Its about the pain of separation, the longing to reunite, and the sacredness of expressing these things.

Buckley, wearing a T-shirt, jeans, and heavy Doc Martens boots, waded into the water singing Led Zeppelins Whole Lotta Love.

Concerned about their boom box getting wet, Foti moved it out of harms way.

When he turned back around, Buckley was gone with the undertow.

Possessing the same incredible range as opera icon Pavarotti, his phrasing could be anguished or exquisite; his breath control was phenomenal.

Beyond that, he was the soul of eclecticism: Raised on prog rock, he dabbled in hair metal, gospel, country, and soul.

Once, during a live performance, he improvised in the ecstatic style of Qawwali devotional singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan someone Buckley once described as my Elvis over the riff from Nirvanas Smells Like Teen Spirit.

He released two albums during his life: 1993s Live at Sin- and 1994s Grace.

The record he was working on in Memphis, tentatively called My Sweetheart the Drunk, never saw completion and was shelved because of his death.

What was released more than a year later a pastiche of studio recordings and demos is as illustrative of his potential as it is of the Jeff Buckley industry that sprung up after his demise.

Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk is a difficult listen, and not just because Buckley was unafraid to be challenging or the fact that much of it is more promise than fruition.

The album encapsulates unpleasant cultural and legal issues of privacy, ownership, and the wishes of the artist when they run counter to those of his fanbase, record label, or even his estate.

Jeff Buckley would not have wanted Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk to come out at all.

He always seemed to be working in opposition to those aspects of him that were apparently beneficial: his record label and his provenance.

I met him for the first time when I was 8 years old over Easter and he died two months later.

Growing up, he was known as Scottie Moorhead, a combination of his own middle name and his stepfathers surname.

Buckley took his biological fathers name after Tims death.) He spent the 1980s playing in various bands and working as a session musician.

He touched my throat, I started to sing, and then I woke up singing.

I had dreamed that my first live performance would be at my fathers chilla funeral ceremony, where we would all sit together again and read prayers from the Koran and so on.

On the fortieth day after his death, we held the ceremony, and I performed for the very first time.

He had died by the time I started, but I hid from him a gift that I was born with.

There was a period when I was frozen for about three or four years, starting when I was eighteen.

In my dream at that time, the ghost of my father came smashing through the window.

More spiritual than religious (as some qawwali can be downright bawdy), it is about devotion to another person, or god.

Jeff Buckley Favorite Books