{"id":9926,"date":"2026-04-02T16:09:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T16:09:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/richard-thompson-album-by-album-26243\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T16:09:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T16:09:07","slug":"richard-thompson-album-by-album-26243","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/richard-thompson-album-by-album-26243\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cI thought we should create our own rock\u2019n\u2019roll language\u201d \u2013 Richard Thompson interviewed"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n

Originally published in Uncut Take 108 (May 2006 issue)…<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

Originally published in Uncut Take 108 (May 2006 issue)\u2026<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Although he may be a guitarist of extraordinary gifts and a singer-songwriter of passionate intensity, Richard Thompson has the demeanour of an absent-minded house master from a Home Counties prep school. Despite living for years in LA, the former Fairport Convention leader and UK folk-rock pioneer remains the quintessential Englishman. When Uncut calls on him at his home in London, during one of his regular visits back to what he calls \u201cthe old country\u201d, we nearly fall over the bats and pads poking out of his cricket bag in the front hall.<\/p>\n

An essential Englishness has always pervaded his folk-inspired rock\u2019n\u2019roll, too, from his Fairport days via his starkly beautiful albums with ex-wife Linda Thompson (n\u00e9e Peters) and on through his solo career. When he talks about the influences on his current album Front Parlour Ballads, he mentions not only Robert Johnson and Elvis Presley but Charles Dickens and John Betjeman. \u201cWe put up for years with Americans singing about mojos,\u201d Thompson tells us. \u201cI thought we should create our own rock\u2019n\u2019roll language.\u201d<\/p>\n

__________________<\/strong><\/p>\n

FAIRPORT CONVENTION \u2013 WHAT WE DID ON OUR HOLIDAYS<\/strong><\/p>\n

(Island, 1969)<\/p>\n

The second Fairport LP was the first to feature Sandy Denny, who brought with her a haunting voice and a dramatic change of direction with trad-folk ballads. Thompson embraced the development, and the LP witnessed the birth of a specifically English take on electric folk-rock. Yet it was one of his own songs, \u201cMeet On The Ledge\u201d, that became Fairport\u2019s signature tune.<\/p>\n

Richard Thompson: \u201cFairport played its first gig on the day Sgt Pepper was released. We played all the psychedelic clubs, so that was the context of the first couple of LPs. But at some point we decided we wanted to be a lyric band and the people playing electric music with interesting lyrics were Dylan and The Byrds, and maybe Phil Ochs and Richard Fari\u00f1a. That meant, for a while, we became very US-influenced. Being idealistic suburbanites, we felt that would make us different.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat changed us was Sandy Denny\u2019s arrival. She came with a repertoire from folk music, and the first thing we did to integrate her into the band was to wrap ourselves around some of her arrangements. So we did some of her folk-club stuff like \u2018She Moves Through The Fair\u2019. We wanted to be more homegrown and to play more traditionally rooted music but in a modern, meaningful way. Trad folk music was considered a bit of a novelty in rock\u2019n\u2019roll. It had lost its connection with the people and died out with the coming of the gramophone, radio and TV, and the importing of popular music styles. So it was a radical thing for Fairport to do \u2013 much harder than it was for Dylan, who was taking what was an American form anyway and connecting it with a bit of electricity.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat We Did On Our Holidays was the start of that process; for us it was the great step we based everything else on. \u2018Meet On The Ledge\u2019, which has an anthemic quality, was the first song I wrote. At the time I never thought much of it, but I can still sing it to this day and skip over the adolescent sentiments and find something meaningful in it.\u201d<\/p>\n

FAIRPORT CONVENTION \u2013 LIEGE & LIEF<\/strong><\/p>\n

(Island, 1969)<\/p>\n

Fairport\u2019s fourth was made in the wake of an horrific M1 crash which took the lives of the band\u2019s drummer, Martin Lamble, and Thompson\u2019s girlfriend. Thompson wrote about the trauma on \u201cCrazy Man Michael\u201d. But it was the explosive arrangements of such folk standards as \u201cTam Lin\u201d and \u201cMatty Groves\u201d that provided the core, characterised by the dynamic electric guitar\/fiddle duelling of Thompson and new member Dave Swarbrick. Thompson stayed in the band for just one more LP.<\/p>\n

