Bill Fay, the cult British singer-songwriter, has died. His label, Dead Oceans, confirmed his death in a statement on social media Saturday. He was 81.
“It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Bill Fay, who died peacefully this morning in London, aged 81,” Dead Oceans wrote. “Bill was a gentle man and a gentleman, wise beyond our times. He was a private person with the biggest of hearts, who wrote immensely moving, meaningful songs that will continue to find people for years to come.”
Born in North London in 1943, Fay released his debut single ‘Some Good Advice’ b/w ‘Screams In The Ears’ in 1967. His two first studio albums, 1970’s Bill Fay and 1971’s Time of the Last Persecution, came out on Decca Records subsidiary Deram. The label soon dropped Fay due to lackluster sales, and decades passed before he would record music again.
After those first two LPs were reissued by a small British label in 1998, producer and musician Jim O’Rourke played the records during the sessions for Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, which led to Jeff Tweedy adding a cover of Fay’s ‘Be Not So Fearful’ to the band’s setlist. Fay joined the band to perform the song twice – once in 2007, and once in 2010.
The title track of ‘Time of the Last Persecution’ also became a live standard of the British experimental group Current 93, whose founder David Tibet helped release Tomorrow, Tomorrow, & Tomorrow, a compilation of Fay’s studio recordings from between 1978 and 1981, in 2005. Producer Joshua Henry then helped Fay sign to Dead Oceans, which released Life Is People, his first album in over 40 years, in 2012.
“Up until 1998, when some people reissued my albums, as far as I was concerned, I was gone, deleted,” Fay told Spin in 2012. “No one was listening. But then I got the shock that people remembered my music. I was doing some gardening, and listening to some of my songs on cassette, and a part of me thought they were quite good. I thought, ‘Maybe somebody will hear them someday.’”
Fay would go on to release two more albums for Dead Oceans: 2015’s Who Is the Sender? and 2020’s Countless Branches. “It’s best I spend my available time doing what I’ve always done,” he told the New York Times in 2020. “I’m thankful that side of my life has continued for all my life — finding songs in the corner of the room.”
