Bill Fay
Bill Fay is a singer, pianist and songwriter from England.
He made one single ("Some Good Advice"/"Screams in my Ears") and two albums (Bill Fay and Time of the Last Persecution) for the Deram label between 1967 and 1971. These recordings did not sell well: poor promotion and distribution were blamed. Fay was dropped from Deram soon after the release of his second album.
Despite returning to the recording studio in the late 1970s, the follow up to Time of the Last Persecution did not emerge until January 2005. Entitled Tomorrow, Tomorrow & Tomorrow, it was credited to the Bill Fay Group and was released on the Durtro Jnana label.
In 2004, the British label Wooden Hill released a collection of demos recorded between 1966 and 1970 entitled From the Bottom of an Old Grandfather Clock.
Fay's original Deram albums are now extremely rare and are much sought after by collectors, though they are easily obtainable on CD since being reissued by Eclectic Discs in 2005.
Jeff Tweedy from the band Wilco has played Fay's song "Be Not So Fearful" in live performances and can be heard singing it in the documentary I Am Trying to Break Your Heart: A Film About Wilco. It is believed to be the influence of Jim O'Rourke who made a cover (along with Glen Kotche) of "Pictures of Adolf Again", which can be heard in the movie from Koji Wakamatsu "United Red Army". The title track of "Time of the Last Persecution" became a live standard of British Apocalyptic Folk group Current 93.