\u201cDave came into the band because we wanted to get an even stronger English edge. Previously we had been playing folk songs on electric instruments, but we had this idea to combine the ballad style of folk music with the freedom of rock\u2019n\u2019roll to create something new. What you hear on Liege & Lief was a trading-off of cultures between Swarb\u2019s and mine. It was a great learning process that actually started with \u2018A Sailor\u2019s Life\u2019 on Unhalfbricking [also 1969]. To me, that\u2019s a more successful recording, but Liege & Lief is the landmark. We\u2019d had a fatal motorway crash, which was traumatic for the group, and making Liege & Lief was our therapy. It was a concept album, really, and we poured ourselves into it as a way of keeping busy. To us, it was far more revolutionary than David Bowie, The Velvet Underground or heavy metal. It was the least popular thing we could\u2019ve done, and the best way to lose our audience overnight.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut our hope was that it would become a truly British popular music. Sadly, that never happened, though it became a cult. I have criticisms of it, although if you ask anybody about the records they\u2019ve made, they tend to see the warts and the scabs and the sticky tape holding it together. But I do feel that on Liege & Lief we were too careful. We could have been wilder. But its influence was profound. I know people who took Liege & Lief as an example of what they could do within their own culture to revive their own traditional music.\u201d<\/p>\n

RICHARD & LINDA THOMPSON \u2013 I WANT TO SEE THE BRIGHT LIGHTS TONIGHT<\/strong><\/p>\n

(Hannibal, 1974)<\/p>\n

The first in a series of recordings by the married couple that chronicled the bleakest human emotions, and gave Thompson his reputation as a purveyor of doom and gloom. Greil Marcus once wrote of his songwriting: \u201cStraight out of the plague years, one imagines him following behind a cart-full of corpses, strumming a lute, laughing at the stupidity of man\u2019s faith and cursing God with his next breath.\u2019\u2019 \u201cGood old Greil certainly nailed me there,\u201d says Thompson.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I left Fairport Convention, it wasn\u2019t over personal differences; I just knew I wanted to do something different musically. I was feeling claustrophobic being in a band, so I got out. It was a gut feeling. Going solo didn\u2019t occur to me. I\u2019d met Linda during the making of Liege & Lief, because she was in the next-door studio recording a cornflakes commercial, and I enjoyed working with her and having her voice as a vehicle. But even that wasn\u2019t really planned. It was simply that it was a fantastic way to hear the songs I\u2019d written.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe looked at who we were and what we were doing and decided the only way we could survive was in the folk world, and so for at least a year around I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight we played the clubs. It was great fun because it was novel for me to be independent. I don\u2019t think we ever stayed in hotels \u2013 we\u2019d sleep on the promoter\u2019s floor. Although, at a certain point, we felt we\u2019d outgrown the folk circuit and got a manager to book us bigger gigs.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople talk about \u2018doom and gloom from the tomb\u2019, and I think I\u2019ve always gravitated towards that side of things. It\u2019s partly to do with my growing up. I\u2019d been raised in a part-Scottish household with Walter Scott\u2019s novels and the poetry of Robbie Burns and the border ballads on the bookshelves. The language of all that stuff was on the heavy side. But I don\u2019t really see it as doomy. It\u2019s just taking things seriously\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

