In an extract from his new memoir Richard Thompson remembers how the iconic band came about, recalls their early gigs and looks back at the motorway crash that killed his girlfriend and their drummer

How the band came together
I met Ashley “Tyger” Hutchings through my schoolfriend Brian Wyvill, who lived a few doors away from him in Durnsford Road, Muswell Hill. Brian had been recommending us to each other for a while, so it was inevitable that we should cross paths eventually, and it finally happened one sunny afternoon across a suburban garden gate. You could bet your life that any band run by Tyger in 1966, of which there were several, would have an obscure repertoire. For Dr K’s Blues Band, he used to track down and play B-sides by artists who had been mere footnotes in blues anthologies, and for the Ethnic Shuffle Orchestra he revived the 1920s repertoires of Gus Cannon and the Memphis Jug [ . . . ]  Subscribers to THE TIMES continue