One of the more touching entries on Euphoria Mourning is a funky, wah-wah-painted elegy called “Wave Goodbye.” Chris wrote the song shortly after Jeff Buckley drowned in the Mississippi River on May 29, 1997. At the request of Buckley’s mother, Chris performed “Wave Goodbye” at Buckley’s private memorial service in New York. The song, a nakedly despondent account of what it feels like to lose someone too soon, gave Chris pause before he ultimately included it on Euphoria Mourning. The feelings were too real, and the topic so close to him that he felt wary about sharing it with the public.

In the several years prior to Buckley’s death, the two singers, perhaps the two most naturally gifted vocalists of their generation, bonded over their shared talents, frustrations, successes and travails. “It’s pretty rare to be able to call someone up on the phone and explain what you’re going through as a songwriter, or a singer, or a bandmate, or what you are going through with the music industry and have somebody totally understand everything you are talking about,” Chris told Guitar One. “I think that was the main part of our relationship. We were on some sort of common ground.”The loss was devastating. 

Chris lent a hand to the curation of the posthumous Buckley collection Sketches For (My Sweetheart the Drunk), where he was credited as “II Dottore Di Musica” or “Music Doctor.” Buckley’s mother was so touched by Chris’s involvement with the project that when it was finished, she gave him one of her son’s guitars, a twelve-string Rickenbacker 360. She also gifted Chris Buckley’s red telephone: an item he treasured for the rest of his life.

Reiff, Corbin. Total F*cking Godhead: The Biography of Chris Cornell. Post Hill Press. Kindle Edition.