RICHARD & LINDA THOMPSON \u2013 SHOOT OUT THE LIGHTS<\/strong><\/p>\n

(Hannibal, 1982)<\/p>\n

The last of the six Richard and Linda albums is suffused with anger and dread. During its making, Richard had fallen in love with someone else and moved to New York. Already separated, the couple were forced to do one final US tour and promoted the record with a series of bitter, cathartic concerts amid backstage tales of drunken despair and ashtrays thrown at heads. Discussing the album is the only time Thompson seems uncomfortable during the entire two-and-a-half hours Uncut spends in his company.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know people call Shoot Out The Lights a break-up album, but I can honestly say that was never the intention. \u2018Don\u2019t Renege On Our Love\u2019, \u2018Wall Of Death\u2019 and \u2018Walking On A Wire\u2019 are dark, I suppose. But they were all written a year before we split up, so people can think what they like. Songs can be about a state you pass through which isn\u2019t where you live. It\u2019s a condition, and sometimes you have to drop in to see what condition your condition is in. I sometimes listen to Shoot Out The Lights for reference. It\u2019s weird, because as a singer-songwriter you keep revisiting your work, whereas an artist can paint a canvas, sell it and never see it again. Some songs don\u2019t have a shelf life, because the emotions don\u2019t last and the world view is too immature. Then there are other songs where you keep finding something new in them.\u201d<\/p>\n

RICHARD THOMPSON \u2013 RUMOR AND SIGH<\/strong><\/p>\n

(Capitol, 1991)<\/p>\n

Thompson\u2019s solo career went into overdrive in the \u201980s with innumerable songs about ruin and despair. By the early \u201990s, although he was still writing about death, drinking and twisted love, his sojourn in America made his work sound even more British. On Rumor And Sigh, Thompson challenged UK songwriters\u2019 embarrassment at fetishising England and Englishness head-on, and routed it forever.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe put up for years with Americans singing about mojos and wondering what they were on about, so I thought we should create our own rock\u2019n\u2019roll language. The Beatles sang about \u2018fish and finger pie\u2019, which was a very British expression, and a song like \u20181952 Vincent Black Lightning\u2019 was about trying to do the same thing. There\u2019s a lot of American songs about Harleys heading down the highway, and I wanted a British equivalent. It was an attempt to create a British romantic object as the lodestone around which the song revolves. So was \u2018Don\u2019t Sit On My Jimmy Shands\u2019. But you have to avoid sounding like Chas & Dave. I like to be taken seriously.<\/p>\n

\u201cParadoxically, living in LA allows you to be as English as you want, as it\u2019s a very bland place. It\u2019s full of Brits, pubs, tearooms and plenty of fog to remind you of the old country. The irony is that English fans got very upset that \u2018rumor\u2019 was spelt in the American way. It was supposed to have the \u2018u\u2019, but the artist had already painted the cover, and I didn\u2019t have the heart to tell her to change it.\u201d<\/p>\n

RICHARD THOMPSON \u2013 FRONT PARLOUR BALLADS<\/strong><\/p>\n

(Cooking Vinyl, 2005)<\/p>\n

Thompson\u2019s solo albums are invariably greeted with acclaim. Yet the appearance of this \u2018homemade\u2019 album (recorded in his garage studio) won him his most enthusiastic reviews in years. Uncut concurred with the consensus, concluding: \u201cIn his mid-50s, Thompson is now producing his most rounded, fully realised work.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was quite charming, really. The songs are small and intimate. If rock\u2019n\u2019roll is something that hits you over the head in a stadium, that album is the opposite. It\u2019s almost a one-to-one transaction between the performer and the listener.<\/p>\n

\u201cI still feel part of a tradition and am very influenced by traditional music. But I was listening to a lot of composers like Debussy, Satie and Ravel while making it. I was interested in the way they would treat a song and the structures they would use, and I pursued that to see if it could apply to the style I use. I think you can hear that in the bridges and some of the non-repeating aspects of the songs, rather than a folk music influence. It\u2019s always fun to play with structure to see if it leads down a fruitful alley and takes you somewhere worth exploring. But I\u2019m surprised the album got such great reviews. I didn\u2019t realise it was my comeback because I didn\u2019t know that I\u2019d been away. Now there\u2019s been the boxset, too [RT: The Life And Music Of Richard Thompson], so I can probably do nothing for the next five years.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The post \u201cI thought we should create our own rock\u2019n\u2019roll language\u201d \u2013 Richard Thompson interviewed<\/a> appeared first on UNCUT<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Originally published in Uncut Take 108 (May 2006 issue)… Originally published in Uncut Take 108 (May 2006 issue)\u2026 Although he may be a guitarist of extraordinary gifts and a singer-songwriter…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,35,5797],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","category-interviews","category-richard-thompson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9926\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}