Jeff Buckley Feared Drowned

PHILADELPHIA - Jeff Buckley, 30, the luminous-voiced rock singer and son of hallowed '60s folkie Tim Buckley, was presumed dead in Memphis, Tenn., yesterday, four days after he disappeared while swimming near the Mississippi River.

"We're still patrolling the area with our harbor control units," Memphis Police Lt. Richard True said. "There's some current there and his body could have been pushed downstream."

Buckley was swimming fully clothed off a marina last Thursday night when he vanished under the surface after a boat passed. A friend on shore who lost sight of him reported him missing. There is no evidence that alcohol or drugs played a part in the incident.

"It has become apparent to me that my son will not be walking out of the river," Buckley's mother Mary Guibert said yesterday. "It is now time to make plans to celebrate a life that was golden. . . .

All of us are mourning his passing."

Buckley's label, Columbia Records, said a memorial service will be planned in the coming weeks.

The talented singer, who moved to Memphis from New York in February, was scheduled to begin work this month on a follow-up to his highly praised 1994 debut, "Grace." That album introduced an artist whose music owed a debt to Van Morrison, Led Zeppelin and Judy Garland, and whose voice was an instrument of dazzling range that eerily recalled his father, who died of a heroin and morphine overdose in 1975 at the age of 28.

Buckley's parents were married only briefly. Buckley was raised by his mother in Orange County, Calif., and met his father - whom he was loath to discuss - a few times as a baby, and spent a week with him a month before his father's death. Buckley performed at a tribute to his father at St. Ann's Church in Brooklyn Heights in 1991 and soon thereafter took up a residency at Manhattan's Cafe Sin-e.

The dark-browed, doe-eyed Buckley soon became the subject of a record company bidding war. Columbia won out and in 1994 released the four-song "Live at Sin-e," which included Edith Piaf's "Je N'en Connais Pas la Fin" and a 10-minute version of Van Morrison's "The Way Young Lovers Do."

"Grace" followed, and though it indulged Buckley's grandiose taste - "I like bombast," he said in a 1994 interview. "I'm really into over-the-top emotion" - its mixture of beautifully sung old tunes and melodramatic Buckley originals like "Grace" and "So Real" marked the emergence of a major talent.

Buckley was a stunning, dramatic live performer who quieted rock clubs by singing in hushed tones one moment and exploding into full-volume ululations the next. But "Grace's" follow-up was slow in coming: The album was scheduled to be produced by Television guitarist Tom Verlaine last year, but that plan was scrapped amid rumors that Buckley was wrestling with personal problems.