Once accused of murder, Richard Fagan sings of redemption before his death

Columnist’s note: Songwriter Rich Fagan sat down with The Tennessean in his home in late July to talk about his solo album, his art and the legacy in his craft. At the time, he was receiving in-home nursing care for his ongoing battle with liver cancer. Fagan died on Friday night, with his wife by his side.

Richard Fagan got into a fight with his best friend, slashed the man's wrists with his pocket knife, and left.

Tom Oteri, a music publisher, died on the floor of the home they shared.

Fagan, a successful Nashville songwriter, was accused of murder.

"It should have been me," Fagan later said.

He wished he was dead.

But he didn't die.

Not then.

It's happening now.

Fagan is in the final stages of liver cancer.

Bruised patches cover his body like bold birthmarks, darkening his toothpick-thin arms and the cheekbone under his left eye. His 6-foot frame, hunched at the shoulders, holds only about 130 pounds. His collarbone protrudes rigidly above his shrunken chest.

Only his feet have heft, swollen like tree trunks holding up a wilting frame.

Three and a half years ago, doctors told him he had six months to live.

"I've been living on faith ever since," he said late last month, sitting on the back porch of his Nashville home where he meditated each morning.

Fagan's heyday

With faith, Fagan has found solace and that has come through in his music. Maybe more than ever before.

Last year, Fagan released his first solo album since 1979 — one seen as his swan song.

"Five people on the album die, so it's a real country album," Fagan quipped, flexing a signature wit that has not faded even in his final days.

The semi-autobiographical musings on the album delve into the sordid experiences of his past, while also offering some of the lippy lyrics and unexpected story twists in the good ole country compositions he established a career on.

In his heyday, Fagan had six Top 10 singles on the Billboard Country charts. His songs have been recorded by Neil Diamond, George Strait, Hank Williams Jr., George Jones, Shania Twain and many others.

In 1994, John Michael Montgomery released one of Fagan's now most famous works, "Be My Baby Tonight." The next year, Montgomery cut another of Fagan's ruminations, a quick-tongued tune called "Sold (The Grundy County Auction Incident)." Both songs hit No. 1.

But this album, two decades later and titled "Redemption," has personal insight that his others did not.

He wrote one song about his own absolution while at Discovery Place, a drug and alcohol treatment center in Burns, Tenn. He wrote another about recovery at a halfway house in Dickson, Tenn. — ironically, he said, located on High Street. The title, "My Name's Joe," mirrors an AA meeting introduction.

The lyrics of his redemptive renderings say much:

You know, I used to be a sinner, until I went too far astray.

And it's only by God's grace that I'm standing here today.

'Cause one night, high on Jose Cuervo, I killed my best friend with my knife.

Now I'm in Tennessee State Prison, serving 99 to life.

'Shaken and shocked'

It was a drunken argument between friends that went too far.

Fagan was full of tequila and antidepressants the night of the altercation with Oteri in 2008. Oteri was under the influence of pain pills he had been prescribed for a broken rib.

When Fagan left the house after the drunken rage, he said, it was because Oteri told him to get out. In the days after the incident, police said Fagan didn't think he dealt a fatal blow.

And he didn't.

At 10:45 that April night, a policeman saw Fagan driving with a blown-out tire and pulled him over. The officer charged Fagan with driving under the influence after the songwriter admitted he downed six shots before getting behind the wheel.

While in jail, Fagan called another friend to check on Oteri. That friend found the screen door locked and the house in disarray. The friend called police, and paramedics found Oteri's body in the kitchen.

By that time, Fagan had been released on bond. Police arrested him again and charged him with criminal homicide.

But Fagan was not convicted.

An autopsy found Oteri died, not of his wrist wounds, but of a heart attack.

Fagan pleaded guilty to DUI and, at the Oteri family's request, the district attorney sent Fagan to rehab, not prison. He spent more than two months at Discovery Place, and seven more months in extended care. When he first arrived, he couldn't remember any of the songs in his repertoire.

"I was that shaken and shocked," he said.

But the words returned to him, and new ones followed. He had his guitar with him on the 17-acre rehab retreat, and he often scrolled lyrics on a pad of paper. When he transitioned to the halfway house, friends like Jason Ringenberg of Jason and the Scorchers would pick him up and take him to write songs and then drop him off again when they were through.

All the while, Fagan was recording his life (with a few embellishments of the facts here and there).

"I'm not smart enough to write that s--t," Fagan said. "It came straight from the sky."

Co-writer to caretaker

Jeff Dane — a tattooed country rocker with a law degree — would disagree.

