Richard Thompson
With Fairport Convention, his then-wife Linda and solo, the songwriter/guitarist has a catalogue with a unique character.
The unique appeal of Richard Thompson is twofold. Firstly, there’s his prowess as a guitarist, forgoing any flashy histrionics for a sophisticated style rooted in both American rock’n’roll and traditional British folk, but driven by a sense of invention that reaches into jazz, country and beyond. Then there’s his songwriting, more often than not dark and imagistic, tackling spiritual, romantic and political concerns with a biting lyricism and dry wit.
Thompson’s songs have been covered by a range of artists including Robert Plant, Dinosaur Jr., Emmylou Harris and David Gilmour, yet he remains something of a cult figure. Despite a 50-year career that has yielded more than a dozen solo studio albums alongside six with ex-wife Linda and a handful with Fairport Convention, it’s a state of affairs that has never seemed to bother him much. “I’m glad, in a sense, that most people don’t know about me and what I do,” he once said. “I’d rather they hear the music and then say: ‘I wonder what kind of person created this.’”
Thompson started out as a teenage prodigy in Fairport in 1967, his foraging guitar drones helping guide their transition from West Coast copyists to pioneers of a new form of home-grown folk rock that drew from the past yet pointed at the future. After a tenure that included such masterworks as Liege & Lief and Unhalfbricking, he quit for a solo career in 1971. By the following year he’d married folk singer Linda Peters and begun a musical collaboration that delivered a succession of 70s albums that enthralled and exhilarated in equal measure.
The couple’s relationship was all over by the early 80s, the vitriol and pain only too raw on Shoot Out The Lights, their final LP together. The rest of the decade found Thompson striking out as a solo artist, with albums that flitted between genres while developing his skills as a narrator of waspish character studies. He fully hit his stride with 1991’s Rumour And Sigh, streaked with black humour and sharp satire.
Thompson’s creative faculties have shown few signs of wear as he’s moved through the millennium, issuing a steady flow of albums. In 2011 he was awarded an OBE, a validation of sorts for his very singular contribution to the art of song. As Thompson himself once put it: “What I wanted to hear didn’t exist, so it was necessary for me to go out and create it.”