John Fahey was born into a musical household and spent his formative years in Tacoma, Maryland. His father working as a government official, both of his parents being fond of playing the piano. Musical tastes range from classical music to bluegrass. The teenage John Fahey developes a fascination for the guitar and is especially interested in the sounds and myths of classic country blues and bluegrass. He successfully works on a degree in philosophy and religion and heads out West in 1963 to continue his studies in California. At this time, examples of John Fahey’s original music for guitar have been put onto vinyl already. A couple of friends talk the reluctant (and gas-pumping) musician/academic into investing some small funds into the recording and pressing of just 100 copies of an album that was to gain legendary status in the years to come: BLIND JOE DEATH. On the surface the name of a long lost black bluesman, but in reality the first of Fahey’s many inventions and pseudonyms. BJD - an alter ego that was to re-surface time and again and a debut release that already featured some of Fahey’s one-of-a-kind prose. The almost grotesque „musicologist“ liner notes on the album’s cover provide a first taste of his many quasi-surrealistic writings to come. „Blind Joe Death“ establishes an almost allegorical connection from Fahey to the early practioners of black Southern country blues. At the same time the guitarist manages to found his own label „Takoma Records“, a company that over the years turns into a forum for up-and-coming players like Robbie Basho and Leo Kottke.   In the early Sixties, John Fahey continues his academic studies in Berkeley and Los Angeles, at the same time performing solo in coffeehouses and clubs. He’s doing research on country-blues founding father Charlie Patton and writes a widely respected thesis on Patton, but declines an offer to teach. Fahey puts most of his energies into his music and Takoma Records instead - the first US indie label whose owner is also its most important artist. Takoma is the first American label for acoustic guitar music. His reputation is growing, while Westcoast audiences mostly consider him to be some kind of strange folkie/country blues-revivalist from the East. A man with a strange kind of aura and attitude. But Fahey’s quirkiness defies easy categorization and the uniqueness of his musical cosmos is becoming more apparent as time goes by. His penchant for absurd titles indicate this uniqueness („Dances Of Death & Other Plantation Favorites“, „The Revolt Of The Dyke Brigade“, „The Singing Bridge of Memphis, Tenn.“, „The Great San Bernadino Birthday Party“ etc.) and refer to the almost shamelessly idiosyncratic nature of his work.   Fahey goes on extended road trips to find the lost bluesmen of the Deep South. He manages to discover blues legends like Bukka White and Skip James and is responsible for bringing them back on the scene. His early releases on Takoma use a country-blues context, but in an experimental kind of way. Fahey manages to create something new and terms it American Primitive Guitar Music – including a cornucopia of influences from Bartok to bluegrass, from religious hymns to blues. A new kind of American guitar impressionism, performed by Fahey with a simple technique that doesn’t vary. The music is accompanied by texts and stories that ironically mock the earnestness of the contemporary folk exegetes and create a bizarre mythical landscape featuring non-existant bluesmen, demons, angels, trains and former lovers. An almost inextricable jungle of American myth and reality created by one man’s imagination.   John Fahey works on this eccentric universe of music and myth continuously and especially the time between 1968 and 1974 proves to be very productive. Not everything he does makes sense, however. Fahey’s is prone to dabble in sound collages, music concréte and even dixieland, but is conveying the picture of an ahead-of-his-time artist losing direction. Personal problems and bad business decisions come into effect as well and undermine Fahey’s creativity to a degree. In the late Seventies, Fahey finally sells Takoma Records. He moves into a downward spiral of monetary problems, alcoholism, bad marriages and illness. Fahey leaves California for Oregon and hopes to continue his creative path from there. The music gets more and more obscure and there are longer breaks in between album releases. A couple of Christmas and religious albums are his most popular releases in the US, but Fahey is attempting to break with his work from the past, debuking old admirers with remarks like „If you want to live in the past,  don’t take us all with you.“   John Fahey slowly but surely becomes an outcast living on the fringes of American society. In the course of a divorce, he loses his house and takes up residencies in various motel rooms. His guitars are pawned again and again. Fahey starts painting and is now a weird figure haunting second-hand record stores for classical music to sell to collectors for a profit. On top of that, Fahey falls victim to the effects of the Epstein-Barr syndrome - chronic fatigue. He is diagnosed a diabetic and alcoholic, but manages to clean up from the latter to save his life.   Surprisingly, a new interest in his work coming from unexpected directions is developing. Young rock avantgardists like Chicagoan producer/multi-talent Jim O’Rourke and New York‘s Sonic Youth express their fondness and admiration. Fahey is motivated to start working on experimental tape collages that are worlds apart from his acoustic guitar music of the past. In the chaotic seclusion of his motel rooms, the ailing Fahey picks up the electric guitar and produces music that is experimental, eclectic, anarchic and quite strange.   The Nineties bring more new interest in Fahey’s past recordings and a small inheritance allows him the start of another record label: Revenant Records. Fahey intends to use the label as a platform for issuing historic hillbilly and blues recordings as well as avantgarde jazz and experimental rock. He collects some of his writings and articles for a book release with the title „How Bluegrass Music Destroyed My Life“. It contains a collection of surrealistic prose and some quasi-autobiographic vignettes.   John Fahey’s life ends by kidney failure following multiple bypass surgery. Some obituaries appear that recognize his trailblazing musical legacy as a pioneer of American guitar music, but to get to the bottom of his musical and spiritual cosmos remains an almost inconceivable task to this day. It’s a world that hasn’t lost any of its strange darkness and bewildering mystery, weird humor and intellectual richness. John Fahey has remained a mystery - both as a person and as an artist. His music still stands as an expression of intrepid individuality. Many successors like Michael Hedges, Leo Kottke, Alex De Grassi and William Ackerman have profited immensely from the groundbreaking work he did in the course of a career that lasted almost forty years.