The reclusive and enigmatic Fred Neil really didn’t care one hoot about the machinations of the music business, and while it is tempting to compare him to someone like Nick Drake, whose bouts with depression kept him away from the limelight, it would appear Neil suffered instead from a severe case of personal and creative sanity, an ailment extremely rare in the music industry. And Neil knew how that industry worked very well. He was a Brill Building songwriter for a time. He played sessions (he was a session guitarist on Bobby Darin’s 1958 hit “Dream Lover,” for instance). He certainly knew how the publishing end of it worked, since the publishing royalties from Roy Orbison’s version of Neil’s “Candy Man,” a B-side hit in 1961, gave the unusually frugal Neil the freedom to do as he pleased in both his personal and creative life from that point on.

His recorded output really only spanned eight years, from 1963 to 1971, and for all practical purposes Neil dropped off the face of the earth after the release of the piecemeal Other Side of This Life album in 1971. While it is difficult to look at Neil’s self-abbreviated recording legacy and not have a strong sense that things are incomplete, the quality of his output, particularly as a songwriter, is extremely high. In addition to “Candy Man,” he also wrote “Everybody’s Talkin’,” a huge success in 1969 for Harry Nilsson, and penned such gorgeous songs as “The Dolphins,” “Little Bit of Rain,” and the brutally straight-eyed and honest “Other Side of This Life.” He lived off the songwriting royalties from these impressive songs until his death in 2001, never straying far from his beloved southern Florida Coconut Grove area, playing only an occasional gig, and then always in support of his Dolphin Research Project, which he started in 1970. His recorded legacy may be small, but it has tremendous presence, and coupled with his decision to live his own life and not be a dancing pony to the whims of the music business, it has made him an oft-cited cult legend. But this isn’t one of those lost genius stories (although musically Neil often was a genius). Neil was never lost. He was living his life.