Murray Head: "Unsung at home, but French heroin."

There is a small but exciting sub-category of British musicians - unsung at home but heroes in others. At the top of the list is the 75-year-old singer-songwriter, almost forgotten in Great Britain but one of the best in France's adopted country.

Murray Head has been celebrated in France since the mid-1970s when his hit song Say It Ain't So; Joe became a national product. Generations dance slowly at the end of the disco under Head's stunning tenor, and the song is still regularly aired on old radio shows.

"I kept telling them it wasn't a love song - it was actually about politics and Richard Nixon," Head said. "But people were so disappointed that I stopped bothering them.

Amid another national tour of France, he thought of his long career and the strange changes that brought him to the vassal status of rock god in the English Channel.

"The quality of French people is that they are very, very loyal. If they like you, they will stay with you. In England, everyone is driven by the next media sensation."

The Head was in the spotlight. Hidden somewhere between Hawkwind and Steve Hillage, his LP Say it Ain't So LP – a cover with a Head's Head record in a crowd of long lenses – was a typical 1970s record store. But did anyone buy it?

"Musically, this album is a little gem of folk-rock... The guitars joined in between the guitars add a bit of post-hippie flair - but with a British touch that immediately tells us we're not in San Francisco." writes the website text, blog & rock'n'roll in celebration of last year's album 45th anniversary.

Before his first release, Head had a moment of fame when Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd-Weber chose him as their first Judas Iscariot, who sang with Deep Purple's Ian Gillan on a pre-theatre version of the Jesus Christ Superstar album.