Richard Thompson (born 3 April 1949) is an English songwriter, musician (primarily a guitarist), singer and record producer.
Thompson first gained prominence in the late 1960s as the lead guitarist and a songwriter for the folk rock group Fairport Convention, which he co-founded in 1967. After departing the group in 1971, Thompson released his debut solo album, Henry the Human Fly, in 1972. The next year, he formed a duo with his wife, Linda Thompson, which produced six albums, including the critically acclaimed I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight (1974) and Shoot Out the Lights (1982). After the dissolution of the duo, Thompson revived his solo career with the release of Hand of Kindness in 1983. He has released 20 solo studio albums. Three of these Rumor and Sigh (1991), You? Me? Us? (1996), and Dream Attic (2010)have been nominated for Grammy Awards, while Still (2015) was his first UK Top Ten album. He continues to write and record new material and has frequently performed at venues throughout Europe and North America, and occasionally further afield.
Music critic Neil McCormick described Thompson as "a versatile virtuoso guitarist and a sharp observational singer-songwriter whose work burns with intelligence and dark emotion". His songwriting has earned him an Ivor Novello Award and, in 2006, a lifetime achievement award from BBC Radio. His 1991 song "1952 Vincent Black Lightning" was included in Time magazine's "All-TIME 100 Songs" list of the best English-language musical compositions released between 1923 and 2011."All-TIME 100 Songs: 1952 Vincent Black Lightning" (retrieved on 26 February 2014). Thompson was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2011 New Year Honours for services to music. Many varied musicians have recorded Thompson's compositions.
His memoir, Beeswing: Losing My Way and Finding My Voice, 1967–1975, was published in 2021.
Early life and career (1949 to 1972) Richard Thompson was born at 23 Ladbroke Crescent (off Ladbroke Grove), Notting Hill, West London, England. His father, a Scot, was a Scotland Yard detective and an amateur guitar player; several other family members had played music professionally. He was the younger brother, by five years, of sister Perri, who became a fashion designer. While attending William Ellis School in Highgate, he formed his first band, Emil and the Detectives (named after a book and a movie by the same title), with classmate Hugh Cornwell, later lead singer and guitarist of the Stranglers, on bass guitar. When he was a teenager Thompson moved with his family to Whetstone, near the northern end of the London Underground's Northern line.
Interviewed in 2003, Thompson said:
Like so many musicians of his generation, Thompson was exposed to and embraced rock and roll music at an early age, and he was also exposed to his father's jazz and traditional Scottish music record collection. His father had seen Django Reinhardt play in Glasgow in the 1930s and played guitar himself. He was later described by his son as "a bad amateur player ... with three chords, though, unfortunately, not C, F and G." All these musical genres were to colour Thompson's playing in the years to come.
American producer Joe Boyd said:
At the age of 18 Thompson co-founded folk rock group Fairport Convention. Largely on the strength of Thompson's playing, Boyd took them under his wing and signed them to his Witchseason production and management company.
Boyd said:
Shortly thereafter Thompson, already acquiring a reputation as an outstanding guitar player, started writing songs seriously. This seems to have been out of necessity as Fairport Convention was at first essentially a cover band.
By December 1968, when Fairport's second album What We Did on Our Holidays was released, 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".
On 12 May 1969, between the recording and release of their next album Unhalfbricking, Fairport's van crashed on the M1 motorway on the way home from a gig at Mothers, a club in Birmingham. Drummer Martin Lamble, aged 19, and Thompson's girlfriend Jeannie Franklyn were killed. The rest of the band suffered injuries of varying severity. Later in 1969, Fairport re-grouped with a new drummer, Dave Mattacks, and also invited the well known fiddle player, Dave Swarbrick, to join. Thompson and Swarbrick worked together to create songs such as "Crazy Man Michael" from the band's seminal 1969 folk-rock album Liege & Lief and "Sloth" from its 1970 follow-up Full House.
