A decade after his death, Maria Coole explores the tragic legacy of the man with an angel's voice.

Captivated by the singer on stage, the eight-year-old boy bounced excitedly in his seat. As the song ended, his mother asked, "Jeff, would you like to meet your daddy now?" She didn't have to wait for an answer, as the young boy was already out of his seat, heading backstage. There, he came face-to-face with singer/songwriter Tim Buckley. Jeff jumped onto his lap and while Tim gently rocked him back and forth, Jeff excitedly told his "new" father all about his life. It was the first time he ever remembered meeting him. "I sat on his knees for 15 minutes," Jeff later said of the meeting. "He smiled the whole time. Me too."

There would be no happy reconciliation tale, however, as just three months later, on June 29, 1975, Tim would be dead from an accidental alcohol and heroin overdose, aged 28. Although that meeting between father and son was brief, Tim's ghost was to haunt Jeff all his life and, ultimately, set in train a prophecy from which he could never escape.

Almost two decades later, like his father before him, Jeff Buckley would find himself exploding onto the music scene and besieged with accolades. It was August 1994 and Jeff's first album, Grace, was released to great critical acclaim. Fans were bowled over by his amazing multi-octave vocal range - inherited from his father - that allowed him to swing from a soft caress to operatic highs and shrieks. And with its fusion of choral pieces, Led Zeppelin-inspired rock, cabaret, folk, jazz and cover songs, like Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah", it blew away his idols.

The praise overwhelmed the young musician. Buckley's biographer, David Browne, recalls the time Jeff was introduced to his hero, Led Zeppelin's frontman Robert Plant, at a dinner party. The elder statesman of rock told Jeff how much he loved Grace and, overcome with emotion, Jeff had to leave the room shortly afterwards. Other accolades came thick and fast - in 1995 Jeff won the Rolling Stone award for Best New Artist, as well as France's prestigious Gran Prix International Du Disque. It seemed he had everything to live for, but in May 1997, Jeff's life would be cut short in a mysterious and tragic accident.

Jeff's destiny began when his father, Tim Buckley, met Mary Guibert at Loara High School, in Anaheim, California. In October 1965, aged just 18 and 17 respectively, the young sweethearts were married. But, as Browne would later discover, by the time Jeffrey Scott Buckley was born on November 17, 1966, no-one knew where Tim was to tell him the news. A few months earlier, fed up with the musician's frequent absences, Mary had called it a day. "Tim was true to himself," mused his guitarist, Lee Underwood, "fully aware he'd be accepting a lifetime of guilt".

Tim was a beguiling mix of handsome dark looks and vulnerability, which combined to make him irresistible. His debut folk/rock album, Tim Buckley, was released two days after Jeff's birth and throughout 1968-69, Tim was the new folk/rock poster boy. But he was ill-at-ease with his new-found success and, becoming increasingly disenchanted with the music business, he began producing experimental material. By 1970, he'd successfully alienated most of his fans with his avant-garde albums and had turned to booze and drugs.

In the spring of 1975, Tim was deter-mined to make a comeback and embarked on a successful US tour. According to Browne's biography of Tim and Jeff, Dream Brother (HarperCollins, $24.95), on June 29, on his way back from the last gig of his tour, he dropped by a friend's LA home and snorted heroin. But on top of the alcohol he'd been swigging all day, this lethal cocktail simply proved too much. His friends drove Tim home and told his second wife, Judy Sutcliffe, whom he'd married in 1970 (also adopting her then seven-year-old son, Taylor), that he was drunk and had taken barbiturates.

As his condition worsened, Judy panicked and called for help. Tim was taken to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Jeff and his mother Mary weren't invited to the funeral.

By now, eight-year-old Jeff was a smiley "little hippie kid" living in California's Orange County and answering to the name of Scott or Scotty Moorhead - Mary had divorced Tim in 1967 and married car mechanic Ron Moorhead two years later, with whom she had a son, Corey, in 1972. The family then spent the next decade constantly relocating, moving between Moorhead's, Mary's lovers' and the boys' maternal grandmother's homes.

Jeff's family would always refer to him as "Scotty" to his dying day, but a few months after he learnt of his father's death, Jeff informed his mother that he wanted to use the surname Buckley in his dad's honour. According to Browne, it wasn't until 1980 that he began to use his real first name, which he discovered after finding his birth certificate.

Music became Jeff's refuge and, while at Loara High (the same school that would later produce Gwen Stefani), he started playing the guitar. "He could hear a song once and then play it straight through," reminisces school band drummer Paul Derech.

At 17, Jeff enrolled in Hollywood's Musicians Institute, graduating in 1985. His music was his life - no-one ever saw him drinking alcohol, smoking or taking drugs. "He was so pure," family friend Tamurlaine Adams told Browne. "He was hardly interested in women or sex. He was happy, but the sadness and melancholy was always there."

Success did not come easily and Jeff spent the next six years trying to find his musical identity in LA and New York, recording his first demo, Babylon Dungeon Sessions, in 1990. But, just as he thought he was going nowhere, in early 1991, he received a request out of the blue - would he attend a tribute concert for his dad in New York?

