In a month when we lost some big names in music – Marianne Faithfull, Roberta Flack, Rick Buckler of The Jam – the death of Bill Fay may have passed without much attention.

Usually categorised as a folk singer, but sounding little like either old-fashioned folkies or the newer indie-folk generation, he’s one of those veteran artists whose music only reached an audience decades after he made it.

The nearest comparison, I suppose, is his contemporary Nick Drake, whose albums similarly failed to sell at the time, in the early ’70s, but became collectors’ items for a cult audience years later.

Unlike the tragic Drake, Fay’s disappearance from public view was due not to an early death but commercial failure, exacerbated by an intensely private lifestyle and a disinclination to perform or promote his records.

While Drake made three albums before he died at the age of 26, Fay recorded just two before being dropped by his label, who seemed unsure whether he was the new Syd Barrett or the new Bob Dylan. Of course he was neither.

But he lived to the age of 81, never moving from North London except when studying electronics at Bangor University in Wales – where he began making music – and had just begun recording a new album when he died, despite Parkinsons robbing him of his ability to play the piano.

Fay’s first two albums, released in 1970 and 1971 – the originals are now collectors’ items – drew little attention at the time and sold next to nothing. But their rediscovery three decades later by younger artists led to their rediscovery and re-release.

Cover versions by artists including Nick Cave, Wilco, Marc Almond, Pavement, The War On Drugs, Cate Le Bon, Julia Jacklin and AC Newman rekindled his career, encouraging him to return to the recording studio after a hiatus of 40 years, during which time he had worked as a gardener, park keeper, fruit picker and fish packer.

With a voice to which the patina of age had lent the sound of a kindly grandfather, he emerged with two more late-life albums in 2012 and 2015 that showed he had not lost his way with a poignant lyric and a good tune, followed by a final album, Countless Branches, in 2020.

Fay’s legacy, described beautifully in a statement from his record label, Dead Oceans, is to be remembered not only for his records but, in a reference to his privacy, forever as “the man in the corner of the room at the piano.”

RIP Bill Fay (1943-2025)