Q Lazzarus, famed musician who was later a Staten Islander, dies at 60 (2024)

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Diane Luckey, a musician who was propelled into stardom with her 1988 hit song “Goodbye Horses,” an iconic tune from the Oscar-winning film “Silence of the Lambs,” has died. The former singer, who later appeared in the 1993 movie “Philadelphia,” before reportedly retreating from the limelight and working as a Staten Island bus driver, was just 60 years old.

Born in Neptune, N.J. on Dec. 12, 1962, the second youngest of seven siblings, Luckey grew up in Neptune, attending Mount Pisgah Baptist Church and Neptune High School. According to a family obituary, she loved music and started singing at a very young age as part of the Mount Pisgah Youth Choir.

“After seeing the Broadway musical, ‘Bubbling Brown Sugar’ in New York City while on a class field trip, she decided that she wanted to dedicate her life to singing,” the obituary notes. “She moved to New York City when she was 18 and immediately started working at Sigma Sounds Studio as a backup singer and writing jingles for commercials.”

She began performing and recording under the name Q Lazzarus and while driving a NYC taxi cab during a blizzard in the late 1980s, Luckey fortuitously picked up filmmaker Jonathan Demme.

“Luckey was listening to one of her own cassettes in the car because she was preparing to record the next day,” Rolling Stone magazine reported, attributing the tale to Luckey’s close friend Eva Aridjis. “Demme said he liked the songs and asked Luckey whose music it was. ‘Well thank you very much,’ Luckey replied, ‘it’s me.’”

The filmmaker formed a bond with Luckey, featuring the Q Lazzarus song “The Candle Goes Away” in his 1986 film “Something Wild,” Rolling Stone noted. He then included “Goodbye Horses” in 1988′s “Married to the Mob,” though used it more famously three years later in the iconic “Silence of the Lambs” scene where serial killer Buffalo Bill is applying make-up and talking to himself in the mirror. In Demme’s 1993 film “Philadelphia,” Q Lazzarus contributed a cover of the Talking Heads’ “Heaven.”

Lazzarus retreated from the public eye in the mid-90s. The artist, who had gained a sort of cult following, was contacted by alternative style and culture magazine Dazed in 2019, to whom she confirmed that she had retired from music and was working as a bus driver on Staten Island.

“I just wanted people to know I am still alive, I have no interest in singing anymore,” she told the publication responding via direct message about her rumored whereabouts. “I am a bus driver in Staten Island (I have been for YEARS), I see hundreds of passengers every day, so I am hardly hiding (or dead!)”

At the time of her death, Luckey was finishing work on a feature documentary about her life and music with filmmaker and friend, Eva Aridjis. According to her family obituary, the film will be released in 2023, along with an album of songs spanning her entire musical career.

“Diane was a big-hearted, fun-loving and passionate woman who loved traveling, adventure, music, cooking and people,” the obituary reads. “Amongst her other transformative experiences was a six-month stint on a fishing boat in Alaska, and a long trip through South America with a friend. She had a great sense of humor, loved to tell stories and jokes, and also had a unique and wonderful style of dress that was all her own. She was fiercely devoted to her family, children, and friends, and was also a devout Baptist. Diane will be sorely missed by all of those who knew her. She lit up the room and turned heads everywhere she went and has always been a larger-than-life legend in the music world.”

Luckey is survived by her husband, Robert Lange, and her son, James Luckey Lange, who both currently reside on Staten Island. She is also survived by a daughter, Sayydina, plus numerous other relatives, friends and collaborators.