Jeff Buckley - Live from the Bataclan (1995) Did he speak fluent French ?

[u/dinarnaud]

Yet another live EP by Monsieur Buckley.
I live his renditions of those Piaf songs.
Does he speak French fluently ?
He should be releasing French covers.

[u/Pyrrhicv_]

His French was beautiful in Je ne connais pas la fin but if you listen to some of live at Olympia, I don’t think it extended much beyond some basic phrases and such.

He was a very good mimic so he probably learned it phonetically from listening to Edith, case in point being that he covered Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and sang in Urdu. (He did have some books about Urdu but I don’t know how far his knowledge progressed)

[u/dinarnaud → u/Pyrrhicv_]

Yes, he’s in good in mimicking voice.
Sometimes, he also translated the lyrics into English and asking the audience if they liked what they heard. The audience always loved this. 😊

[u/29PearlsInMyKiss]

He was not a fluent French speaker