Fahey was introduced to me and everyone else in England at precisely the same time on the same Saturday by John Peel, some time in 1968. Not personally (that came 31 years later) but musically. He played "The Death of the Clayton Peacock". It had the effect of slowing me right down to a stop. It was such a strange sound. I had to hear it again, but being penniless, I couldn't. Months later I found Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death second-hand for 19/11d and the enigma began to grip. Fahey came from another world and he sounded like he wasn't going to stop long in this one. I had to get everything, before he was gone and it wasn't easy. If Transfiguration was Volume 5, where were the other four?

Of course getting hold of Fahey wasn't much better in America. Even there, you couldn’t have bought the first two albums at all unless you were a member of the penumbra of the inner circle, as it were. Or unless you got your gas tank filled at Martin’s Esso Station near Takoma Park in 1959. It would have been the West Coast that first saw Fahey records in any number, in the years 1965 and 1966. But in Britain, the situation remained acute until as late as 1968. Acute meaning No Fahey At All.

Transatlantic issued the first UK release in 1968 (Transfiguration). The next up was The Yellow Princess on Vanguard. I noticed that neither record had a picture of Fahey. Why not? What was wrong with him? Was he old or young?

Then, after dearth came glut, just like it says in the Bible. In '69 Sonet issued the '67 versions of volumes one and two and Vanguard issued Requia. So five albums came out in two years and then the imports of all the rest of them began in earnest, first sightings of which were in 1970. By '71 they were a regular feature of the import section in Virgin’s first shop in London. That’s where I got mine, so thank you Sir Richard Branson. Finally, Sonet caught up with America in '72, so that made eleven albums in three years. It was exhausting. (The same thing happened again in the late '90s - see postscript).

Trying to make sense of the whole thing was a full time occupation. I noticed that Fahey would often steal from himself - one tune would find its way into the middle of another. Then there were strange hidden songs which occasionally emerged, like finding a dinosaur bone while you're on a picnic - was that "Shortnin' Bread" I just heard? And hold on, right in the middle of the sound collage "Requiem for Molly" is that - hah! "California Dreamin'"??? It is! Blimey! Why is "When the Springtime Comes Again" now called "Mark 1:15"? Or is it "Voice of the Turtle"? I don't know, they seem to have printed the A and B side labels the wrong way round on my copy.

It was rare to get a Takoma record that wasn't festooned in typographical errors or deliberate falsifications. Did Fahey really record a song called "The Little Train that Couldn't"? Well, that's what it says on the Voice of the Turtle album. Anyway, why doesn't he put the song "Voice of the Turtle" on the album Voice of the Turtle? Is he trying to confuse me deliberately? What's all this about Fonotone Records? John Fahey is supposed to have made some 78 rpm singles for them. 78s? Singles? Isn't that a rather unusual way to try and crack the charts?

A little later I meet other Fahey fans. I'm hoping for some answers, but all they say are things like "are all these Evil Devil Woman Nancy Maclean Joe Buzzard people supposed to be real? These sleevenotes don't make any sense and it's hurting my head!" So they weren't much use. Especially not on the day we discovered that Voice of the Turtle is two albums with different tracks issued with the same sleeve… but that's too horrible to go into here.

We gradually began to piece together some of the Fahey story, that he'd been part of the so-called Blues Mafia who between them revived the country blues in the 1950s, which led eventually to the reissuing of all of those scratchy 78s on brand new microgroove lps, some of which found their way into the possession of young English musicians who, on hearing Robert Johnson, instantly quit their Art Colleges and formed groups in order to play "Sweet Home Chicago" in Leeds or Dorchester. It appeared history had edited Fahey and his friends out, but the way I figured it was: no blues Mafia, no blues reissues, and no reissues, no Cream, Led Zep and all the rest.

Anyway, one day I meet David, a hardcore fan. He plays guitar, as does his friend Jary. They say they have a surprise for me. Hmmm…what can it be? A first edition Death Chants? (By now I am sophisticated, I know of such things.) We're in David's house in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, England. I have to close my eyes. What's that I hear? Jary comes into the room & begins to play The Yellow Princess - he's spent half of his life becoming a note-for note - no, more than that, a nuance-for-nuance Fahey copyist so he's very very good, but even so, it sounds impressive. Such a deluxe bass sound - where have I heard that before? I open my eyes and I behold …. the Bacon and Day guitar. The very one which Fahey is holding on the cover of Requia - the very guitar! It turns out that it came from a third Fahey fan friend who bought it from a famous Berkeley guitar shop to whom it had been sold by the brother of Country Joe (of Country Joe and the Fish). Either Fahey or Joe or the brother had smashed someone over the head with it, so it was in pieces, but still very recognisable. So it was fixed, and bought, and so it came to England. And it's still in Cambridgeshire to this day.