Clutching a guitar and wearing his father's pea coat, which was given to him by one of Tim's friends, Jeff turned up at St Ann's Church, Brooklyn, on April 26, 1991, to make his singing debut at the "Greetings From Tim Buckley" concert. "This isn't a springboard, this is something very personal," he admitted. "It bothered me I hadn't been to his funeral. I used that show to pay my last respects."

Jeff performed "I Never Asked To Be Your Mountain", Tim's tribute song to Mary and Jeff. "My God, I stepped on stage and they backlit it, and it was like the fucking Second Coming," Jeff said in Dream Brother.

The audience was buzzing with the discovery of this fresh talent in Tim Buckley's son, and backstage, Jeff cried as he accepted the compliments. It was a magical night, not least because he became smitten with a girl he'd noticed earlier, Rebecca Moore, a jobbing actress and waitress. Feted and falling in love, he had every reason to stay in New York now. "I sacrificed my anonymity for my father, whereas he sacrificed me for his fame," Jeff told The Philadelphia Inquirer.

After a brief alliance with band Gods And Monsters, Jeff's star was quickly in ascendance and he soon became the talk of the New York music scene. In April 1992, Jeff began performing at a tiny, but iconic, cafe called Sin-é in New York's East Village. News spread fast and, within a month, hordes of limos were parked outside, all carrying record executives eager to sign him. Jeff was fearful he'd be crushed by the business that had so stifled his dad, but nevertheless, in the following October, he signed with Columbia Records. "I'm convinced I got signed because of who I am," Jeff told Browne, "And it makes me sad. But I can't do anything else."

Jeff's debut came in November 1993, with the EP Live At Sin-é. It was the beginning of a new life, no longer supplementing his meagre earnings by cat-sitting for friends. His personal life was also in new territory. No longer with Moore, he was developing a flirtatious side and his ability to identify the brand of perfume a woman was wearing became a trademark. He enjoyed an affair with singer Brenda Kahn, as well as a fling with one of his musical heroes, the Cocteau Twins' Elizabeth Fraser, while on tour in the UK.

On August 23, 1994, Jeff's masterpiece, Grace, was unveiled. The cover image, hand-picked by Jeff himself, shows him dressed in a sparkly jacket, looking moody and sullen. The image was typical of his contradictory nature - wary of the music business, yet signed with one of its biggest companies; frustrated with the image-driven industry, yet looking every bit as glamorous as a film star.

On the album appeared Jeff's version of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" - Grace's magnum opus, and still considered by many to be the definitive recording of that song. It would be the song Jeff would be best known for. Grace quickly gained cult status - going gold in Australia - and for the next two years he toured ceaselessly, from Australia to the UK. "How overwhelming can something be? This has been the most surreal year of joy and utterly satanic bullshit mixed together," he wrote to his fans on his email mailing list.

By now he had a new love, violinist Joan Wasser from the Dambuilders, who'd shared a bill with him in 1994. Joan understood Jeff's struggle. "He never knew he was going to be taken on the level of 'hot boy'," she revealed to Browne. "That was ridiculous to him because he wanted to be taken seriously."

With the tour taking its toll, by 1996, Jeff was an unshaven, weary-looking man with dyed-black hair, constantly knocking back tequila and smoking joints. A second album had been planned for autumn 1995, but Jeff had barely begun to write anything new. He was feeling pressurised and drugs offered an effective escape. The fact that his dad had been an addict just fuelled Jeff's curiosity.

"He was a little paranoid," admitted Joan and, in December 1996, Jeff described his anguish at the loss of his creative anonymity. "There was a time when I could show up in a cafe and simply do what I do ... I loved it and then I missed it when it disappeared."

In February 1997, Jeff and his band moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where their attempts to record proved futile. Still feeling creatively blocked, he stayed on in Memphis after the band returned to New York and secured a Monday night gig at a bar called Barrister's, where he worked on new songs. Things looked like they were finally coming together - Jeff was playing and, he said, coming to terms with his father's legacy. Happy with his new songs, on May 29, 1997, Jeff's band returned to Memphis to work. But it was not to be. Within five minutes of them walking into Jeff's one-bedroom house, the phone rang. It was Jeff's friend, Keith Foti.

According to Browne, Jeff and Keith had driven to nearby Mud Island River Park to play music and watch the sunset. Just after 9pm, Jeff decided to take a swim - fully clothed and still wearing his boots - in the Wolf River, a tributary of the Mississippi, known by locals to be a dangerous swimming spot. Minutes later, he was floating, singing Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love". Keith stayed ashore and, after moving a radio and guitar out of reach of the wake of a passing boat, looked up to real-ise that Jeff was gone. He wouldn't be seen again until his body was found on June 4.

Initial speculation was that he'd committed suicide, but the autopsy confirmed that he had no illegal drugs in his system, and his estate insists it was simply a tragic accident. When Jeff had read his father's obituaries in 1975, he'd been devastated to see no mention of himself. Little did he know that, after just six years of fame, his own tributes would far outshine those of his dad. Mourning the lost of a huge talent, U2's Bono stated, "Jeff was a pure drop in an ocean of noise."

For more on Jeff and Tim Buckley, read Dream Brother by David Browne (HarperCollins, $24.95). The exhibition, A Wished For Song: Portrait Of Jeff Buckley, opens May 17 at Blender Gallery, Paddington, NSW. Visit www.blender.com.au.