Richard Thompson

This article is about Richard Thompson, the contemporary songwriter, for other uses, see Richard Thompson (disambiguation).

Richard Thompson (born 3 April, 1949) is an English musician, best known for his guitar playing and songwriting.

As a guitarist Thompson is notable for the breadth of his influences â€" which range from Buddy Holly and James Burton via Les Paul and Django Reinhardt to less likely influences such as pipe player Billy Pigg â€" and for his penchant for improvising rather than relying on worked out solos for each song.

Over a long career (he first recorded in 1967 as a member of Fairport Convention), Thompson has received much acclaim from his peers and has consistently been well-regarded by critics. While he has never become a 'household name' — even his best-known albums have enjoyed only limited commercial success — he has earned a reputation as a skilled and compelling live performer and a consistently vital recording artist. In August 2003, Rolling Stone magazine listed Thompson as #19 on its list of The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time. He continues to write and record new material and plays many live shows each year.

Biography and Career.

Early life and career (1949 to 1972)

Richard John Thompson was born in London, England. He grew up in a household full of music and books. His father, a Scot, was an amateur guitar player, and several other family members had played music professionally. Whilst still at school, he formed his first band 'Emil and the Detectives' along with fellow classmate Hugh Cornwell on Bass guitar, the original lead singer and guitarist of The Stranglers.

Although, like so many musicians of his generation, he was exposed to and embraced rock and roll music at an early age, he was also exposed to his father's collection of jazz and traditional Scottish music. All these various styles were to colour Thompson's playing in the years to come.

By the age of 18 Thompson was playing with the newly formed Fairport Convention. It was Thompson's guitar playing that caught the ear of American producer Joe Boyd. Largely on the strength of Thompson's playing Boyd took them under his wing and negotiated them a contract with Island Records.

It was about this time that Thompson, already acquiring a reputation as an outstanding guitar player, started writing songs seriously. This seems to have been out of necessity â€" Fairport Convention were essentially a cover band at first.

Thompson:

I remember saying to Ashley after a gig, that I was kind of embarrassed about doing the material we were doing, because it seemed that we should have outgrown doing covers â€" even though it was only 1967 â€" it somehow wasn't good enough and other bands were writing their own stuff and we should too. I remember being angry and saying to Ashley this isn't good enough, we've got to get some original material... and stuff started to trickle through.

By the time of Fairport's second album, recorded and released in early 1969, Thompson was starting to emerge as a songwriter of distinction. As Fairport's lineup and their sound evolved, Thompson continued to grow in stature as a player and as a songwriter with compositions like "Meet On The Ledge", "Genesis Hall" and "Crazy Man Michael".

In January of 1971 Thompson announced that he was leaving Faiport Convention. He seems to have had little in the way of firm plans for his immediate future, other than the notion that it would be "fun" to make a record by himself.

In April of 1972 he released his first solo album Henry The Human Fly. The album sold poorly and was panned by the press, especially the influential Melody Maker magazine. With time "Henry" has come to be more highly regarded, but at the time the critics' response hurt both Thompson and his career.

By this time Thompson had struck up a relationship with the singer Linda Peters, who had sung on Henry The Human Fly. In October 1972 the couple were married, and Thompson, with Linda now effectively his front woman, regrouped for his next album and the next phase of his career.

Richard and Linda Thompson (1973 to 1982)

The first Richard And Linda Thompson album, I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight was recorded in May 1973 in short time and on a small budget. Largely because of the petrol shortage in Britain and its impact on the availability of vinyl for records, "Bright Lights" was held back by Island Records for nearly a year before being released in April of 1974. The album was well received by the critics, though sales were less than stellar. The record is now regarded as one of the highlights of Thompson's career and a masterpiece of English folk-rock.

Thompson's lyrics expressed a rather dismal world view, and it has been suggested that the bleak subject matter of his songs helped to keep his recordings off of the hit parade. A more likely explanation was given by ex-Island A&R man Richard Williams in the BBC TV documentary A Solitary Life â€" Thompson was just not interested in fame and its trappings.

The Thompsons recorded two more albums â€" Hokey Pokey and Pour Down Like Silver, both released in 1975 â€" before Richard Thompson decided to leave the music business and the couple moved to a Sufi commune in East Anglia.

It was not apparent from their records at first, but the Thompsons had embraced the esoteric sufi strand of Islam in early 1974. I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight was recorded before this conversion, but released sometime afterwards. The songs for the second Richard and Linda album, Hokey Pokey were similarly written some time ahead of the album's recording and eventual release. It was Pour Down Like Silver, with its cover photo of a turbaned Richard Thompson gazing out at the world, that tipped the public off to the Thompsons' growing preoccupation with their faith. Their son Teddy Thompson, who also became singer-songwriter, was born in 1976.

The trilogy of albums released either side of his sojourn in the commune were heavily influenced by Thompson's beliefs and by Sufi scripture, but in the long run his spiritual concerns (he remains a committed Muslim) have not overtly influenced his work — or at least, not to the extent displayed by the work of the more famous Cat Stevens who initially renounced secular music altogether after adopting the Muslim faith. Thompson's religion manifests itself more obliquely in his work — for example, one of the most striking songs off 2003's The Old Kit Bag is "Outside Of The Inside", a sarcastic post-9/11 critique of the fundamentalist mindset, which Thompson usually introduces in concert as "a Taliban's view of the world".

In 1978, Thompson decided to take his family out of the commune and go back to their old home in Hampstead. He also decided to return to making music, partly because, as he commented at the time, he'd come to realise "that [he] wasn't really any good at anything else".

Joe Boyd had already invited Richard Thompson to play on Julie Covington's debut album. With studio time and the American session musicians hired to work on the Covington album available, the Thompsons went back into the studio to record under their own name for the first time in three years.

The resulting album, First Light was warmly received by the critics but did not sell particularly well. Neither did its follow up, 1979's harder-edged and more cynical Sunnyvista. Chrysalis Records did not take up their option to renew the contract, and the Thompsons found themselves without a contract, but not without admirers.

Gerry Rafferty had booked the Thompsons as the support act for his 1980 tour, and had also used Richard as a session player on his Night Owl album. Rafferty generously offered to finance the recording of a new Richard and Linda Thompson album which he would then use to secure a contract for the Thompsons. Richard Thompson fell out with Rafferty during this project and was not happy with the finished product. Nevertheless Rafferty kept his side of the bargain and presented the album to several record companies â€" none of whom expressed interest in signing the Thompsons. Rafferty did not recover his investment.

About a year later Joe Boyd signed the Thompsons to his small Hannibal label and a new album was recorded. Shoot Out The Lights included new recordings of many of the songs recorded in 1980, and was clearly a very strong album. Linda Thompson was pregnant during the sessions, and so the album's release was held back until Thompsons could tour in support of the new album. Linda's pregnancy also meant that she did not sing on all of the songs she had sung on the original Gerry Rafferty recordings of songs.

As an interim measure, Richard Thompson agreed to undertake a low-key solo tour of the USA. This tour was set up by Nancy Covey who had been in UK in 1981 trying to sign Thompson to play at the famous McCabe's guitar shop in Santa Monica. During this tour Thompson and Covey became intimate and in December of 1981 Richard and Linda Thompson separated.

On its release in 1982, Shoot Out The Lights was lauded by critics and sold fairly well â€" especially in the USA. The Thompsons, now a couple for professional purposes only, toured the USA to support the album and then went their separate ways. Both the album and their live shows were well received by the American media, and Shoot Out The Lights effectively relaunched their career â€" just as their marriage was falling apart.

Solo (1983 to present)

After a stormy tour of the USA the Thompsons separated professionally. Richard Thompson continued recording as a solo artist. His 1983 album Hand Of Kindness saw him working with Boyd again, but the album was startlingly different from Shoot Out The Lights â€" swaggering and extrovert where the previous album had been dark and angst-ridden.

In 1985 Thompson returned to the big league when he signed with Polygram and received a sizable advance. He also married Nancy Covey and began to move his home and his working base to California. Across A Crowded Room was his last album to be recorded in England and the last to have Boyd as producer.

After sales failed to match the critics' praises Thompson was under some pressure to repay Polygram's investment with a hit album. In 1986 he released Daring Adventures which was recorded in Los Angeles and produced by Mitchell Froom. Daring Adventures, with its rich sound, markedly different production and use of American session players was perceived by some as evidence of the Thompson's increasing "americanisation". Perhaps more significantly the album continued the trend, begun with Across A Crowded Room of Thompson's songs moving away from the seemingly personal and towards the character sketches and narratives that he has become famous for. Froom and Polygram had plans to target college and the growing "alternative" markets with Daring Adventures. Sales improved, but not by enough.

Polygram were not the first label to decline an option to renew a contract. Thompson's management negotiated a new deal with Capitol Records and Thompson released a string of albums between 1988 and 1996 with Froom in the producer's chair.

