Singer Q Lazzarus died on July 19 at the age of 59, according to an obituary published on the website of a funeral home in her hometown. She was the author of the hit song “Goodbye Horses”, which is featured on the soundtracks of the films “The Silence of the Lambs” and “The Mafia Affair”.
The cause of death was not disclosed. Q Lazzarus hasn’t been seen in public since 1996, and rumor has it he’s been living away from the limelight as a bus driver in recent years.
Her musical career began in the mid1980s when she was discovered by Jonathan Demme, the director of The Silence of the Lambs and The Mafia Affair. Q Lazzarus, then known as Diane Luckey, worked as a taxi driver and played her music for the director during a race.
After the success of “Goodbye Horses”, the singer appeared in the film “Philadelphia” (1993) and sang the song “Heaven” by the band Talking Heads. However, in 1996, the band that accompanied Q Lazzarus broke up, and the artist has not performed as a singer since.
Fans have tried in vain to locate her for the past few decades: some believed she had substance abuse issues, others said she was in an abusive relationship, and some speculated that Q Lazzarus was dead.
It was all speculation until 2017, when a fan asked on Twitter where the singer had been, and received a response from a woman named Diane Luckey, claiming to be Q Lazzarus:
“Hello, sorry for the disturbance. I just wanted to let people know that I’m still alive and not interested in singing anymore. I’m a bus driver in Staten Island (YEARS). I see hundreds of passengers every day, so no, I’m hiding (and I’m not even dead!). I gave my phone and address to journalist Thomas Gorton (of Dazed Magazine) to prove I was “real”. Sorry if this is a boring ending to the story. I’ll be leaving Twitter soon because I find it weird, please save this message in case anyone else is interested. Thanks.”
The fan shared the news on Facebook and forums about the singer, saying the account has a photo very similar to Q Lazzarus. However, the profile was deleted on the same day. “I decided to google ‘Diane Luckey’ because that was the name she used on Twitter and to my surprise there is a woman named Diane Luckey who sued a Staten Island bus company in 2015 because she didn’t have a single driver,” she told the fan.
That’s what fans were most likely to hear from Q Lazzarus when his death was announced by the Jackson Funeral Home. The obituary states that Diane Luckey was working on a documentary about her life with filmmaker Eva Aridjis, who mourned her death on Instagram:
“Over the past three years, Q has become one of my closest friends. We spoke to each other almost every day, sometimes to talk about the film or her music, but mostly to talk about our lives and our everyday lives,” says the filmmaker Post.
“She loved my daughter Josephine she said she decided to trust me when she saw a picture of her and she always insisted on picking up my elderly parents from the airport when they arrived from Mexico and bringing me medicine , when I arrived sick and cooked for me and my crew while we were shooting at her house,” recalls Eva Aridjis.
According to the obituary, the film about the life of Q Lazzarus is set to be released next year with an album combining songs from throughout his career. Remember the hit “Goodbye Horses”: