Standing Inside The Flame

A rediscovered songwriter of immense sensitivity, Bill Fay left us on February 22.

A DAY OR TWO after Bill Fay made his one return to the stage, in 2007, he called to tell me about how it had gone. Fay had turned up for a Wilco gig at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire in London, where he encored with Jeff Tweedy on Be Not So Fearful, a gentle prayer of a song from his 1970 debut album. Fay was touched by the kindness of Tweedy and Wilco, but mostly he wanted to talk about how he’d travelled to the venue by bus from his north London home. For the entire journey, he’d been transfixed by a ladybird that had hitched a lift on his jacket sleeve. It was a measure of Fay’s boundless capacity for awe, for understanding the value of small epiphanies, and…

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MOJO (Digital) - 1 Issue, May 2025

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