Linda Thompson

Richard Thompson’s famous fans choose their favourite songs

~ Michael Stevenson ~ Leave a comment

Admirers from Robert Plant to Rachel Unthank pick the tracks from the master songwriter that mean most to them

Robert Plant

How Will I Ever Be Simple Again?
from Daring Adventures (1986)
“Richard’s frenetic, beautiful guitar style freed British music in the 60s from the slog of the blues. He melded his influences so impressively to history. This song speaks to me about my life, surveying myself from above and below. Richard, if you’re reading, we’ll have to stop not meeting like this.”

Shirley Collins

A Heart Needs a Home
from Hokey Pokey (1975)
“Richard’s still extraordinary, such a bold and muscular presence on stage, and his voice is still gorgeous. I played this again and again when Ashley [Hutchings] and I broke up. It helped me heal.”

Hugh Cornwell

Meet on the Ledge
from What We Did On Our Holidays (1969)
“The ledge was a limb of a tree on Hampstead Heath. I remember hearing this on the radio for the first time, that special meaning came through.”

Carrie Brownstein

Hokey Pokey
from Hokey Pokey (1975)
“I love the double entendre in the lyrics, the hint of darkness in the words contrasting with the music-hall feel of the tune. A good songwriter leaves you neither here nor there but someplace new, searching for more.”

David Byrne

The Calvary Cross (live)
from I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight (1974)
“Brian Eno recommended this, which led me down a rabbit hole. It’s ominous, full of dark portents. [On playing live with Richard in 1992] I remember trying to glean anything I could from a master writer and craftsman.”

Rachel Unthank

Has He Got a Friend for Me
from I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight (1974)
“A song about a girl desperate to meet someone, anyone. It’s not straightforward. It’s uncomfortable. Richard’s brilliant at capturing a moment and its emotion.”

Mark Ronson

I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight
from I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight (1974)
“It’s just a perfect song. It starts with this drumbeat that just makes you want to get up. The vocals are really bratty, on the verge of punk-rock and folk. It’s been my wistful dance around the kitchen in lockdown on a Friday night, so I wanted to pay tribute to it.”

Linda Thompson

How I Wanted To
from Hand of Kindness (1983)
[Its chorus runs: “Oh how I wanted to/ Oh how I wanted to/ To say I loved you”] “I chose this because it’s about me. Ha ha. Also, I love it.”

Source: Richard Thompson’s famous fans choose their favourite songs

Richard Thompson: ‘I had to put the pen down, take a deep breath, have a little cry’

~ Michael Stevenson ~ Leave a comment

The folk-rock pioneer has finally written his memoir, covering a life-changing crash and his fiery romance with Linda Thompson

Richard and Linda Thompson

It’s nearly 55 years since Richard Thompson began his career in music. A pioneer of folk-rock, hugely influential singer-songwriter and one of Britain’s most astonishing guitarists, he was only a month out of his teens on the morning of 12 May 1969 when all promise was nearly stopped short. His band, Fairport Convention, had been signed on the spot in 1967 when producer Joe Boyd saw his talent with a guitar at 17, and their mission to reconnect British rock with the older, beautiful songs of their home country was well under way.

He’d already jammed with Jimi Hendrix and supported Pink Floyd; now Thompson’s band had recently finished their third album, Unhalfbricking, with new singer Sandy Denny. A work full of ambitious originals and covers that still regularly appears in best British album polls, it got to No 12 in the charts then; decades later, it became a touchstone for the Green Man festival-endorsed folk-rock revival of the 2000s when everyone who liked Joanna Newsom and Will Oldham raved about it.

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Ten Thousand Times Adieu review – beautiful old songs sung with love

~ Michael Stevenson ~ Leave a comment

‘Bobstock’, in honour of the folk singer Bob Copper, assembled a fine and exciting lineup featuring Shirley Collins, Linda Thompson, Robin Dransfield and Martin Carthy, writes Colin Irwin

It’s nearly 11 years since Bob Copper died, four days after receiving the MBE at Buckingham Palace, but with a new generation revelling in his legacy, his role as English folk song’s genial and unwitting patriarch has never been more cherished. Much of the revered treasure chest of traditional song lovingly preserved by his Sussex family for more than 200 years was refreshingly reinvented during an ambitious event – dubbed Bobstock – marking the centenary of his birth.

“Keeping a toehold on the past adds another dimension to the present and the future,” Copper said in one of the documentary films preceding the big evening concert, and the strands connecting “the authentic voice of ordinary people”, as Billy Bragg called the Copper family, with modern times were joyously underlined every time the nine-strong present incumbents of that family tradition stepped on stage. The link even extended to their trademark tuning forks, trusty songbooks and self-mocking humour, emphasising the irrelevance of vocal perfection when beautiful old songs with an historic role in rural local communities are sung with love and conviction.

At the evening concert, nostalgia blended with youth and modernity. Rabbits out of the hat were Shirley Collins and Linda Thompson, overcoming the dysphonia that has effectively kept them both off stage for decades, to remind us of Bob’s adoration of blues with an enjoyably ramshackle The Soul of a Man. Other blasts from the past included an Oak reunion (Peta Webb still singing with spine-tingling beauty); Robin Dransfield ably performing Spencer the Rover with his sons; Heather Wood reviving the spirit of Young Tradition with Jon Boden, Fay Hield and

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