Bill Fay has died at 81 years old. I am sure many of you will have heard of him. After two albums of melancholic singer songwriting (more pop than folk) he went off the radar in the early 70s and I remember it being reported in Mojo in the 90s that he was presumably a Jeremy Spencer style casualty. Nonsense! He had just been dropped by his label and was getting on with his life: a lesson for us all in avoiding dangerous rock romanticism. His comeback via Wilco’s cover version of ‘ Be Not So Fearful’ was heartening, and he made some good mature recordings. Apparently a disciple of Catholic mystic Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, I think his second album, the suitably apocalyptic and odd ‘Time of the Last Persecution’, is his best.
Bill Fay
