This is a strange story, but life is often unusual like this. The Magnetic Fields/Future Bible Heroes’ Stephin Merritt had never met his father Scott Fagan before this year. Fagan had a brief affair with Merritt’s mother, and he had apparently never been present in his son’s life. The first surprise (or may be not) is that Scott Fagan was a singer-songwriter in the 60s and 70s, he even has a still active website, and in 1971, he wrote a rock opera (‘SOON’) produced on Broadway (with Peter Allen, Richard Gere, Nell Carter, Leata Galloway, Pamela Pentony, Pendelton Brown, Dennis Belline, Joe Butler, Marta Heflin, and Marion Ramsey) as an attempt to ‘bring to light’ the absurdity and cruelty of the music business, and it’s destructive effects on artists and society’… If you know about Merritt’s anti rock star image, you’ll probably think that the fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree! And it seems that the two men have truly found each other, as Fagan wants to cover his son’s songs! He has started a Kickstarter campaign to fund the album, simply called ‘Scott Fagan Sings Stephin Merritt’.
Isn’t it a nice fuzzy story? It may you really think about the power of (no, not music) DNA and genetics of course! Think about it, they had never met before and are in total symbiosis. This is what Fagan had to say about his son’s work:
‘When I first heard the songs, I was astounded. It felt as if I were listening to myself singing songs that I’d been in the middle of writing and then had somehow inexplicably forgotten about. … This album is my homage to the mysteries of mulch-generational musicality and my way of showing, or rather singing, my appreciation for Stephin’s wonderful, wonderful songs.’
But what took them so long? Why didn’t they meet earlier? It’s now done and the song below, ‘In My Head’, is from Fagan’s first LP, ‘South Atlantic Blues’ released in 1967-8. He had a great voice, not quite his son’s baritone, but very interesting nevertheless,… plus he was a total hottie!