Fagan, Dane said, is a "master of the craft." He would approach an idea, be with it in his mind for a minute, and then next time he spoke he would have half the song written.

Dane, who tours as the lead singer of The Lost Trailers, calls Fagan's two No. 1 songs a pair that shaped him as a musician.

"If you are going to look at it from a modern standpoint … 'Be My Baby Tonight' sold the fast-paced rapping sound," Dane said. "He helped shape that. No one was doing that, and then everyone was doing it.

"That fast-paced cadence is quintessential Rich."

Now, Fagan has slowed — and Dane knows that decline intimately, not only as a friend and fellow songwriter, but also as a live-in caretaker.

The young artist moved to Nashville from Los Angeles three years ago. Fagan saw Dane's name on a pitch sheet, and offered Dane a song. They ended up getting together to write. Dane was new to town then and without a place to stay. Fagan offered Dane the extra room in their house.

Soon, they were working together often, sitting in the kitchen penning "typical country stuff — dirt roads and moonlight rivers." In a departure from the typical, they wrote a reggae with a Southern drawl in "Another Night Like This," which appears on Fagan's "Redemption" album.

"He quickly became like family to me," Dane said. "He and his wife, Rose."

And, though Dane didn't foresee it, that relationship would come to be significant. Rose has Parkinson's. Fagan was about to be diagnosed with liver cancer. He would need Dane to do more than come up with a catchy chorus.

'A colorful life'

In February, doctors confirmed liver cancer would take his life. Fagan began to fade.

First, it was the diverticulitis inflaming his colon and making him nauseated. He couldn't sleep.

Then it was the falls.

He would call Dane at 6 a.m. using his cellphone from the living room, saying he had fallen and couldn't get back up.

His appetite faded, and soon he subsisted on brie cheese and Metamucil. He took one pink pill and six fiber supplements a day.

Dane would do the grocery shopping, cook for himself and Rose, who doesn't speak or move much herself. He would get prescriptions. Go to the bank for them. Go on "sin runs" for Fagan to get cigarettes and lottery tickets.

Mostly, he would just be a companion.

"He wants to hang out and talk and just be buds," Dane said.

So they would sit and tell stories. "He has so many stories because he’s lived such a colorful life."

Fagan first discovered music at 14, joining two guys trying to harmonize at school. He came in as the third part. They taught him music, but they also introduced him to drugs. He drank and sniffed airplane glue and Carbona cleaning fluid.

And life became crazy.

He went to Vietnam in '67 and nearly got court-martialed for drugs. When he got discharged, he went to Woodstock. Dane remembers Fagan telling stories of running with a "tough gang," tales filled with guns and drugs and tying guys to chairs.

"He did so many wild things," Dane said. "Which makes for good stories and good songwriting. He’s got so much to draw from."

'A bigger legacy'

Up until his final days, Fagan still lived in the home where the altercation with Oteri took place, the walls covered in framed albums displaying a lifetime of songwriting success. The fight happened at the edge of a record-decorated hallway off the front alcove. Oteri died near the breakfast nook off the kitchen.

"Right there," Fagan said, eyeing the spot all these years later.

Oteri rescued Fagan from the streets in Philadelphia where they met. He helped the once-homeless songwriter through trials with alcohol and other substances. He saw music potential in Fagan and he became part of the family. Fagan moved to Nashville in 1986. The duo became roommates and best friends.

The fight they had in 2008 was one of the few, if the only, physical battle they ever had, Fagan said.

When Fagan remembers Oteri now, it's "generally in a good way."

"We were here for each other," he said. "We had a purpose."

Fagan still had more to do.

"I want to leave a bigger legacy," he said.

He had benefit shows to play at the Bluebird Cafe, raising funds for nonprofits like Alive Hospice well before he knew he would need its care. He had songwriters like Dane to mentor and take in, even before he knew how valuable that would be in his final months. And he had art to create. Cedar planks bought from the grocery store.

One to remember war, an homage to Vietnam with a replica of his dog tags and old snapshots from overseas. A symbol of a battle he fought, and was fighting.

Another was for loved ones lost. A wooden rectangle, painted with hearts and flowers and cacti and displaying three prayer cards. One for his mother. One for his sister. And one, in the middle, for Oteri, his prayer card positioned underneath a peace sign.

And even a few weeks ago, Fagan was still writing songs, sitting in his kitchen in front of his laptop, flipping lines back and forth.

"I am weak," he said. "But I am still engaged. I am always thinking creatively.

"... It's boiling up inside. It's something I can be positive about — both life and death."

Reach Jessica Bliss at 615-259-8253 and on Twitter @jlbliss.