River's Edge

About 100 feet offshore is one of two massive cement pylons that support a monorail bridge to Mud Island. Buckley had just crossed past it in the growing darkness when Foti yelled that a small boat was approaching down the center of the channel, which the corps keeps dredging to a depth of some 9 feet.

"Hey, get out of the way!" yelled Foti, and Buckley did, but very shortly afterward, a larger boat appeared, creating a wake that surged toward the shoreline. Foti turned for just seconds to move the boombox off the flat rock where it sat. When he turned back, he says, "There was no sight of Jeff."

After calling out for Buckley with increasing desperation for several minutes, Foti ran up the bank to the welcome center. There, at a pay phone not far from a statue of Elvis Presley, he called the police at 9:22 p.m. Help arrived quickly, but despite the presence of helicopters, police launches and officers combing the shoreline under emergency lighting ("This place was lit up like Christmas," recalls Bowen), there would be no sight of Buckley until June 4, around 4:30 p.m., when a passenger aboard the riverboat American Queen spotted his body.

Bowen identified the body, barely recognizable at this stage but bearing Buckley's navel ring with a purple bead and, as the autopsy noted, "green shiny toenail polish on three toenails." The probable cause of death was "drowning," although at press time, the Shelby County medical examiner had not yet completed a toxicology report from blood samples taken before Buckley's body was cremated. Bowen, after closing down the house Buckley had planned to buy on a quiet residential street in Memphis, drove some of the singer's possessions up to New York and carried his ashes to Buckley's mother, Mary Guibert.

Buckley had moved to Memphis to record what would effectively be his second album, though 1994's Grace had been preceded by a well-loved four-song EP, Live at Sin- ffl82, which had introduced the singer in December of 1993. Whether onstage or in the studio, Buckley made intensely personal music, ushering in songs with quavering guitar and moving from whispery, sensitive soliloquies to wailing, drum-thrashed sonic assaults. A natural high tenor with unfailing control of his falsetto, he could move surely through four octaves.

Even though Buckley avoided the guttural rumblings that marked the folk and jazz excursions of his natural father, the much-celebrated '60s singer Tim Buckley, he was constantly being compared to the man whom he met only once, briefly, when Jeff was 8. Two months after that meeting, on June 29, 1975, Tim was dead, at age 28, of an overdose brought on by a combination of heroin, morphine and alcohol.

Tim Buckley left behind nine albums, which portrayed his singular progression from a romantic, visionary folk troubadour (Goodbye and Hello, 1967) to his increasingly jazz-inflected poesy (Starsailor, 1971) to, finally, a randy rocker. The apparitions in his brilliant 1972 album Greetings From L.A. range from post-Vietnam lost soul ("Nighthawkin") to broken-hearted international rou ffl82 ("Hong Kong Bar"). The elder Buckley never quite became a star, and the few sparing obituaries generally failed to mention his estranged wife, Mary, a classically trained pianist who'd been born in the Panama Canal Zone. Most also failed to mention his son, Jeffrey Scott Buckley.

Life as Scott Moorhead Jeff Buckley was born in los Angeles, on Nov. 17, 1966, at a time when his father already had abandoned his mother. Buckley was raised mostly in Orange County, Calif., surrounded, he has said, "by music and marijuana," and kept his belongings in paper bags because of the family's frequent moves. He spent his high school years among kids he referred to as the "Disneyland Nazi youth" of Anaheim, Calif. An elfin, contrary loner, he didn't cherish his yearbook: "I had already drawn trails of blood trickling down the faces of all the popular people, and I just threw it out."

Buckley had been raised as Scott Moorhead -- from his middle name and the surname of his stepfather, auto mechanic Ron Moorhead. Unresolvedly bitter over his natural father's uncaringness, Buckley spoke well of Moorhead -- often noting that his stepdad gave him his first Led Zep album -- and the two stayed in touch even after Ron and Mary split up.

"Jeff and I had a wonderful talk on the telephone a few days prior to the accident," says Moorhead. "He always reassured me that I was his dad and he was my son. Jeff was so happy. He told me he had stopped smoking and stopped eating meat. He was so excited about going into the studio; he felt his voice was the best it had ever been. Nothing in this world will ever take away the hurt in my heart, but the fact that I know my Scotty was so happy and full of joy softens my tears."

Mary Guibert (who appears to be Buckley's sole heir; he left no will) became a remote yet curiously vivid figure in the days after her son's drowning. "It has become apparent to me my son will not be walking out of the river," she said in a press release. "It is now time to make plans to celebrate a life that was golden." In her statement for this article, she said, "The story of my son's life is much bigger and richer than the few years he spent as a recording artist."

Chanteuse With a Penis Jeff Buckley grew up consumed by music, playing in outfits ranging from reggae cover groups to metal bands. Not long after he decided to skip college, he enrolled in Los Angeles' Musicians Institute -- a notorious station of the cross for L.A. hair bands. The music he'd learned from his classically trained mom melded with something much ruder, and Buckley soon bounced between coasts, making demos -- clearly talented but still searching for focus.