May 6, 2025 • 57 mins
Richard Thompson is a London-born guitar virtuoso whose career started in 1967 as part of the groundbreaking folk band Fairport Convention. The following decade Richard formed a duo with his former wife Linda Thompson, and together they released six albums, including the critically acclaimed, I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight. Richard then struck out on his own, writing songs that have since been covered by artists like Robert Plant, Elvis Costello and Bonnie Raitt.
On today’s episode Bruce Headlam talks to Richard about his love of traditional Scottish music, and how he’s reworked old folk songs over the years. Richard also plays examples of his unique playing style on the guitar and talks about the time he played alongside Jimi Hendrix.
You can hear a playlist of some of our favorite Richard Thompson songs HERE.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Richard Thompson is a London born guitar virtuoso whose careers
started in nineteen sixty seven as part of the groundbreaking
folk band Fairport Convention. The following decade, Richard formed a
duo with his former wife, Lynda Thompson, and together they
released six albums, including the critically acclaimed I Want to
See the Bright Lights Tonight and my personal favorite pour
(00:32):
Down Like Silver. Richard then struck out on his own,
writing songs that I've since been covered by artists like
Robert plant of his Costello and Bonnie Ray. On today's episode,
Bruce Helim talks to Richard about his love of traditional
Scottish music and how he's reworked.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Old folk songs over the years.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Richard also plays examples of his unique playing style on
the guitar and talks about the time he played alongside
Jimmy Hendrix. Is broken record, Real musicians, real conversations. Here's
Bruce Hadlam with Richard Thompson.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
You talked in your book about a big event for
you is when you heard the band's first album. It
helped reassure you that you're looking at Scottish music, particularly
in English and Irish, Yeah made sense. Can you talk
about what it was like to hear that record?
Speaker 3 (01:27):
Well, the band's first album came out at a time
of sort of high psychedelia, you know, the San Francisco band,
So you know, some of which I thought were great,
Somemmer which I thought really were not very good, but
there was a kind of a looseners to it, and
I kind of a kind of a drugged noodling anyway,
you know, that was the provading culture at the time,
(01:47):
and when the band came along, it was kind of
a shotgend oft that the short haircuts for you know, wow,
you know, gosh, people with short haircutsing. So suddenly Y
had this music that this seemed very honest, and it
seemed very down to that, and it seemed rooted in
so many American music forms, but successfully rooted, successfully continuing
(02:08):
those traditions. I said, Yeah, you had gospel, you had RM,
but you had blues your country, you had jazz, all
perfectly blended and musicians who could play that stuff in
their sleep. But that's somehow they'd learned how to play
this stuff really really well for a bunch of basically Canadians,
you know. But plus you know, leave On from Arkansas. Yeah,
you had three great singers in that band, and you
(02:31):
had a you know, juniors keyboard player and sax player
in Garth Gods and God Rest Society just passed away.
And you had a great guitar player in Robbie Robertson,
and a great rhythm section, I mean one of the
best rhythm sections in the history of rock music anyway
in Levon and Rick Danko Ridanka is still one of
(02:54):
my favorite three bass players.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
What interests me when you when you talk about particularly
that record, is you share something with the band that
not a lot of writers do, which is that you
write music that seems both very old and contemporary at
the same time.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
You know, people always say, well, the band songs sound
like they could have been written a hundred years ago,
and I think not quite, because they sound modern too.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Yeah, and I can't think of many writers who really
pull that off.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Well, you know, you have to know your history, I
think first of all, which the band obviously did. I mean,
they knew their roots. You know, they jammed with Sunny
Boy Williamson. You know that they really understood certainly, you know,
rock rock and roll music, and as writers, particularly Robbie.
You know, it was a history buff you know, so
(03:49):
perhaps almost to a fault because I think some of
the lates stuff is a bit more labored. Things like
the night they drove off Dixie Down. I mean that's
just a piece of history.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
It started in the library. Yeah, okay, So how did
you go back to investigate Scottish music? You grew up
with some, but there's a whole history there. Yeah, and
this is going to sound like a naive question. Are
there great resources that you could go to? Was it
just old records when you started looking back to research
(04:18):
this stuff? What were you looking at?
Speaker 3 (04:21):
Various sources. You've got a great resource in London called
the Social Sharp House, which has a big library of
traditional music and there's what champions of traditional music and
preservas of traditional music. So you can go there and
look stuff up, you know. Yeah, you can get the
Child ballads, you know, the five volumes collected by Francis
James Child, which has like, you know, four hundred English,
(04:45):
Irish Scottish ballads in there. That's another great resource. There
are people who seeing this stuff. It's like a living tradition.
I mean, if you got out to Aberdeenshire in Scotland
in the nineteen seventies. You could have set in the
caravan of Lucy Stewart, you know, as many collectors did,
(05:05):
Kenny Goldstein and Shirley Collins. They all went up to
to to Lucy Stewart because she had an incredible memory
as a repository of traditional music. And after Kenny Goldstein left,
apparently she said, you know, he didn't he didn't get
a half of what I know, so a lot of
(05:28):
stuff might have passed away with her. You know, we
don't really know. So you've got all those resources. And
we learned a lot from people like Alor Lloyd, who
is who was another great musicologist who specialized in traditional
music and also a singer. And what we get Burt
on the end of the phone and say, Bert, we
(05:49):
got this song in Mattie Groves, you know, and we're
missing we like a better verse three. You know, well
what have you got would you know?
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Then?
Speaker 3 (05:58):
So he said, oh yeah, well if you take this
one from this source and that blah blah, you know.
So in a sense what we were compiling ballads from
all over the place really to come up with a
version that we felt really, you really did it, you know,
it really told the story. One of the great things
about some of those old songs it is how colorful
(06:19):
they are in a sense that they describe things in
a very colorful way, in a very immediate way that
suits you know, a rock band actually could quite well.
It suits an electric treatment quite well.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Were there songs that just resisted it you thought, no,
this song, it just belongs to another age. We can't.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
Yeah. Sometimes, yeah, I think sometimes there was a feeling,
you know, that the song was too pastoral and that
wasn't really our lives in the twentieth century, you know,
where we were kind of urban nights or suburban nights and
a song about you know, you know, I Sow the
seeds of love. I think we eventually recorded a bit,
but I was a bit reluctant to do it because
(06:59):
I thought it's too you know, it's too soft. You
know that there are better songs that there are kind
of industrial songs, there are work songs that would fit
the genre, but it would fit you know, the the
electric band setting better. But you know, something like like
Magic Roads. It's just that it's such great language. The
laghage is fantastic you know, you know, a grave, a grave.
(07:23):
Lord rold cried to put these lovers in but bury
my lady at the top. She was of noble kin.
You know, it's really beautiful, clever, you know.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
So did that that in a sense gave you your
vocabulary for your own music?
Speaker 3 (07:38):
I think partly?
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Yeah, for sure, you're known as a very depressing writer.
Of course, because so many of your songs are about
love a band and love scorned being alone.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Well I suppose. I mean, you know thematically, you write
about what you know, and you write about you know,
human states that have been written about for hundreds of years,
so that there are a kind of a tradition. There's
an overlap. But I'd be very interested. I'd be very sorry.
I'm influenced by the language of traditional music.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Now when you get these songs, they wouldn't come with harmonies.
Were they mostly melodies?
Speaker 3 (08:15):
Like?
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Did you have to re harmonize a lot of these things?
Speaker 3 (08:18):
Yes? We did.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Yeah, American music, I guess, because so much is influenced
by blues. Just it's got such a strong resolution, you know,
just heads towards that final chord, and I find a
lot of the music you were playing a lot of
the folk music, it sort of expands, it doesn't have
that that same drive towards sort of the final resolution.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
I think, well, I think people, you know, people like
Davey Graham, people like Martin Cathy developed a way of
accompanying traditional music in a way that reflected more what
you're hearing a solo vocal performance, so that a lack
of resolution. And the way you did that is through
(09:03):
suspensions really you know, through not resolving. So that's the
tuning that the Davey Graham I think it was the
first person to come up with. It's not onlike a
Clarence actually banjo tuning from the Appalachians in the nineteen
(09:25):
you know, thirties onwards. And what is the it's it's
basically D A D A D G A D.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
So he was the first to use like a dead
get suspension.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
Yeah yeah, it's.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
A suspension because it's a it's a sixth yeah right yeah, okay.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
So that some may start that when it may finished
that way as well, which is good, which is just
leaves it open. I mean, it doesn't resolve anything, you know,
is it for you know, something like she moves with
a fair.
Speaker 4 (10:04):
My young love said to me, my parents will, Ma,
my father will like you for your lack a harp.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
Come.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
And she let her hand on me, and then she did.
Speaker 5 (10:26):
Say, what will not long?
Speaker 3 (10:51):
Yeah? Sorry, kind of rings over. You have a nice
thing about those kind of open tunings is if you're
a solo guitarist, you get a bit size, you get
a bit more volume out of the guitar. But because
so many notes are ringing over, gives the illusion that
you're a best guitar player than you actually are.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
I'm going to remember that now. Some of your songs
walking on the wires a song, Yeah, I think of that,
and I know it does resolve in the end, but
it almost feels like it could end on the fourth,
it could end on other tones. The Great Valerio is
another one to me that it feels very much like that.
(11:28):
You seem to like these songs that don't have the
just they just have a different I don't know if
it's the form that's different. I don't quite know how
to describe it.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
Yeah, well know you mean, and I do like that,
you know, I like that like a resolution in a sense.
But again, I think it all comes from vocal music.
I think it comes from hearing somebody sing a song
unaccompanied and you imply what the harmony is. And if
you're schooled in you know, you get kind of Mozart
kind of harmony or something, then you're going to accompany
(12:01):
it that way. If you come from a more traditional background,
or if you're Mars and Carthy or Davey Graham, you're
going to interpret it in a different way. You're going
to interpret the harmony as something else, or you're just
going to add a drone to the whole thing and
and just just leave it floating.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Now, do you use a lot of drone notes?
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (12:20):
Does that? Does that come from bagpipe?
Speaker 3 (12:22):
Yeah? Pretty much.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
And so when you're doing that, do you do you
try and you try and use an open string for
the drone?
Speaker 3 (12:28):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (12:29):
And is it always the tonic or.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
They're practicularly it's either going to be the G or
the D.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
It's funny because in you know, a lot of jazz,
it'll be the high note will be uh, particularly in
the piano. Yeah, that's how they'll harmonize a lot of
like little runs and things like you'd have you'll have
the high tonic. And then do you ever use like
the high e for.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
The well, yeah you can, you can do do it
the other way around that exactly.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
So yeah, you also use you use an enormous number
(13:55):
of like trills on your Is that again the bagpipe influence.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
It's traditionally influence you bagpipes, you know, Scottish, Irish fiddle players,
accordion players. There's a lot of grace notes, a lot
of extra notes around the note that that would be
a big part of the expression or where you're playing.
In something like a dance tune, that's pretty much sets
you know, this is the tune that, this is how
you play it. To make it more interesting, you might
(14:23):
add more flourishes and bits and pieces, you know that
(14:45):
kind of you know that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Well, is there any and I don't even know if
the harp is a is a Celtic instrument?
Speaker 3 (14:57):
Sure is? You know the original Western European and instrument
for a companying voice was there was the harp, you know,
the small harp the ballad hop right, So people like
Richard the first Richard the Lionheart, who was a singer songwriter,
thank you very much. His mother was Eleanor Vakatain, who
was a champion of the arts. But if you were
a king or a courtier or something. Among your accomplishments
(15:20):
besides like you know, murdering people, you know, like spiking
people through with a sword or was you had to
dance and you had to sing, and in some cases
you could be a songwriter. Henry the eighth was a songwriter.
Oh yeah. Also I would have accompanied himself on the
on the harp. He wrote songs like black is the
color of my true love's hair, which I'm sure it
(15:41):
is never off your turntable pastime with good company, and he.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Would stroke it out and say blonde is the color?
Speaker 3 (15:49):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, yeah, so we still got Adde
Bollyn's head anywhere. Yeah, check the hair color. Yeah. Didn't
write green sleeves, so that came a little late, but
that was accredited to him for a while. So yeah.
So if you if you're if you're a king, courts
you singer songwriter.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Like all great songwriters, he took credit for things he
didn't actually write. Well, when you're king, very country. Yeah,
when you're king, you say, oh, I think I wrote
this one. Of course you did, your majesty. Is there
any harp influence in your playing?
Speaker 3 (16:24):
Yeah? Any any kind of guitar or covered with with
your finger picking. It's a very hard like and if
if you use, if you use those kind of strings
that ring over, you know, those kind.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
Of tell me what you mean that when you say
strings that are ringing over.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
Well, you know, like like I see, I suppose to
call straight flat picking more jazz style.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
So for people who would be casual listeners, they might
think you were born somewhere on a Scottish glen to goatherds.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Well, that sounds romantic.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
It does, as it turns out. It turns out I'm
really from London, suburban London. Suburban London suburbs are a
wonderful place. It all comes from the suburbs. The Rolling Stones,
the Beatles, inner sense come from the suburbs, you know,
the Kings come from the suburbs fairly close to where
I grew up as well.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
Yeah. Yeah, but my father was Scottish, so that's always
been a strand in the music, you know, and as
a kid I was kind of transfixed by Scottish music,
but by things like bagpipes, you know, hearing bagpipes outdoors
where where you get that that kind of Doppler effect
or that kind of phasing thing. You know.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Oh, even as a kid, you like that.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
Well, you know, just one of the first music I
ever heard was probably going with my parents up to
Edinburgh Castle. I'm watching the military tattoo, you know, with
these incredible pipe bands. I suppose I could have been
attracted to the incredible drumming, but it was it was
more the you know, Scottish use of melody. I think
hit me for very young, my melody and drone, which
(18:23):
you know, it's an old It's an old human thing,
isn't it. You know, in Western European music, you know
that they developed kind of the chord a compliment, you know,
but a lot of cultures didn't go that way though,
that they just had the drone and the melody and
a lot of instidments playing in Unison, that kind of thing,
(18:44):
which I also find very attractive. Although I do like
harmony as well, I like everything.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
Is there something distinctive about Scottish melodies? Are there certain
tones they emphasize?
Speaker 3 (18:57):
You know that there's an interesting Scottish use of the
pentatonic scale. And you know, if if you think of
country music where that comes from, a lot of it
comes from Scottish music. The Scots were a notable ethnic
group in the Appalachians and that you know that that
that classic country you know, major pentatonic scale do you do?
(19:21):
You do?
Speaker 4 (19:21):
You do that?
Speaker 3 (19:23):
That's all over country music and it's all over Scottish
music as well. And so so that there's that pentatonic scale,
there's a there's another Scottish pentatonic scale which doesn't have
a third in it. There's no major or minor.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
I see, So how would you if you were going
to harmonize that?
Speaker 3 (19:56):
You know, the classic way to harmonize Scottish music is
basically to use the the root called and one, so
I k d you use the sea as well as.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
There's almost a mixed Ildien sound.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
Yeah, and it's kind of I would say it's unique
to Scottish music, but it's it's it's fairly unusual and
it's almost a bit lonesome in a sense, you know, Yeah, yeah,
you get this kind of spaciousness. Well, work with that
particular scale, I find which it was suitable for the backpipe,
you know, which is out there you know playing on yeah,
(20:35):
up in the mountains or you know, at the end
of a loch or something. So you know, it's it's
a dimension of music that struck me very young, and
it kind of stayed with me as well, even as
I learn more about harmony and I learned about you know,
you know, ponlytonalism and twelve tone and dissonance and uh
that those basic kind of like drone in the fifth
(20:57):
or or you know that there's still very compeling.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
We'll be back with more from Richard Thompson and Bruce
Headlam after the break.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
When did you first pick up a guitar?
Speaker 3 (21:23):
I think I was probably ten. Yeah, my father was
was an amateur guitar player. You know, no, they're not
actually very good, and one day he bought him a
guitar one of his old army mates. We worked in
a guitar shop in at the West End of London,
and I had this damaged guitar, like the side had
split open in transit, and my father, being I would work,
(21:45):
you know, glued it up and thought this is great,
I'm going to play it. But I grabbed it before
anybody else could get their hands on it and basically
commandeered it. And you know, at that time, you know,
it's kind of a you know, we're talking about nineteen sixty,
you know, rockn roll where it was still around. I
had an older sister who had Buddy Holly Records and
(22:05):
Elvis Records and June Vincent and Jerry D Lewis.
Speaker 4 (22:10):
You know.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
So you know, the guitar was a very hip thing.
And also in Britain you had an instrumental bank called
the Shadows, which they were kind of British Adventures if
you like. But actually much better players are much much
better recorded.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
I wanted to ask you about the Shadows because they
loomed so large. Oh they did in England. People here
would know their stuff because they associated with surf music.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
And Canada as well. Actually, you know, a more local
hotspot for for the Shadows, was that, right. Neil Younger
claims he was a huge Shadows fan, okay, and you
can hear in his playing actually it's used to that,
you know, the wammy bar.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
And everything, right, yeah, and you like them as well well, yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
I mean it was a great sound, of very deductive sound,
and it was something that you could get together with
with your with your friends and and that was the
kind of the beginning of playing in a group, you know,
of learning from each other, which is what happens when
you joined a banner. You kind of pick stuff up
(23:12):
from the other people in the band and you slowly
spiral upwards. We hope you know as musicians. But yeah,
the Shadows were very influential on every body of a
certain age. I mean really, you know, if you speak
to Jimmy Page or somebody, you know, he was like, oh, yeah,
I hate Marvin you know the Shadows.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Yeah, could he play a strat well, well.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
The story is at that time that there was a
band on American imports of instruments for some reasons, so
you couldn't buy a Fender, you couldn't buy Gibson. So
Cliff Richard, who the Shadows, used to back well when
I was at the States because he had a hit
record here and and he brought back the first actual
Fender stratocaster to go into England and he came to
(23:54):
Hank so that was a big thing. And then they
all got kitted out with fenders, you know, so exciting stuff.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
This is has such a distinct, beautiful sound.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
Yeah, yeah, it's all about tone, and you used you know,
like these so fairly primitive these days, but but you know,
to tape eco device it's for portable tapeco machines to
give him a bit of extra reverb.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
There are other players that you've talked about, and one
and again not someone people over here have listened to
is Davey Graham.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
Yeah, he's kind of the first guy through the door,
you know. But maybe mid mid fifties. Davy was acoustic
guitar pler, and I should stress that first of all.
And he was playing kind of a blended style. He
was playing something that had Scottish re roots and he
was part Scottish West Indian roots here he was got
(24:49):
part Guyanese and you know, throwing in jazz kind of
throneous monk and stuff, you know, and kind of blending
it all together with a bit of you maybe Morocco
music into Morocco and kind of soaked up a bit
of music down there, and it kind of blended into
this style that that kind of stayed in a sense.
You know that that influenced Bert Jansch. So Bert jan
(25:12):
had a kind of you know, Scottish English traditional style
with a bit of blues thrown in. You know who
was Martin Carthy, you know, influenced but by by David Graham.
He was just kind of pioneer and in a sense
he was kind of all over the place, you know.
You know, you know you had to kind of discipline
him to to make sense of his music, you know,
(25:34):
because he just sit down and say, oh this is
you heard this tune from Marks, you know, blah blah
blah blah blah. And I said, oh, this is a
this is yeah, this is Miles Davis. You know, he
just be you know, all over the place. So to
sit him down and and and have him more disciplined
but was quite a thing, you know. And you know
he was junkie, you know. Yeah, he had a lot
(25:55):
of issues and it's life. But but you know I
saw him from time to time. I mean, he's a
good man, good man.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
It strikes me that that you're a more disciplined player
that like when you talk about chance putting sort of
blues in Scottish, you don't do that as much like
when you're playing a more bluesy style, which is a
more rock style for you, not you don't really do blues.
You tend to play a little more formally. Is that true?
Speaker 3 (26:22):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (26:22):
Or is that unfair?
Speaker 4 (26:23):
Well?
Speaker 3 (26:24):
I think not so much. Formally it's different. You know.
I think I realized in about nineteen sixty seven that
there's a lot of competition in London for blues guitar players,
you know. You know, but in my school back yet
we were playing blues r and be all that kind
of stuff. But at a certain point, I thought, you know,
you know, yeah, you've got a piece of green out.
You've got Rick Klatton, You've got Mick Taylor. You know,
(26:48):
you've got all all these blues players and it is
a crowded field and I'm just naming, like, you know,
three of them, but there's like twenty, you know, just
just in life.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
I think there's twenty named Jimmy yeah alone.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
Yeah. So so I thought, well, you know, I'm really
going to be different. You know, the the you know,
the blues and I says that they don't have a
place in my vocabulary, but but Kelsey music does. And
you're in Kelsey music. You also you have you have
bent notes, you know, you have a kind of soulful
kind of phrasing, you know. So I thought, well, I'll
(27:20):
I'll exploit that more than the blues. Inevitably, I've got
technique that probably comes from BB King. I mean that's
just something I learned at school. You know, there is
you know, if you're brato, you know kind is your
vibrato like his? No, But everybody's just different. But yeah, so.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
You made you mentioned you mentioned bent notes in Scottish music,
Well what tones are you bending to and from?
Speaker 3 (27:46):
Then? From Scottish Irish music, there's more bends in Irish
music for sure, mostly going up to the but bending
up to the seventh, right, bending up to the octave,
bending up to this to a second, I.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
See, And that's more Scottish, that's more Irish and more
Irish pardan me is that is that because the instruments
they were using.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
Yeah, you know, Scottish pipers now under the influencer of
Irish pipers bend notes they're they never used to. But
the bending is it's more of a vocal tradition in Scotland.
Like work songs in the Hebridies, you know, you have
you have more notes that get the kind of bend
up to the note that not much going down, but
a lot of times bending up to the note. You know. So,
(28:39):
so I tried to develop a different vocabulary. Really, I
didn't want to sound like all these other blues players.
I've always thought it was kind of cultural exploitation and somehow,
you know, all these white guitar players in London, you know,
but but buying chess records. Never been to Chicago, you know,
never been to Mississippi. But you know they love the music,
(28:59):
absoutely love the me is it? But I thought, well
is that enough? You know? Is it enough to love it?
At what point? Are you just like like a kind
of a slavish imitator, you know, a dilet hands, you know,
a colonial exploit. This is all go through my head
when I'm like, you know, eighteen years old, you know,
I thought, well, well, you know, you know, the interesting
(29:19):
stuff for me, like when you know, when the Yardbirds
were playing, I'm a man, you know, I thought that
this is you know, pathetic. You know when you think
of the nobility of the original version, you know than
the Muddy Waters version, It's like it's just got sexual authority.
It's such a nobility to it.
Speaker 4 (29:37):
You know.
Speaker 3 (29:37):
The yard Bud's just sounded like little boys, you know,
and they couldn't do the feel, you know that the
feel of the rhythm section, it was all wrong. But
you know, but I thought when the yardbirds did original songs,
it was far more interesting when they did for Your
Love or something. Thought well, this is actually a really
good pop song and the blues influences coming in, and
that's fine, you know, I thought that was a more
(29:57):
interesting use of influences.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
In your book, you mentioned being on stage I think
just once with Jimmy Hendrix.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
Oh but probably three times.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
And what was that like.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
We used to play this late night club called the
Speakeasy in London, and you know, birds would roll in,
you know, usually after midnight from playing out of town.
You know, they come back from Birmingham, my magister, and
they'd be hungry so that they come in and to
eat really but there was always a live band on
(30:29):
and there was a dance floor. We used to play there,
you know, a couple of times a month at least,
you know, and Jimmy would, you know, about one o'clock,
two o'clock in the morning, after a few drinks, would
want to get up and play. So you just sit
in with us, which was fantastic. Bit intimidating, of course,
but it was a nice experience and he was a
(30:50):
very sweet man in my.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Experience, did he because he played a left guitar, right.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
He just take my guitar and then turn it upside
down and play with great facility either way, you know really.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
Yeah, did he string his guitar that way or did he?
I'm not sure he strung it.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
I mean for a left handed guitar player. Yeah, but
he could play mine basically upside you know, he turned
it upside down and figure out everything in the reverse
genius will or will.
Speaker 1 (31:19):
Out he gave it back to you. Did you just
smash it and leave? That's quite something.
Speaker 3 (31:23):
No, he didn't set fire to it. He didn't smash it.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
But no, I was thinking, maybe you did. Well, I
can't do that anymore.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
Well, think with Hendrix. I mean you could kind of
figure out what he was doing, you know, harmonically, it
wasn't that that uh, you know, it was sophisticated. There
was basically a blues play. But he could always up
the game. You know, he could always play with his teeth,
you could have sex with the guitar, you know, he
could you know, play behind his back. You know, he
had all the tricks that he'd learned, you know, playing
(31:52):
on the chitpland circuit in America. But yeah, it was
an interesting presence on the on the London music scene,
and I think he intimidated all those guitar players, the
Claptains of Jeff Becks, so that they were totally intimidated
because in a sense, you know that they've been learning
off records and they developed this way of playing the
blues and R and B. And then this guy turns up.
(32:14):
He's kind of the real thing, you know, and he
can take it to another level. You know, they're all,
you know, they're utterly intimidated. That's a great story of
I think one of Jimmy's first bigger performances in London,
and it was the week that Sergeant Pepper came out
and all the guitar players turned up, Pete Townsend, Jeff Beck,
(32:38):
Eric Clapton, I think Paul McCartney was there as well.
There was sitting in the audience, you know. And of
course Jimmy's opening song is Sergeant Pepper's Learning Hearts Club,
but which he learned knowing that that there'll be a
beatle in the in the audience, so of course he
like destroys it. You know. He plays it pretty straight
for about a chorus and then and all hell, let's
(33:01):
loosen and he goes into his stratophoric Jimmy and at
the end of the song, you know, these guitars can
pretty out of churning. He's just destroyed the tuning. So
he says, Hey, Eric, are you out there? Meany Clapton
And it's a little sort of puny for yes, and
(33:24):
he says, could you come and tune this for me? Oh? Yeah? Anyway? Yeah,
So yeah, he was He was the presence on the scene.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
What was it about London? I guess England at that point.
I mean the Beatles and the Stones are sort of
you know, they broke the ice. Yeah, but there seemed
to be so many You were playing all the time.
There were clubs, there were colleges, and there was John Peel,
who's this huge influential figure who was recording guys like
(33:54):
you before anybody else.
Speaker 3 (33:57):
What to start with it with John Peel? John Peel,
what was a British DJ? You kind of emerged about
sixty seven, you know, with the rise of psychedelia, flower power,
and he had a show on the BBC. They had
a couple of sho he had a late night show
and he had a show where bands would come into
the studio and record, especially for that show. So you
(34:19):
come in and if you had a new record out,
you'd record, especially for the BBC, four songs and they'd
be broadcast and anybody and everybody. It was on that show.
You know, Pink Floyd had come in and spent hours
trying to reproduce their latest record, which they spent you know,
months on. But they manage it, you know. And his
(34:40):
producer was a great guy, Bernie Andrews did just a white,
wonderful character. The engineers were great, you know, and the
BBC somehow allowed this to happen in a sense that
you know, the BBC, we was very conservative, but let
things slip through sometimes, you know, like Munty Python's flying
cycle or something. I mean, they just allowed it all
to up and because they weren't really paying attention. Yes,
(35:02):
so that's the radio. In terms of places to play,
there were a lot of places to play. There were
clubs first of all, you know in London you had
half a dozen clubs where everybody would play. So that
was great because that was a kind of a fallback,
you know that that's income. And also at that time
every university in London I was basically free. There was
(35:25):
no fees for tuition, and also they all had entertainment
budgets from the then socialist government in Britain, so they'd be booking,
you know, these incredibly anti establishment bands like Soft Machine
and Pink Floyd, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, you know,
and fairpoorl Convention Thank you very much. So in a sense,
(35:46):
you know that this whole countercultural thing about was subsidized
by the British labor government. So Pink Floyd you had
probably owe their existence to Harold Wilson more than anybody else.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
They should thank him on the sleeve.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
I think I should have a special album dedicated to Horrid.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
Because you know, there's an argument in the United States
now but protectionism and tariffs and all these things. It's
interesting to think back at a time that the government
said no, you know, BBC had to use live performances.
They didn't want taped music because they're very strong unions
colleges needed to hire live musicians.
Speaker 3 (36:21):
Well, it's extruding. It was a thing that didn't last forever,
you know. Again, I mean that kind of changed. I
think the other good thing about that time was that
the record companies hadn't figured out what was going on.
You get these moments in music where the business is
lagging behind the creativity, and that's when things really pop,
(36:42):
you know, that's when stuff is exciting. And it took
them a while to catch up. The same thing happen
with punk, you know, but basically it took about two
years to figure out what the sex Pistoles were up to,
you know, but by which time a lot of stuff
had slipped through. So you had record companies scrambling to
sign everybody, and they pretty much did, I mean, any
(37:05):
any band you know, of any shape or size was
basically signed just in case, you know, in case they
were the next big thing. So that was good, you know.
So you have people making records that maybe wouldn't have
ever made records peep, like the Incredible String Band, and
they made, to my mind, fantastic records, but they might
never have been signed.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
How important was live performing for you back then? In
learning what it was?
Speaker 3 (37:29):
Everything? You know, I think it was and it still is.
The light Live performance is always the focus because it's
that thing that happens, is that transaction that happens between
a performer and the audience in which the performer is
almost just like like the conduit for creativity.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
Is that how it feels when you're up there?
Speaker 3 (37:50):
Yeah, a good day. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
You mentioned in your autobiography that I guess just because
of the kind of clubs you were playing in the demands,
you get pretty good at doing long solo.
Speaker 3 (38:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
I don't know if you watch the Get Back documentary,
but there's a scene that always sticks out to me,
which is George Harrison is talking about Eric Clapton. He said,
you know, he can just play and play and play,
and Harrison says, I can't do that. Yeah, he can
solo within the confines of a song.
Speaker 3 (38:17):
Oh absolutely, And George would kind of figure out a
solo as well. He wouldn't be improvising a solid necessarily,
but for use improvisations. Oh yeah. But that's as the
school that I came out of. That that was what
was not only permitted at the time, but expected at
the time. So if you're a band and you had
a guitar player in the band, the guitar player will
(38:37):
be expected to stretch out. Yeah. I mean that's the
same thing in the States, you know, with the psychedelic
bands from San Francisco, you know the quick Silver Messenger
Service or something. You know, there was no real restriction
on how long a solo it would be. It could
be two minutes, it could be half an hour. You know,
it depended on you know, probably the you know, the
drug balance of the band, and you know, how people
(38:59):
were feeling and how the audience were responding. You know.
So that's just the school I came out of. So,
you know, I go and watch bands and I'd see,
you know, it's a sep of people like Jeff Beck
and playing a ten minute solo, and I think, okay,
fair enough.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
And it never that was never intimidating. You always had
not the charms.
Speaker 3 (39:17):
I mean, it was something that we did because maybe
we hadn't rehearsed, you know, more than an hour of music.
Sometimes you'd be playing three sets at the aforementioned speakeasy
and you think, well, okay, third set, we'll just do
a longer solo and on this particular song, you know,
that'll be that'll be half a set. So that was
another consideration. But and I just got used to it,
(39:39):
you know, and in a sense, you know, into the seventies,
I'm still doing the same thing. Sometimes I'm hoping the
audience isn't falling asleep, of course, But but it just
became a thing, and after a while, you know, the
audience expects it. You know that the guitar nerds and
the audience are waiting for the guitar solos. You know.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
I guess it's hard for me to think of you
in that way because you are such a your songwriting
is so strong and your songs are so well constructed
as forms, and I tend to think of those players
not being great songwriters.
Speaker 3 (40:12):
Understand, Yeah, but I wouldn't do it in every song.
And some songs you almost want to have a surah
that's pretty much written, you know that you refer back to.
You might do little variations on it, but it's kind
of part of the structure. But then maybe a couple
of songs in an evening you might just let go
and figure that the emotion of the song will carry
(40:35):
you into the instrumental passage. You know, you start off
with a lyric and the lyric has a certain emotion
to it, and you think, well, I'm you know, maybe
you don't even think about it. You just go instrumentally
and if the band goes with you, that's great, And
you know, you might play for another ten minutes, and
it's still it's still musical. You know, you're not being
(40:58):
self indulgent necessarily. You know you're just being carried on
the way of whatever the song is. You know the
emotion of the song, and you kind of know when
you get to the end.
Speaker 2 (41:09):
One last break and we're back with Richard Thompson.
Speaker 1 (41:16):
We've talked a lot about your playing. When did the
writing start for you?
Speaker 3 (41:20):
Well, writing can be inspired by anything. It should be
inspired by anything. So it's good if you can have
the flexibility to start with a melody, or start with lyrics,
or start with a riff, start with a hook line,
just to get you started.
Speaker 1 (41:35):
You know, some people are collectors of folk music, but
some people you learn to sort of transform it. When
did you know? Was there a song a time you
thought I found my voice? I know this is mine now?
Speaker 3 (41:48):
Well, probably in the sixties. I'm playing with Fatball Convention
when we started to play traditional music with electric instruments,
and at that point I thought, okay that this is
this is where I begin in a sense, this is
this is a vocabulary I need to learn, and somehow
(42:09):
I'm going to stay with this and I'll add to
it and I subtract from it. But basically this is
this is going to be my musical vocabulary, and at
some point I think it gets more influenced by jazz
and by classical music harmonically. I'm not afraid to kind
of extend that vocabrary pretty much anywhere. But I think
if you've got a strong route, if you've got a
strong basis, yeah, then you're free to bring other things
(42:32):
into it and it's still your music. So you can
say that's a great idea in that Jamaican song, I'm
just gonna I'm going to grab that. I'm going to
incorporate it into what I do, and it won't sound Jamaican.
It I sound like what would I do. Yeah, I
think at a certain point you have a distinctive vocabulary
and songwriting as well. I mean, I mean, it's the
(42:52):
same point I figured out, like this, this is the
kind of song I want to write. This is a
song that has roots in where I come from and
and I'm not going to lose that. But I can
also I can change the rhythm sometimes, you know, I
can import a rhythm from somewhere else. I can use,
(43:14):
you know, this Indonesian something or other. You know, that's
an inspirational idea, you know, but you can kind of
make it yours. I think people have always done that.
Speaker 1 (43:23):
And you know, you had this just explosion of great
songs for Fairport, and then later when you're playing with
your then wife Linda, you were writing for two really
great singers. You're writing for Sandy Danny, and then Linda
tell me about how you went about that.
Speaker 3 (43:40):
Yeah, I think it is possible to write with somebody
else in mind. So you can say, I'm going to
tailor this song to someone else's voice, someone like Genesis Hall,
you know, with tailored to Sandy's key and to Sandy's
wonderful wide ranging abilities as a singer, you know, like
she could really do justice to it. So the whole
(44:02):
way the chorus goes and moves off to sing anything.
So I'd be quite comfortable doing something which would really
use all of our range. And for Linda, you know,
I'd write songs and then we would discuss them and
we say, okay, you should sing this one. Uh, you
know this one is it's more of a kind of
a male song where but perhaps I should be singing
(44:23):
this one. You know, it's it's more what we could
emotionally identify with.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
Really, you know, you are considered the two of you
are considered the authors of one of the great breakup
albums of all time. But you say that's actually not
the case. That wasn't the shootout the lights was coincidental.
Speaker 3 (44:40):
But I think it's a it's a journalistic lazy cliche evenstance.
Speaker 1 (44:44):
In some ways, I'm a lazy journalist. That's why I
use it.
Speaker 3 (44:48):
It wasn't aiming at that's you. But I'll take it
a previous you know, written reviews and stuff, and people
will like a bit of scandal anyway that don't exit,
so that they'll play that up. Plus, you know, the
songs were written, you know, a year, two years earlier
in some cases, so we've been living with the songs
(45:08):
for a long time. And I'm sure you know the
songs kind of subconsciously reflect on what's going on in
your lives. But you know, to me, it's just an
album of songs, some of which I still enjoy and
some of which I still perform. Yeah, it's funny when
you've got albums that are sort of you know, forty
five years old and fifty five years old and you're thinking,
(45:29):
oh gosh, I'm still playing this song, so it must
be a good song if you're still if you're still there.
Speaker 1 (45:35):
Did you always relate to them at the time, because
you've also written story songs, You've written songs about different
people other people. Yeah, in a sense, one of you know,
your big hits, fifty two Vincent black Lightning. It's not
about you, but in some sense it must have been
about you.
Speaker 3 (45:51):
Well, you know, the envy is about me. When I
was a kid, one of the neighbors had a vincent
black shadow which I thought was just the most beautiful
thing I've ever seen, this, absolutely incredible. So I remember
that when I started writing the song. No, you know,
I make things up and make up stories. That's a
(46:11):
valid thing to do, I think as a songwriter.
Speaker 1 (46:13):
Can I ask you about a few individual songs from
your solo career Waltson for Dreamers, which is just futiful?
Do you remember writing that?
Speaker 3 (46:23):
Yeah, started with the title, you know, I think just
as sometimes I just wrote right down titles, you know,
just for fun and preferably as you know, as streamer
consciously as I can. And again I think I'm making
something up, but maybe it's about me. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (46:40):
Can you talk about persuasion? Which saying with your son Teddy.
Speaker 3 (46:46):
Well, I read that an instrumental for a film, Oh yeah,
with a slightly different melody, and it's an Australian film.
And my friend Tim Finn, who was actually from New Zealand,
but I think he was living Australia at the time,
said I like that tune. Can I put some words
to it? So so we kind of sat down and,
(47:06):
you know, tried to co write a lyric, which is
a very difficult thing to do. So I said, Tim,
take it away and just run with it, because you know,
I'm struggling here to to to find some mutual experience,
so we can we can really write about So he
went away and wrote the lyric and he recorded it first,
(47:26):
and then I thought, well, I like this song, so
I'll do a version, And then I did a version
with Teddy and that those are very popular kind of
radio here actually, and whatever. Whenever I sit in with
with with Teddy or he sits same way with me
and we sing a few songs together, that's when the
audience wants to hear.
Speaker 1 (47:48):
You reminded me of your relationship with Tim Finn that
you've done a few songs with Crowded House, and you
did a very famous guitar solo on Sister Madly. It's
just so different from everything else on that album. Unexpected.
Speaker 3 (48:04):
Yeah. I did a lot of tours, were opening for
Credit House in Europe and in North America, and we
became good, good friends, you know, and I would usually
sit in on their set and we play System Madly
or something else you know at the time, and credits
are great because they'll they'll kind of do anything on stage.
(48:24):
I mean, they'll mess around that, they'll mess up their
set list, they don't really care, and it was always
great fun to play with them. So, you know, I
got to do the you know, the record, the System
Madly record. In fact, last May, I did a seventy
fifth birthday I just give my age away, Good Heavens
seventy fifth birthday constantly in London at the album Hall London,
(48:47):
and and Credit House came and played on that, so
you know, I just I just sat in with them
for a few songs, which was great, you know. So
we got to do Weather with you and Don't Dream
It's Over and Lovely, one of my favorite bands. I
think I think Neil is one of my favorite songwriters
(49:07):
without Squeeze on the on the bill as well, which
is my favorite British band.
Speaker 1 (49:14):
You did a great solo version of Tempted Yeah, which
I would think a song that there's no way you
could do that solo, but you was.
Speaker 3 (49:22):
I think we had somebody on percussion and when we
did it and I think Judith I was singing harmony.
He said so, so it can't be done. It's not
an easy song because that the harmony is really tricky.
Glenn till Brooker, who writes the melodies, you know that
he loves. He's kind of moving basslines and it's sort
of unexpected jazz. Course it could sneaking into a pop song.
Speaker 1 (49:42):
The very the very complex songs it is yeah yeah,
and his guitar playing is very.
Speaker 3 (49:48):
Guitar playing is complex. The lyric is complex, and the
usual rule of thumb which Squeeze ignore all the time,
but get away with it is you know, complex lyric,
simple melody, complex melody, simple lyric. That's the sort of
standard you know from the Brial building days or before
you know, but squeeze get it, get away with it
(50:10):
with the complex lyric complex melody. They just somehow they
do it, you know. So that's really nice kind of
(50:41):
shifts and lots of majors of mine minus the major stuff.
Speaker 1 (50:46):
I was going to mention you did a it was
a Kennedy Center honor or something for Joni Mitchell, and
you played Woodstock. Now the rumor was you weren't supposed
to play Woodstock that night.
Speaker 3 (50:59):
Yeah, the Stone Temple pilots Withdrew at the last minute.
I don't know if someone was ill or you know,
whatever reason. So I had now, which in a sense
is good. But because I didn't have time to think
about it, I thought I was, okay, well, you know,
let me pick a key. I'll do it in d
you know. And I tuned it to a modal tuning
(51:20):
as well. And I thought, well, I don't really know
the tune. You know, the lyrics are going to be
on the auto que, so I'll I'll get the lyrics
from there, but I kind of know them. But sometimes
you think think you know something and you don't. And
I just went went out cold, and you know, I
didn't have time to get nervous. I didn't have time
(51:40):
time to think about what I was doing, you know,
I didn't have time to think there's journey out there
on the balcony, So you know, sometimes you just had
to shut stuff out and concentrate. So that was good
and people seem to respond to that very well. But
basically I was just making it up, you know, honestly.
Speaker 1 (51:58):
So tell me, for steners, you say it's a modal tuning,
what do you mean by that?
Speaker 3 (52:02):
That look like a dad gut down d D.
Speaker 1 (52:08):
Does that mean it relates to a particular mode or
when you say modal.
Speaker 3 (52:13):
It's called a modal chuning. I think because you have
suspensions in it. You know, yeah, you could, you'd have
a modal tuning with a second in it, but this
one keeps saif keep that going, that's right. But for yeah,
(52:45):
for whatsuck, I just.
Speaker 4 (52:48):
Charted. God, you was walking a lot, that's me.
Speaker 3 (52:53):
Where are you going? You're telling me? So, you know,
the open tuning gave me a lot of leeway in
terms of whatever the hell I was going to sing
us a melody and how I was going to fit
the words. But I got away with it. You know,
it's not nice sometimes. Yeah, we're professional musicians here, We're
(53:13):
supposed to be able to do this. Kind of stuff
we're supposed to able to rise to the moment.
Speaker 1 (53:17):
I did want to ask you about a couple more songs.
First of all, fifty two vincent black Lightning, which is
always a great moment in your concerts. What did what
went into that? We talked about the lyrics. It was
just envy what went into the well? It sounds like
a traditional rock and roll song in some ways, but
(53:39):
it's got a very different feel.
Speaker 3 (53:41):
Yes, so it's I mean the tune is very very simple,
nacial melody.
Speaker 1 (53:55):
Just a little bit of it. So we can tell
me what your Meandian.
Speaker 3 (53:59):
Read to James, that's a fun motor by could feel
special in his social.
Speaker 5 (54:09):
Life, says James, too, red boy, what's up to you?
Speaker 4 (54:16):
It's an some black light in nineteen fifty two, and
I've seen you in the corners.
Speaker 3 (54:23):
I'm cafes.
Speaker 4 (54:24):
It seems red hair and black leather my favorite color scheme.
Speaker 3 (54:30):
And they put him off behind and down to box.
Speaker 4 (54:37):
Here that.
Speaker 1 (54:55):
Yeah, so I see, so seize the base note. But
you're now you're using uh capo as well. But but
the tune is in G.
Speaker 3 (55:06):
Well, it's it's a nominal G well, that's it's not
B flat. Yeah. Yeah, it's just kind of c G tuning.
So it works well for you know, the key of uh,
you know where am I? Okay? The brief like Cad
and the Beef, And I thought I'd invented this tuning,
(55:30):
of course, and I've discovered that they've been using it
in Hawaii for you know, the last hundred years.
Speaker 1 (55:36):
Well, they didn't write that song, but.
Speaker 3 (55:38):
But in Hawaii there's something like two hundred guitar tunings.
You know that they basically explored everything. So so it's
it's easy to be late to the game.
Speaker 1 (55:48):
There's so much more I want to ask you, but
it's you've been very, very generous.
Speaker 3 (55:52):
I have been incredibly generous.
Speaker 1 (55:53):
Yes, you have been incredibly generous, very English, which I appreciate.
Speaker 3 (55:57):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (55:57):
And what's what's next? You did a great album last
Ship to Shore.
Speaker 3 (56:01):
Yeah, I keep writing stuff. I don't know where it
comes from, but I'm still writing songs, and I'm excited
about about the songs I'm writing, and I'm thinking I
want to get back in the studio and put on
another record as soon as possible.
Speaker 1 (56:14):
What an absolute treat.
Speaker 3 (56:15):
Thank you very much. To date.
Speaker 2 (56:19):
An episode description, you'll find a link to a playlist
of our favorite Richard Thompson tracks. Be sure to check
out YouTube dot com slash Broken Record podcast to see
all of our video interviewers, and be sure to follow
us on Instagram at the Broken Record Pod. You can
follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is
produced and edited by Leah Rose, with marketing help from
(56:40):
Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer is Ben Tolliday.
Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries and if
you like this show, please remember to share, rate, and
review us on your podcast app. Our theme music's back
any beats. I'm justin Richmond.
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Richard Thompson is a London born guitar virtuoso whose careers
started in nineteen sixty seven as part of the groundbreaking
folk band Fairport Convention. The following decade, Richard formed a
duo with his former wife, Lynda Thompson, and together they
released six albums, including the critically acclaimed I Want to
See the Bright Lights Tonight and my personal favorite pour
(00:32):
Down Like Silver. Richard then struck out on his own,
writing songs that I've since been covered by artists like
Robert plant of his Costello and Bonnie Ray. On today's episode,
Bruce Helim talks to Richard about his love of traditional
Scottish music and how he's reworked.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Old folk songs over the years.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Richard also plays examples of his unique playing style on
the guitar and talks about the time he played alongside
Jimmy Hendrix. Is broken record, Real musicians, real conversations. Here's
Bruce Hadlam with Richard Thompson.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
You talked in your book about a big event for
you is when you heard the band's first album. It
helped reassure you that you're looking at Scottish music, particularly
in English and Irish, Yeah made sense. Can you talk
about what it was like to hear that record?
Speaker 3 (01:27):
Well, the band's first album came out at a time
of sort of high psychedelia, you know, the San Francisco band,
So you know, some of which I thought were great,
Somemmer which I thought really were not very good, but
there was a kind of a looseners to it, and
I kind of a kind of a drugged noodling anyway,
you know, that was the provading culture at the time,
(01:47):
and when the band came along, it was kind of
a shotgend oft that the short haircuts for you know, wow,
you know, gosh, people with short haircutsing. So suddenly Y
had this music that this seemed very honest, and it
seemed very down to that, and it seemed rooted in
so many American music forms, but successfully rooted, successfully continuing
(02:08):
those traditions. I said, Yeah, you had gospel, you had RM,
but you had blues your country, you had jazz, all
perfectly blended and musicians who could play that stuff in
their sleep. But that's somehow they'd learned how to play
this stuff really really well for a bunch of basically Canadians,
you know. But plus you know, leave On from Arkansas. Yeah,
you had three great singers in that band, and you
(02:31):
had a you know, juniors keyboard player and sax player
in Garth Gods and God Rest Society just passed away.
And you had a great guitar player in Robbie Robertson,
and a great rhythm section, I mean one of the
best rhythm sections in the history of rock music anyway
in Levon and Rick Danko Ridanka is still one of
(02:54):
my favorite three bass players.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
What interests me when you when you talk about particularly
that record, is you share something with the band that
not a lot of writers do, which is that you
write music that seems both very old and contemporary at
the same time.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
You know, people always say, well, the band songs sound
like they could have been written a hundred years ago,
and I think not quite, because they sound modern too.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Yeah, and I can't think of many writers who really
pull that off.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Well, you know, you have to know your history, I
think first of all, which the band obviously did. I mean,
they knew their roots. You know, they jammed with Sunny
Boy Williamson. You know that they really understood certainly, you know,
rock rock and roll music, and as writers, particularly Robbie.
You know, it was a history buff you know, so
(03:49):
perhaps almost to a fault because I think some of
the lates stuff is a bit more labored. Things like
the night they drove off Dixie Down. I mean that's
just a piece of history.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
It started in the library. Yeah, okay, So how did
you go back to investigate Scottish music? You grew up
with some, but there's a whole history there. