When I first heard about English singer-songwriter Bill Fay, it was thought he was dead. A 1999 Mojo article speculated that Fay’s total disappearance after his two early 1970s albums was due to his descent into drug addiction, leading to death. The article indicated that both his self-titled debut album and its follow-up, “Time of the Last Persecution”, were now reissued on a single CD. I immediately went out and bought it at my local record store and found Fay’s brand of baroque folk-pop mysterious and beguiling. A winsome, slightly off-key voice espoused the virtues of appreciating nature and hoping for world peace on the first album, then delved into darker elements of war and inequality on the second. The turbulent aspects of the later songs were echoed by sudden frenzied guitar blasts, which unexpectedly roared in throughout the collection. Each album cover also reflected this dichotomy, the first showing a fresh faced lad standing in the water in Hyde Park, while the second presented a bearded, disheveled portrait that could almost be mistaken for Charles Manson (hence the drug rumors).
Fast forward to 2012. I’m listening to an NPR podcast at work and the host says something to the effect of “up next, a story about forgotten musician Bill Fay, who returns with his first album in forty years.” I had to rewind the show several times to make sure I heard what I thought I’d heard. It was true. Fay was alive and well and had a brand new release titled “Life is People”. It turned out that after being dropped by the record company, Fay never stopped writing songs as he worked odd jobs, took care of his mother and enjoyed gardening for the past few decades.
NPR also posted a song from the album, ‘The Never Ending Happening.’ To quote the song itself, it was simply “astonishing to me” (how many lyrics have you heard that use the word “astonishing”?). I listened to the song numerous times every day for at least a month until I got the LP. Fay uses what sounds like a variation on Beethoven‘s ‘Moonlight Sonata’ on the piano to back his now weathered voice, which actually covers his past vocal deficiencies and fits the music better than ever. Only a mournful cello enters at the end to provide a fitting coda. The lyrics continue to reflect Fay’s wonder over the beauty and resilience of nature and his dismay over manmade tragedy. Fay performed the song with a charming shy nervousness for most likely his only television appearance, broadcast on Later. . . With Jools Holland on November 23, 2012.
There are marvelous lines here that evoke everything from spirituality (“Souls arriving constantly / From the shores of eternity”), visual and aural beauty (“Nightfall stars then rise again / Birdsong before the day begins”) to the fragility of the human spirit (“For some it’s like tight-rope walkin’ / Blind-folded and shaking”). In just two verses, Bill Fay manages to encapsulate the earth’s miracles and horrors, set to an emotionally striking melody.
Bill Fay passed away on February 21, 2025, at age 81. R.I.P.
