Finding Q Lazzarus

A Conversation with Eva Aridjis

Q Lazzarus in Goodbye Horses music video (1988)

A few weeks ago, I started looking for documentaries about a main subject, who dies unexpectedly during production. That happened to me this past summer when Paul Reubens, who I had been filming with for several years, passed away. I’m currently editing the film, and until this week, I hadn’t met another filmmaker with a similarly surreal experience.

Then I connected with Eva Aridjis about her current film-in-progress Goodbye Horses: The Many Lives of Q Lazzarus. Diane Luckey (aka Q) was a cult musician, best known for her iconic 1988 song Goodbye Horses. Sadly she passed away in the summer of 2022 at the age of 61, while Eva was completing production. Eva is currently doing a Kickstarter campaign to finish the film, and we spoke about her fated encounter with Diane, their intimate friendship, and the great responsibility of being a messenger for somebody who can no longer speak for herself.

Diane Luckey aka Q Lazzarus

Eva: I'd always been a fan of the song Goodbye Horses. I used to DJ in bars and small clubs in New York, and I would always play that song. I knew a little bit about the singer Q Lazzarus. She had been a taxi driver in New York in the ‘80s when she was making music in the East Village. The director Jonathan Demme had gotten into her car one day when she was playing her own music. He fell in love with her voice, which is quite androgynous. You know, most people who hear the song Goodbye Horses think it's like a white New Wave guy singing. They have no idea the singer is a black woman.

Demme put her music in four of his films, and with Silence of the Lambs, the song really got on people’s radar. So I knew a little bit about that. And then I knew that she vanished halfway through the ‘90s. Even her friends and bandmates had no idea what happened to her. Some people thought maybe she was dead. She really just vanished without a trace.

Then in 2019, I read an article in Dazed and Confused magazine. This writer found Q’s real name Diane Luckey and looked her up in the phonebook in Staten Island. He went to the address and knocked on the door, and a guy came out and said, “Oh, no, she doesn't live here, and I don't know who that is.” The writer kind of concluded, well, I didn't find her, so the story is over.

A few months after I read that article, I called a car from a rideshare app to my apartment in Brooklyn. When I got into the car, my driver was an African American woman in her late fifties playing the full album of Neil Young's Harvest. The music was kind of unexpected. Her GPS wasn't working, and she said to me, “This is your town, you tell me where to go.” I asked her where she lived, and she said Staten Island. So I started getting this feeling like maybe this could be Q Lazzarus—the voice, she lives in Staten Island, she's the right age, she was someone who knows about music.

We were talking about Neil Young, and we started kind of singing together, and I said, “Did you ever see him in concert?” She said, “Oh no, my concert days are long gone.” And then I said, “Well, what about Q Lazzarus? Did you ever see her perform?” I just wanted to see what she would say, and she was kind of taken aback. She said, “I've heard of her,” and then changed the subject. When we arrived in Manhattan, she extended her hand and said, “Nice to meet you, I’m Q… How did you know?” I asked her if we could have lunch or a cocktail sometime to talk more. She said, “Let me think about it. Give me your number.” So I put my number in her phone, and she drove away.  

I thought I probably wouldn’t hear from her again, but the next morning at 10am, I got a call from a number I didn't recognize. I answered, and the voice said, “It’s Q. I had a dream about you last night.” I asked if it was a good dream or a bad dream, and she said, “Girl, if it was a bad dream, I wouldn't be calling you!” She kept explaining, “You know, I dreamt I was performing, and you were there, and I haven't had a dream that I was performing in like 15 years.”

The strange thing is I had wanted to make a film about her before, but I had no idea where to find her. So the seeds were sort of already there in my head. We went to Mogador for lunch (one of the only restaurants still standing from the era she lived in the East Village), and Diane started telling me about her life and why she disappeared. I told her that I’m a filmmaker, and at that moment, we just started making the film. We both felt that our encounter was fated.

One of the less dramatic reasons why Diane disappeared was because she had a son and she had spent years driving cars to support him. When I met her she was still paying his way through college. But as we started working together, she realized the timing of this felt right because her son was about to graduate and become self-sufficient. She thought maybe she could go back to music now. We decided that I would make the film, and then she would put out a record of her music, including material that nobody has ever heard.  

We finally got copyrights for her music, and put everything in her name. She had never gotten any royalties whatsoever for Goodbye Horses, except for what Jonathan Demme paid her for using the music in his movies. She also had this whole other body of work that spans several genres. The one common thread is her, you know, and that very powerful, amazing voice.

Eva and her daughter, and Diane

We became very, very good friends. And, you know, six months after we started filming, COVID happened. At the beginning, I was filming with a DP and a sound recordist, but during the lockdown, it just became me and her. We never really went back to a larger crew, and it got very intimate.

When she was having health issues, we started to talk on the phone every day, or see each other once a week. We just talked about life, it wasn't even really about film or music anymore. We were still planning to finish the film as soon as she got better. The only thing we still had left to film was her comeback concert, which was going to be her return to the stage.

By the end, the nature of our relationship was more of a friendship and less of a work relationship. The last things we ever said to each other on the phone was, “I love you, I love you.”  

Eva and Diane

After Diane died, I took a break because, you know, I was extremely upset over losing a friend. Now as I’m editing, seeing her every day and hearing her speak, I kind of forget that she’s passed away. The closer I come to finishing the movie, I'm really feeling that loss all over again. Now it's like, oh wait, she’s never going to see the finished movie.

I don't have that immediate thing anymore of saying, what is she going to think of the film? What would she think of this scene? Would she want me to use this song? Maybe it was a little bit freeing creatively, but obviously at a huge cost. I'd rather have it be the other way around. But I'm also very aware of what she would have wanted. The portrayal of who she was as a person is even more urgent now because this is the only document that's going to put that out into the world. The responsibility got way bigger.

My film is a portrait of a woman of color who was failed by the music industry, the medical system, the legal system, you know, just from many, many institutions across the board. Diane was screwed over and over again. Now the film is what is going to advocate for her. People will see what her life was, how talented she was, and I hope there will be some justice in that.

-Eva as told to Matt

I can’t wait to see this film, and after reading this, I hope you feel the same way. Please consider donating to Eva’s kickstarter campaign, so that she can give Diane the revelatory film that she deserves.