‘Soon’ has been a long time coming and is finally out today.
The new album from Scott Fagan, featuring songs originally drawn from the 1971 Broadway rock opera of the same name, has been some 55 years in the making.
The story behind the album is remarkable, Soon’ was conceived as a radical call-to-arms against the complacency of the modern world, and a tone poem about art, radicalism, commerce, and corruption. The rock opera drew on Fagan’s own experiences in the music industry, and featured him in the lead role, alongside Richard Gere, Barry Bostwick (later the lead in Grease and The Rocky Horror Show), Joe Butler (of Lovin’ Spoonful), Vicki Sue Robinson, and Peter Allen. The original Broadway production, subject to creative meddling that compromised its creators’ vision, closed the day after its opening. A year later, it was restaged in Los Angeles for a brief two-week run. Then Fagan’s opus was lost to time. The album was shelved, never to be recorded or heard. Until now.
Recorded over seven days in July 2025 at Sam Phillips Recording Service in Memphis, a hallowed studio that has hosted Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, Alex Chilton, and The Cramps among others, the sessions found the now 81-year-old singer-songwriter working with a crack Memphis rhythm section—drummer Terence Clark (Brandi Carlisle, Keith Urban), guitarist Steve Selvidge (The Hold Steady, North Mississippi All Stars) and keyboardist Rick Steff (Cat Power, Dexy’s Midnight Runners, Lucero).
‘Soon’ is an album that feels as if it’s made up of lost classics. Each one of the thirteen songs is a gem, illustrating Fagan’s extraordinary facility and range as a singer and songwriter of great sensitivity, passion, and humour. From its rousing opener, “Let The World Begin Again”, through fiery protest songs, and tender, heart-wrenching ballads, the album is by turns, uplifting, mournful, righteous, giddy, soulful, and anthemic. To the previous singles, “Faces Names and Places,” a rousing rocker calling for a thorough accounting of those responsible for the world’s ills, is a near-perfect fit for the current moment. And the album’s title track “Soon,” a masterclass in classic songwriting that could easily have slipped into Sinatra’s repertoire. A ballad about hope, faith, yearning, and the promise of a brighter tomorrow, it’s a song Fagan wrote as a 24-year-old that feels all the more poignant and affecting sung by him now, in the autumn of his years.