For a short while a late career commercial breakthrough, like that enjoyed by Bonnie Raitt, seemed likely. The Grammy nominated 1991 album Rumor And Sigh sold well and a single, "I Feel So Good" achieved some chart success. The song 1952 Vincent Black Lightning from Rumor and Sigh remains allegedly the most requested song on American public access radio [1]. Unfortunately, a boardroom shake-up at Capitol saw Thompson fan and champion Hale Milgrim replaced by Garry Gersh, and the Mirror Blue album was held back for almost a year before being released. Rumor And Sigh's success was not capitalised on.

Thompson continued recording for Capitol until 1999, when Mock Tudor was recorded and released. In addition Thompson modified his deal with Capitol so that he could release and directly market live, limited quantity, not for retail albums. The first of these was Live At Crawley, released in 1995. These "authorised bootlegs" are well-regarded by Thompson fans. This time it was Thompson who refused the option to renew a contract, and he parted ways with Capitol in 2001. Hereafter Thompson's albums would be self-funded and distributed and marketed by the small, independent and independently minded Cooking Vinyl label.

Ironically the move to a smaller label bought a bigger marketing push and healthier sales. Thompson's initial releases on Cooking Vinyl, 2003's The Old Kit Bag and 2005's Front Parlour Ballads, did well on the indie charts on both sides of the Atlantic.

Side projects and collaborations

Over the years Thompson has participated in many projects with other musicians. Often these projects allow him to participate in music and experiments that would not fit well on his own albums.

In between leaving Fairport Convention in early 1971 and releasing his debut solo album in 1972 he undertook a large amount of session work, most notably on albums by John Martyn, Al Stewart, Matthews Southern Comfort, Sandy Denny and Nick Drake.

During the same period he also worked on two collaborative projects. Morris On was recorded with Ashley Hutchings, John Kirkpatrick, Dave Mattacks and Barry Dransfield, and was a collection of English traditional tunes arranged for electric instruments. "The Bunch" were almost the reverse conceptually â€" a grouping of English folk-rock musicians (including Sandy Denny, Linda Peters and members of Fairport Convention) recording a selection of classic rock and roll tunes.

Thompson has continued to guest on albums by an array of artists from Crowded House and Bonnie Raitt to Norma Waterson and Beausoleil and folk artists like Cathal McConnell and Bob Davenport.

Since the early 1980s Thompson has appeared at Fairport Convention's annual Cropredy Festival, both in his own right and as a participant in sets with current and previous Fairport members (He once joked that Fairport Convention are a bit like the Hotel California: "you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave"). These sets are seldom confined to performances of songs out of the Thompson or Fairport Convention canons, and in recent years some surprise offerings have included the soul classic "I heard It Through The Grapevine" (with Thompson backed by the Roy Wood Big Band), The Beatles's "I'm Down" and even "The Lady Is A Tramp".

He has worked with experimental guitarist Henry Kaiser, most notably as part of the ad hoc aggregation French, Frith, Kaiser, Thompson with whom he recorded two albums. In 1997 he worked with long-time friend and band member Danny Thompson to record a concept album Industry that dealt with the decline of British industry. A year later he worked with early music expert Philip Pickett on the acclaimed Bones Of All Men which fused renaissance tunes with contemporary music.

In recent years Thompson has devised and toured his show 1000 Years Of Popular Music. The inspiration for this came when Playboy magazine asked Thompson (and many other music industry figures) in 1999 for their suggestions for the "top ten songs of the millennium". Correctly guessing that Playboy expected most people's lists to start at around 1950, Thompson took them at their word and presented a list of songs from the 11th century to the present day. Perhaps not surprisingly, Playboy didn't use his list, but the exercise gave him the idea for a show which takes a chronological trip through popular music across the ages. Thompson acknowledges that this is an ambitious undertaking, partly because he reckons that he is "technically unqualified to sing ninety per cent of the material", and partly because of the spare musical setting he restricts himself to: besides his acoustic guitar, he's backed by singer/pianist Judith Owen and a percussionist. A typical performance would start with a medieval round, progress via a Purcell aria, Victorian music-hall and Hoagy Carmichael and climax with Thompson's unique take on the Britney Spears hit "Oops!... I Did It Again".

In 2004 Thompson was asked to create the soundtrack music for the Werner Herzog documentary Grizzly Man. The score, which was recorded over a two-day period in December, 2004, brought Thompson together with a group of improvisational musicians, mostly from the San Francisco Bay area; video footage from the sessions was edited into a mini-documentary, In the Edges, which was included with the DVD release of Grizzly Man.

