In the 1960s he was a pop star, in the 1970s he went solo, but since 1980 Andy Fairweather Low has been cast in the role of supporting artist - until the release of his first solo album for 26 years. He talks to Joe Breen

This month, on the other side of the world, Sydney to be precise, Andy Fairweather Low will shoulder his guitar one more time, take the call from Roger Waters's roadie and head out on to a stage that is not his own. But he is a happy man. For the first time in 26 years the 58-year-old Welshman has an album under his belt - his first solo CD recording - and it is a cracker.

Sweet Soulful Music may not have set the charts alight but it marked the long-overdue return of one of the great lost singers, guitarists and writers of British popular music. Fairweather Low's story is a counter to the cynics who say that money matters more than music, that the will to write and play great songs withers with age and disappointment.

Since 1980, when he last released a solo album, the wonderful, exuberant and now unavailable Mega Shebang, he has become an in-demand guitarist for hire, playing for more than 24 years with Pink Floyd's Roger Waters, 13 years with Eric Clapton, including on Clapton's acclaimed Unplugged album, and numerous other pieces of session work with the likes of the Who and ace guitarist Joe Santriani.

As we speak, the roadie from Bill Wyman's Rhythm Kings - he also plays with the former Rolling Stone bassist's band - interrupts to remind him that they are ready to head off to that night's gig "in King's Lynn, wherever that is". Tomorrow they are "somewhere else and then somewhere else and then somewhere else" - the life of a touring musician, but he is not complaining. "It is good to be working - there's not enough people working that's for sure, so I'm very grateful for that one."

It is about 40 years since he arrived in London with Welsh combo, the Amen Corner, and proceeded to have some major hits including Bend Me Shake Me and the classic (If Paradise was) Half As Nice in 1969. From there he kicked off a solo career that took him through the next decade with a trilogy of well-received albums for the A&M label.

These included the single Wide Eyed and Legless, one of pop's great odes to drink, which still crops up occasionally on the radio today. (The best of the A&M albums was released last year on CD.)

But a new mood was abroad and he would become a casualty of it. "The last album I made, apart from Mega Shebang in 1980, was the last of a series for A&M called Be Bop 'N' Holla in 1976. After I made that album A&M signed the Sex Pistols and everything changed from that moment on. The business changed, that record company changed, the managing director changed and whole attitude in the pop-rock business completely changed. It also made it very difficult for someone like me to get arrested after that. And I did try. I made one more album for Warner Bros and that fell out."

It was a difficult time. Revolutions push everybody out of their way. "I literally did disappear.

I mean I ran out of money. I well remember the day I went to my mother and she gave me £20 and I stood on the beach and looked out and said 'what is going to happen next?'. And then I got a call from Roger Waters in 1984 after I'd done a lot of charity gigs. He asked would I come up and see if we got along, cause I hadn't seen Roger since 1967 when we'd toured with the Pink Floyd and Jimi Hendrix on a big bill that went through Europe including Northern Ireland - yes, we went to Belfast."

On the last occasion Fairweather Low's manager had threatened to break Waters's legs, but "we managed to laugh about that and I've been working with him ever since."

What is notable about his session and live work is how he has managed to fit into other people's bands, how he managed to suppress his own ego. It can't have been easy to forgo the spotlight and even more importantly not sing lead for all that time, especially having been an acclaimed star in his own right.

As Santriani apparently told Glynn Johns, his then producer and Fairweather Low's long-time associate and producer of Sweet Soul Music, when Johns suggested he hire a rhythm guitarist: "Who'd want to do that? Who'd want to be a rhythm guitarist?"

"Well, me is the answer," says Fairweather Low. "Most people who pick up a guitar want to play lead. And I think that's what's happened to me now. After 26 years I want to be a lead guitarist."

On Sweet Soulful Music he shows his skills, filling in beautifully carved bluesy licks and riffs, coloured by impeccable timing and taste. The songs are not bad either. Unashamedly vintage rootsy in character and punched home with some vigour, they are short and very sweet with the occasional tinge of reflection and regret. And then there is his voice, a soft sandpaper tone full of music and feeling that always sounds on the verge of over-reaching but never does.

Strangely, he has sung very little in session work or live with other bands. "Out of 13 years with Eric Clapton I think I only sang backing vocals for the last two years."

It was the same with Waters, who has Katie Kissoun, PP Arnold and Carol Kenyon on backing vocals - "the three girls who are on my album. Incidentally that was Roger's gift. I'd been talking about the album and how I was going to do most of the vocals myself but I was thinking about asking the girls and he said, don't think about it any longer. He paid them. It was his gift to me."

Fairweather Low is remarkably unassuming. He has lived through amazing times, known great highs and lows, met and worked with legendary names such as George Harrison, Clapton and Waters, but like his music there is a compelling honesty to the man and a refreshing absence of false modesty or cant. Of course the years have softened him but he is not embittered by the absence of commercial success.

"No, I was always very accepting. It is like with this album - as long as I accept what it is I'm alright. I do get days, don't get me wrong, of wishing something else had happened with it, that it got played more, but once you get rid of that, it is alright."

He still lives in Wales, has a son of 23, supports Cardiff City FC and plays tennis in his spare time - he plays to county standard. And when he sits down to listen to music? "I'd play T-Bone Walker and if I wasn't playing T-Bone I'd play Lonnie Johnson, or Duke Ellington or Count Basie. And if I wasn't doing that I'd be playing Otis Redding, John Lee Hooker, all the people who influenced me as a young singer. There's a DVD of Ray Charles called O-Genio - it's a record of two shows he did in Brazil - two live shows, black & white, 1963, I'll never be as good as that. He was at the top of his game then. That's what you chase . . ."

And finally, is 58 a good age to be playing rock 'n' roll? "The truth is, I don't feel it. I'm blessed in that I'm black and white about playing. That's what I do. That's what I'm good at."

Sweet Soulful Music is available on Proper Records. Andy Fairweather Low is part of the Roger Waters band which will be performing in the Point in May