Then we are collecting bootlegs from truly dogged aficionados in America and (gallingly) Europe (where do these guys get this stuff??). They have all sorts of recherche gems - the original train sound effect track which was used on the beginning of "Raga Called Pat", for instance - including a note that this particular train was recorded en route from Jackson Mississippi to Houston Texas! Then there's a live snippet consisting of Fahey exhorting the audience to commit mass suicide ("Wouldn't that be a neat thing to do?"). We collect all manner of Faheyiania - reviews, articles, the usual stuff. But Jary tells us that he used to write letters to Fahey and get replies back. Wow! So we try that. And whaddaya know - we get replies too! This sends us into raptures. But sometimes, he sends back our own letters covered with derogatory annotations (in this he was anticipating the standard way of responding to email by about 20 years). He tells us off for boring him or for asking unimaginative questions. But we are developing a personal relationship here…and this feels strange. Fahey is a hero you can talk to.

Then, some summer day in (I think) 1989, out of the blue, a large package is delivered to my house. It's from Salem, Oregon and it consists of reams and reams of very bad photocopies of what turns out to be nothing less than Fahey's unpublished autobiography. It's called Admiral Kelvinator's Clockwork Factory which sounds more like a Roald Dahl kids story to me. It's a very bizarre document - some of it ended up, finally, as the first two chapters in How Bluegrass Music Destroyed my Life. Why did he send it? I think he wanted us to try and get it published in England. Oh, and there were a couple of cassettes in the package too. The accompanying letter told me that they were his next two albums. And that was another surprise. I can't imagine many other musicians who'd send along his next two as-yet-unreleased albums and his autobiography to one of his fans. It's definitely an unusual thing to do. (One of the albums still hasn't been released - Azalea City and Other Toxic Memorabilia - another one for Revenant, I hope.)

Of course sometimes we got fed up with him. Any relationship has its ups and downs. He spent a large part of the 1980s trying to be Bola Sete, for instance. He was never going to be any part of Bola Sete. His versions of "Ocean Waves" and "Black Mommy" were leaden by comparison. C'mon, Fahey, we don't want that shit from you! But we didn't realise how Fahey's life was beginning to close down. He finally visited England in 1987, and I finally got to see him. It was a curious performance - kind of abstract and distant. He made one ominous remark: "I'm making more money from losing weight than I am from playing the guitar - my father-in-law gives me $100 for every stone I lose." He was on the Andy Kershaw programme, on Radio 1. I remember that Richard Thompson, that other wonderful guitarist, was so disgusted at Fahey's bad performance he offered a session of his own to Kershaw for free to make up for it.

Now we know what we didn't know then - that Fahey was spiralling downwards, towards the men's hostel and living in his car, and the enveloping silence of the first half of the 1990s. When the silence did descend, we wrote letters again, but this time, nothing. This was before the internet so you couldn't find out about anything that wasn't in the magazines. And nobody cared much about John Fahey. It's a funny thing - the Washington Post and the New York Times were eager to print glowing obituaries, but I must have missed their "What's one of America's great artists doing washing the dishes in a men's hostel?" stories. That was left to Byron Coley in Spin magazine.

After the Great Silence came the Rediscovery, and the Second Deluge (see footnote), and the revelation of the New Fahey: no more Mr Nice Guitarist. No pretty tunes, no old stuff. I am not a folk, I am really a punk. For that last handful of years it was great: reissues (finally), a ton of new stuff, a website, Revenant, stories in the press, you had your work cut out.

And finally the notorious Tour of Britain 1999 which was a disaster on practically every level except for me, since that's when I finally got to meet Fahey, and converse for several hours with him. So how was he? Cranky, yes. Imperious even. During the course of the evening he hired a guy and fired him as Revenant's European representative. But mainly, the John Fahey I met was affable, gracious, kind and funny, and very willing to try and answer every fan-like question I could conjure up. One particular moment often comes back to me. We were all in Stamford's only Indian restaurant and I was talking about one of my favourite Fahey compositions, "Charlie Becker's Meditation" (on "Railroad"). He couldn't remember it. How does it go? he asked. Well, it's a kind of abstract melody, difficult to hum or sing, and especially when you're competing with the ever-present Indian restaurant soundtrack tape, but three of us tried: "Dumm, dum di di dumm dumm". He's not getting it. Try again. "Dumm dumm di…" The Indian music drones on and we drone on. Then he smiles - "Oh yeah, that one!" and begins la-la-la-ing tunelessly and loudly. He's smiling, but it sounds horrible. "Yeah, that's the one!" I say. "That's the one!"

Postscript:

The Second Deluge (John Fahey In The Late 1990s)

• Four videos (JF In Concert and three tutorial videos)
• New release: Double 78s
• Two rereleases, Legend of BJD & Voice of the Turtle
• Revenant announced
• 1997 Three all-new albums! City of Refuge, Womblife & The Epiphany of Glenn Jones
• One double EP, The Mill Pond
• One rerelease, Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death
• Revenant releases a ton of interesting stuff
• 1998: 2 rereleases : Death Chants and America
• 1 new album (1^st with electric guitar), Georgia Stomps
• Revenant continues releasing and releasing.