April evening, is a singular one. In recent years, we’ve seen both Irish and international acts play at Trinity Ball. Two Door Cinema Club were the big names on the 2023 lineup, while British artist Bakar headlined for the 2024 repertoire. In the 80s and 90s, international names were much more common on the line-up. From the Smiths to the Clash, the Trinity Ball days of yore were immersed in rosy stardom. Jeff Buckley is not a name most Trinity students of today would associate with our annual ball. His name is now so shrouded in myth and renown that to think he could ever have headlined Trinity Ball beggars belief. Well, that’s because he didn’t. Attendees of the ball that night surely did not guess that the young, soft-spoken guitarist who came on just around midnight to a diminished crowd would go on to become one of the most soulful, lambent voices of the 1990s. Jeff Buckley was born to the folk musician Tim Buckley in 1966. On his father’s side he was descended from the Buckleys of County Cork, who emigrated to the United States in the nineteenth century. It is perhaps no coincidence, then, that Buckley began his music career in a venue with a distinctively Irish name. Sin-é was a café opened by Irish immigrant Shane Doyle in 1989. Situated in the trendy East Village neighbourhood of Manhattan, it quickly became a popular music venue for independent singer-songwriters. Among the future stars who performed there wereSinead O’Connor and the Waterboys. Buckley’s first commercial album, Live at Sin-é, launched his career, and his subsequent album, Grace – though at first met with mixed reviews – eventually catapulted him to superstardom, and remains one of the finest pieces of musical artistry of the 1990s. It was at Sin-é that Buckley honed his music, playing sets that would last for two or three hours. Few who attended those early gigs knew what fame awaited the young musician. An Irish talent scout, Michael Murphy, who was then working for the label Imago, took to Buckley’s musical talent while seeing him play at Sin-é in early 1992. Murphy eventually convinced the young Buckley to play at that year’s Trinity Ball, a special occasion which celebrated the 400th anniversary of the founding of the college. It was to be Buckley’s first international gig. He was struggling for cash at the time and the deal was too good to pass up. So, Buckley arrived at Dublin airport, clad in a Sex Pistols t-shirt, on Thursday May 14th May 1992, the day before the ball. Murphy met him there and brought him into the city. Buckley was tired from the flight and rested for most of the evening of the 14th. On the 15th, the day of the ball, Murphy drove Buckley to Newgrange and several monastic sites in the afternoon. They later dined together in Murphy’s family home in the southern Dublin suburb of Deansgrange. Buckley knew he had to be onstage just after midnight. Yet, that evening, Buckley opted to stay in with Murphy’s parents rather than meet the local music managers and scouts who were hounding the streets of Dublin for new talent. Murphy, who had organised a dinner with some of the local talent and several music producers, was understandably confused, but let Buckley retire for the evening as he headed out. The entertainment? For Murphy’s parents, it was of course the Late Late Show, presented at that time by the late Gay Byrne. After some rummaging, Murphy’s parents brought out an array of biscuits and several cups of tea. The three of them spent the evening in front of the television. Buckley left around an hour before his performance, having depleted the store of biscuits at the house considerably. It is probably the first Jeff Buckley performance to be filmed, and until very recently was gathering dust in Murphy’s house in Deansgrange. At that time, Buckley had no agent nor label: he was almost entirely unknown. The tape that survives of his performance shows the young musician playing to a crowd of under a thousand. Seeing him play that night, all baggy t-shirt and foppish hair, to a crowd of dinner jackets and frilly dresses, gives the performance a rather comic side. Unfortunately, Murphy does not plan on releasing the tape to the public in the near future. Buckley’s performance at T-Ball consisted almost entirely of covers – mostly Bob Dylan and Van Morrison classics. At that point, it was the largest crowd Buckley had ever performed in front of, and Murphy remarked that it must have been tremendously important for him, especially given his claim that his and his father’s vocal quality came from their Irish roots. Michael Murphy was not to be Buckley’s agent in the end. Shortly after the T-Ball performance, in October 1992, he signed on to Sony Columbia records. The verdict from that night? A detailed documentary of the night shows hundreds of people leaving through the front gate after dawn. One middle-aged looking man, seemingly unbothered by the fact that he has no idea where his wife is, exclaims that he “thoroughly enjoyed” the experience. Two young attendees, who came from work overseas, complain that the music wasn’t catered for the ball-goers at all, and that they “would not come here again.” One wonders if they would rescind that view in retrospect. Buckley returned to Ireland three more times, and played Whelan’s (the popular music venue) the night Grace was released. His last performance was in 1995, and he died tragically two years later, in May 1997. Buckley’s most famous album, Grace, turns 30 this year. On September 15th, a special anniversary program is being released on the BBC, featuring a wide range of artists paying homage to the late musician. His legacy today is monumental, and he remains perhaps the last great musician in the American folk movement which originated in the 1960s. From Trinity Ball debutant to international folk icon, Buckley’s brief career was one characterised by luck, talent, but above all his willingness to explore new possibilities with his music and performances. Coming to a small college in the west of Europe with no financial security for the foreseeable future was a bold move, sure, but it might just have emboldened him to persist in an occasionally unforgiving musical industry.
‘the students make the university’
Unknown, 1895. “Ode.” T.C.D: A College Miscellany.
Lover, You Should’ve Come To T-Ball
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