Later this month will mark the 21st anniversary of Jeff Buckley’s passing, and will also commemorate the day on which the world of music lost one of its brightest stars. Now, as he prepares to release a new book about the late musician, Buckley’s former manager has opened up about the final days of the iconic star.

Back in February, we spoke about how Jeff Buckley’s former manager, Dave Lory, is set to release the book Jeff Buckley From Hallelujah To The Last Goodbye at the end of May.

Featuring interviews with people who knew him the best, Lory explained the decision to author the book by saying that he is finally “ready to tell my side of his story and to share my memories of the artist who burned so bright for too short a time but left a mark that is finding more new, devoted fans with every passing year.”

Now, as NME notes, Dave Lory recently spoke to NPR‘s Talia Schlanger about Buckley’s final weeks, and the “erratic” behaviour he seemed to exhibit in this time.

“He was trying to buy a house that wasn’t for sale,” Lory explained. “He was trying to buy a car that wasn’t for sale. He proposed to Joan [Wasser, Buckley’s girlfriend]. He even applied for a job to be a butterfly keeper at Memphis Zoo – a lot of weird stuff that was uncharacteristic for him. I think it was a yearning to settle down. He wanted a normal life.”

Jeff Buckley tragically passed away on May 29th of 1997 after embarking upon a spontaneous swim in the Mississippi River in Memphis. Buckley’s body wasn’t found until June 4th, but as Dave Lory recalls, he’ll always remember the moment at which he first learned that Buckley had gone missing.

“It was 5:58 – I’ll never forget the time – in the morning,” Lory remembered. “I was in Dublin so that meant it must have been almost one AM in New York and midnight in Memphis. I just froze. I thought I was having a dream. I dropped the phone and you don’t know what to do.”

“Thank god there was no internet cos it would have been tweeted off the banks. You just go numb. I was totally numb, no emotion.”

Dave Lory’s Jeff Buckley From Hallelujah To The Last Goodbye is set to be released on May 29th.

Check out Jeff Buckley’s ‘Last Goodbye’:

The article was originally published on Tone Deaf