In January 1971, Thompson announced that he was leaving Fairport Convention. His decision was instinctive, rather than a calculated career move:
In April 1972, he released his first solo album Henry the Human Fly, recording with Sandy Denny, Pat Donaldson, Sue Draheim, John Kirkpatrick, Barry Dransfield, Ashley Hutchings, Linda Peters, Andy Roberts, and others. 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.
Solo career
1970s: Richard and Linda Thompson By the 1970s, Thompson had begun a relationship with the singer Linda Peters, who had sung on Henry the Human Fly. In October 1972 the couple were married at Hampstead Town Hall and honeymooned in Corsica. Thompson, with Linda now effectively his front woman, regrouped for his next album and the next phase of his career.
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 1974. The album was well received by critics, though sales were less than stellar.
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 the hit parade. A more likely explanation was given by ex-Island A&R man Richard Williams in the 2003 BBC TV documentary Solitary Life: Thompson was just not interested in fame and its trappings.
The Thompsons recorded two more albums—Hokey Pokey and Pour Down Like Silver, both released in 1975—before Richard Thompson decided to leave the music business. The couple moved to a Sufi community in East Anglia.
It was not apparent from their records at first, but the Thompsons had embraced an esoteric Sufi strand of Islam in early 1974. I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight was recorded before this conversion, but released some time 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, that tipped the public off to the Thompsons' growing preoccupation with their faith.
The trilogy of albums released before and after his sojourn in the commune was heavily influenced by Thompson's beliefs and by Sufi scripture, but in the long run his religious beliefs have not influenced his work in an obvious manner. The outlook expressed in his songs, his musical style, the subjects addressed by his lyrics have not shown any fundamental change. He remains a committed Muslim.
Thompson started to re-engage with the world of professional music in 1977. He played on an album by Sandy Denny, and had undertaken a short tour and started recording with a group of musicians who were also Sufis. Thompson asked Joe Boyd to produce these sessions, and two days were spent on the initial recordings. Boyd recalls that the sessions were not a success: "It was really, I felt, very poor. I didn't have much confidence in the musicians that he was working with. The atmosphere was very strange and it just didn't seem to work."
At about this time the Thompsons and their family moved out of the commune and back to their old home in Hampstead. Boyd had already invited Richard Thompson to play on Julie Covington's debut album. With spare 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 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 one.
1980s
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 (1979) album. Rafferty 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 – none of which 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. Linda Thompson was pregnant at the time of the recording, so the album's release was delayed until they could tour behind the album. Breathing problems arising from her pregnancy also meant that Linda could not sing the lead part on some of these songs as she had done on demo tapes and the Rafferty-produced recordings.
As an interim measure, Richard Thompson agreed to a short (5-day), low-key solo tour of the U.S. This tour was set up by Nancy Covey, then concert director for McCabe's Guitar Shop in Santa Monica. Covey, who had been in the UK in 1981 trying to sign Thompson to play at McCabe's, arranged for Thompson well-received 5 and 6 December shows. It was during this tour that Thompson and Covey developed an intimate relationship, and during that month, Richard and Linda Thompson separated.
Upon its release in 1982, Shoot Out the Lights was lauded by critics and sold quite well – especially in the U.S.
The Thompsons, now a couple for professional purposes only, toured the United States in support of the album, their only American tour together. Both the album and their live shows were well received by the American media, and Shoot Out the Lights effectively relaunched their career – just as their marriage was falling apart. The performances, with a backing band including both Simon Nicol and Dave Mattacks of Fairport Convention, were seen as strong, but the tension between Richard and Linda was all too obvious. For this reason, the Thompsons' fans often refer to the Shoot Out the Lights tour as "The Tour from Hell". Upon returning home, Richard and Linda went their separate ways.
Richard Thompson continued recording as a solo artist. His 1983 album Hand of Kindness saw him working with Boyd again, but with a revised backing band and a more extroverted and up-tempo song selection.