Retrospectives and tributes

Thompson has been well-served by compilers of retrospective collections. These are partly aimed at curious new listeners who are interested in hearing more of him, but are also essential purchases for more committed fans, since they contain material which is unavailable elsewhere. 1976's (guitar, vocal) was a collection of unreleased material from the previous eight years of Thompson's appearances on the Island label. The 3-CD set Watching The Dark is a generous combination of his better-known songs and previously unreleased live and studio tracks. Action Packed is a compilation of tracks from his Capitol releases, plus three hard-to-find songs. Finally, in 2006, the independent label Free Reed released RT - The Life and Music of Richard Thompson, a 5-CD box set consisting almost entirely of previously unreleased performances of songs from throughout Thompson's long career.

Thompson's songs have been extensively covered; for example, "Dimming Of The Day" has been performed by artists such as Bonnie Riatt, Emmylou Harris, The Five Blind Boys From Alabama, and The Corrs. There have been at least two tribute compilations of other artists' interpretations of his work: Capitol's Beat The Retreat: Songs By Richard Thompson and Green Linnet's The World Is A Wonderful Place: The Songs Of Richard Thompson, both released in 1994.

Discography

Albums

*Fairport Convention
*Fairport Convention (1968)
** What We Did On Our Holidays (1969)
** Unhalfbricking (1969)
** Liege & Lief (1969)
** Full House (1970)
** Live At The LA Troubadour (1970)
** House Full (1970)
** Heyday:BBC Radio Sessions (BBC 1968-69) (1987)
** The History of Fairport Convention
*Richard and Linda Thompson
** I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight (1974)
** Hokey Pokey (1975)
** Pour Down Like Silver (1975)
** First Light (1978)
** Sunnyvista (1979)
** Shoot Out the Lights (1982)
** The Best Of Richard & Linda Thompson: The Island Record Years (2000)
*Richard Thompson
** Henry the Human Fly (1972)
** (guitar, vocal) (1976)
** Live! (more or less) (1976)
** Hand Of Kindness (1983)
** Small Town Romance (1984)
** Across A Crowded Room (1985)
** Daring Adventures (1986)
** Amnesia (1988)
** Rumor And Sigh (1991)
** Watching The Dark (1993) | 3-CD retrospective
** Mirror Blue (1994)
** you? me? us? (1996)
** Mock Tudor (1999)
** Action Packed (2001)
** The Old Kit Bag (2003)
** Live From Austin, TX (2005)
** Front Parlour Ballads (2005)
** RT - The Life and Music of Richard Thompson (2006) | 5-CD retrospective box set
* Richard Thompson & Danny Thompson
** Industry (1997)
*The GPs
** Saturday Rolling Around (1991)
*French, Frith, Kaiser, Thompson
** Live, Love, Larf & Loaf (1987)
** Invisible Means (1990)
*Philip Pickett and Richard Thompson
** The Bones of all Men (1998)
*The Bunch
** Rock On (1972)
*Soundtracks
** The Marksman (Music From The BBC TV Series) (1987)
** Hard Cash (1989)
** Sweet Talker (1991)
** Grizzly Man (Music From the Werner Herzog documentary (2005)

Fan club and boutique label releases

(these are not available in retail outlets but can be purchased via Thompson's web site or at concerts)
* Strict Tempo! (1981)
Doom And Gloom From The Tomb, volume 1 (1985)
Doom & Gloom II (Over My Dead Body) (1991)
* Live At Crawley (with Danny Thompson) (1995)
* two letter words: live 1994 (1996)
* Celtschmerz: Live in the UK ‘98 (1998)
* Semi-Detached Mock Tudor (2002)
* More Guitar (2003)
* 1000 Years Of Popular Music (2003)
* Ducknapped! (2003)
* Faithless (2004)
* The Chrono Show (2004)

DVDs and Videos

Across A Crowded Room (video - 1985)
Live in Providence (DVD - 2004)
Live From Austin, TX (DVD - 2005)
1,000 Years of Popular Music (DVD+2CD - 2006)

References

Richard Thompson - The Biography by Patrick Humphries. Schirmer Books. 0-02-864752-1
The Great Valerio - A Study of the Songs of Richard Thompson by Dave Smith (see http://hometown.aol.co.uk/gunnardave/myhomepage/rock.html).
*http://www.richardthompson-music.com/
*http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A243-2001May31?language=printer

External links

* BeesWeb: Official web site
* Richard Thompson for Completists
* The Richard Thompson discussion list
* The Richard Thompson Guitar Tab Archive