Soon Scott Fagan

• 1 Let the World Begin Again 01:59
• 2 Soon 04:04
• 3 Music Music 03:20
• 4 Roll out the Morning 02:16
• 5 Faces Names and Places 02:23
• 6 Child of Sympathy 03:35
• 7 Straight 03:07
• 8 Wait 02:47
• 9 To Touch the Sky 03:38
• 10 What's Gonna Happen to Me When I'm 50 03:33
• 11 Sing a Happy Song 03:25
• 12 It Won't Be Long 04:07
• 13 Please Be Well 03:41
• Total Runtime 41:55

Info zu Soon

Scott Fagan's new album Soon, 55 years in the making, revives songs from Fagan's lost 1971 Broadway rock opera.

Alongside songwriting partner Joe Kookoolis, Fagan conceived and wrote a rock opera, an age-old story of an artist forced to make a devil's bargain between their principles and success, intending it to be the follow-up to his classic 1968 debut, South Atlantic Blues.

But fate intervened. The production (which starred Fagan and a young Richard Gere) closed early, the album was shelved, never to be recorded or heard.

Until now. Recorded over seven days in July 2025 at the hallowed Sam Phillips Recording Service in Memphis with a crack rhythm section, the thirteen songs on Soon illustrate Fagan's extraordinary facility and range as a singer and songwriter of great sensitivity, passion, and humour.

From its rousing gospel opener ("Let The World Begin Again"), through fiery, protest songs ("Faces Names and Places", "Straight"), and tender-hearted ballads ("Child of Sympathy", "To Touch the Sky"), the album is by turns, uplifting, mournful, righteous, giddy, soulful (title track, "Soon), and anthemic (closer, "Please Be Well").

This feels like an album of lost classics waiting to be rediscovered. Scott Fagan has been waiting a long time for the world to hear these songs.

The long, long wait is over, Soon. A soulful folk-rock masterpiece, 55 years in the making.

The album was originally intended to follow Scott Fagan's cult masterpiece, 'South Atlantic Blues' (1968) Songs were originally written for the lost and ill-fated 1971 rock opera Soon, which starred Barry Bostwick, Richard Gere, Joe Butler, Vicki Sue Robinson and Peter Allen Recorded in 2025 at Sam Phillips Recording Service in Memphis, the studio that has hosted Cash, Dylan, Chilton and may more Intimate live shows in London and New York around the album's release, followed by EU and US tours in 2027 The album cover features a specially commissioned oil painting of Scott Fagan by Simon Davis, which will be auctioned for charity RIYL Van Morrison, Donovan, Harry Nilsson, Dion, Skip Spence, Mort Shuman, Doc Pomus, Fred Neil and Bill Fay

Scott Fagan

Scott Fagan
That singer-songwriter Scott Fagan never became a major star is mystifying. That even cult success eluded him is all the more surprising. A teenage prodigy, mentored and managed by songwriters Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman in the Brill Building, who almost became the first artist signed to Apple Records, and later to compose the first rock musical to open on Broadway, Fagan’s story is one of extraordinary talent and monumental potential confounded by a series of frustrating near-misses, all of which conspired to obscure him and his remarkable catalogue of songs from the public eye for decades. Yet in recent years, South Atlantic Blues, his bewitching 1968 debut album for Atco, has been recognised as a genuine lost classic—a mystical, mythical, and deeply soulful folk-rock masterpiece.

An epic song cycle about Fagan’s hard-scrabble upbringing in the Virgin Islands, wrapped around an impassioned love story, South Atlantic Blues is driven by Fagan’s dense, allusive lyrics and an experimental production that infuses his folk song stylings with R&B, jazz, and Caribbean island rhythms. Front and centre on the record is Fagan’s remarkable voice, rich with emotion and longing, which has been described as “somewhere between Scott Walker, Tim Hardin, early Bowie and Donovan”.

Hampered by record company politics, South Atlantic Blues originally landed with a thud, but became so beloved by pop artist Jasper Johns that he rendered his copy into a 1970 lithograph artwork, entitled Scott Fagan Record, publicly unveiled at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Fagan followed up South Atlantic Blues by writing (with songwriting partner Joe Kookoolis) an ambitious 1971 rock musical, Soon. Produced by Edgar Bronfman Jr. and Bruce Stark, the musical featured Fagan in the lead role, alongside an unknown young actor called Richard Gere, and a female chorus that included Vicki Sue Robinson (then Scott’s girlfriend, later a huge disco star). Soon is a radical call-to-arms against the complacency of the modern world; a tone poem in 36 songs about art, passion, commerce, and corruption.

In 1976, now signed to RCA, Fagan released Many Sunny Places, a joyous collection of calypso-inflected blue-eyed soul produced by Warren Schatz. Following that, Fagan spent many years in a music industry hinterland, continuing to write and record songs, including two charming albums written for his children—Sandy, the Blue-Nosed Reindeer and The Great Seahorse—but with nowhere to place them.

In 1999, Fagan became aware that his musical talent had borne unexpected fruit, when he discovered that he was the biological father of songwriter Stephin Merritt of the Magnetic Fields. The song cycle begun anew, the torch passed from father to son, it’s now time for Scott Fagan to step out of the shadows and let the world hear the work of this extraordinary and unique artist.

Dieses Album enthält kein Booklet