CULT HERO: Revered and highly romanticised, Fred Neil was a cross between a rumour and a legend.
A major influence on Tim Buckley, David Crosby, Bob Dylan, John Sebastian and Stephen Stills, he wrote a song that you've heard on the radio probably hundreds of times and, for a while, in the halcyon days of Greenwich Village in the 1960s, he was rated by many of his colleagues and contemporaries as the finest songwriter of his day. Yet Fred Neil (this isn't even his real name), born on the quixotically titled Treasure Island, near St Petersburg, Florida, in 1937, did not end up a hugely successful rock star and did not have a movie made about his life. Instead, he gave up what could have been an immensely successful career to devote his life to dolphins, living a hermetic life. What few brief telephone calls he makes, he makes from pay phones so that his location cannot be detected. His business affairs manager of 10 years' standing has yet to meet him, and his first and last promotional interview was for America's Hit Parader magazine in 1966.
Although he surfaced in Memphis in the mid-1950s, hanging out with Sam Phillips, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley, Neil didn't come into his own until the early 1960s in New York when, through songwriting to order at the Brill Building and stints at the city's groundbreaking folk club, Café Wha?, he quickly gained a reputation for his songs. Yet his reticence about performing became as legendary as his material - once on stage he would use any excuse to leave. Drugs played a large part in raising his paranoia level - reefers soon gave way to heroin, which inevitably inhibited an already locked-in personality. What could have turned into a career saver - his song, Everybody's Talkin', covered by Nilsson, was used as the theme for the movie, Midnight Cowboy - was dismissed by Neil as an aberration. In the early 1970s, when Everybody's Talkin' was ubiquitous on FM radio in the States and elsewhere, Neil slowly retreated from music and hooked up with a charity called the Dolphin Project, working with marine biologist Richard O'Berry in educating the public about the species and returning captive dolphins to the wild.
For the past 30 years, Neil has refused to record or to be interviewed, yet he regularly plays guitar for the benefit of his beloved dolphins. There are rumours that he will record another album or, at the very least, allow the release of a collection of songs he recorded many years ago. The ideas are there, apparently, but it's best not to hold out too much hope. As a musician acquaintance of his, Buzzy Linhart, once said: "Like so many things with Fred, ideas drift out with the tide."
Tony Clayton-Lea
www.fredneil.com