Jeff Buckley penned this song for his longtime friend Chris Dowd, formerly of Fishbone, who was considering leaving his pregnant girlfriend. Jeff did not want his friend to become like his own father, Tim Buckley, who divorced his mother about a month before Jeff was born.
The last track recorded for Grace, this originated from a jam. Buckley had sung some vocals as a reference but hadn't got round to writing proper lyrics. Engineer Clif Norrell explained to Uncut magazine that Buckley asked him to help finish "Dream Brother" because the album deadline had passed and the vocals were uncompleted. "Jeff was in Los Angeles, so they wanted him to get into a studio and finish the song," he said. "We had two days, but Jeff wanted to work on other songs first. On the final night, Jeff sang just the choruses of Dream Brother. He asked me what time it was, I said '11:00 PM', and he said, 'OK, I'll meet you back here at 1:00 AM!' He returned on time and sung the verses a few times and really nailed it. I realized he probably written those verses during the couple of hours he was out of the studio."
Journalist David Browne used the "Dream Brother" title for a posthumous biography of Jeff and Tim Buckley.
See your Spotify stats (with number of plays and minutes listened) and discover new music.
Music data, artist images, album covers, and song previews are provided by Spotify. Spotify is a trademark of Spotify AB.