# Q Lazzarus

Diane Luckey (December 12, 1960 – July 19, 2022), known professionally as Q Lazzarus, was an American singer. She is best known for her 1988 song "Goodbye Horses", which became a cult classic after being prominently featured in a scene from Jonathan Demme's 1991 film The Silence of the Lambs. Several of her songs were featured in other films directed by Demme before she disappeared from the public eye in the mid-1990s.

## Life and career

Diane Luckey was born on December 12, 1960, in Neptune Township, New Jersey, the youngest of seven children. While attending the Mount Pisgah Baptist Church in Neptune as a child, she sang in the Mount Pisgah Youth Choir. She graduated from Neptune High School and, inspired by a production of Bubbling Brown Sugar on Broadway, moved to New York City at age 18 to pursue a music career. She soon started working as a backup singer and jingle writer at Sigma Sound Studios.
In the 1980s, while making music as part of her band Q Lazzarus and the Resurrection, Lazzarus was working as a taxi driver in New York City to make a living. The band consisted of Lazzarus, songwriter William Garvey, backup singer Gloriana Galicia and Janice Bernstein. According to Galicia, by 1985, Lazzarus was working in Chelsea as a live-in housekeeper and au pair for an English businessman named Swan, and the band would record vocal harmonies on cassette at Swan's house; Lazzarus also had a number of other day jobs at the time.
Lazzarus was repeatedly turned away by record companies, who insisted they could not market her because of her image. After picking up filmmaker Jonathan Demme in her taxi during a blizzard and asking him if he was in the music business, she played him her demo tape, to which he replied, "Oh my God, what is this and who are you?" Her song "Candle Goes Away" was then included in Demme's 1986 film Something Wild. In the late 1980s, she moved to London to form an Aerosmith-style rock band and stayed there for five years.
In 1987, Lazzarus and her good friend William Garvey recorded the song "Goodbye Horses" in his East Village apartment. The following year, thanks to Q's fateful meeting with Demme, the song was included in Demme's film Married to the Mob. It later became a cult hit following its inclusion in a scene from Demme's 1991 film The Silence of the Lambs featuring the film's antagonist, serial killer Buffalo Bill. She then appeared in Demme's next film, 1993's Philadelphia, in which she performed a cover of the Talking Heads song "Heaven".
In 1996, Q Lazzarus disappeared from the public eye. In 2015 she was working as a bus driver in Staten Island, and filed a lawsuit against a Hasidic bus company for not hiring female bus drivers.
On August 1, 2019, Q was once again working as a driver and picked up filmmaker Eva Aridjis Fuentes in her car. The two started chatting and Aridjis Fuentes, who was a fan of Q's music, recognized her. Shortly afterwards they met for lunch and decided to make a documentary together. Q also decided to return to her music after a 25-year absence from the public eye. Q and Aridjis Fuentes filmed for three years together and became extremely close. In the resulting documentary film Goodbye Horses: The Many Lives of Q Lazzarus, Q tells Aridjis Fuentes her entire life story with intimate detail, as she wanted the world to hear it in her own words and through the film.
Q also gave Aridjis Fuentes a large bag of tapes and DATs containing dozens of songs, which Aridjis Fuentes digitized. The music- made by Q between 1985 and 1995- included songs recorded in NYC in the 1980s, songs recorded in London in the late 1980s/early 1990s with her rock band (featuring Mark Barrett on guitar, Jon Bouillot on bass, and drummers Shane Atlas and Rick Duce), as well as songs written and recorded with her close friend and collaborator, Dan Agren aka Danny Z. Q's music spans several genres- from new wave and house to hard rock and indie- as can be heard in the film and on the soundtrack.
Q Lazzarus died on July 19, 2022 from sepsis after breaking her leg.
On March 7, 2025 the documentary Goodbye Horses: The Many Lives of Q Lazzarus was released in movie theaters in the United States, and the soundtrack was released by Sacred Bones Records on February 21, 2025.

## Goodbye Horses: The Many Lives of Q Lazzarus

In August 2019, filmmaker Eva Aridjis met Lazzarus after getting picked up in her car service in New York City, and the two soon began working on a documentary about her life, Goodbye Horses: The Many Lives of Q Lazzarus. A Kickstarter campaign for the documentary was launched by Aridjis in anticipation of its release. The film will come out in 2025, and the soundtrack will be released by Sacred Bones Records. The album was listed by online magazine Consequence as one of its most anticipated albums of 2025.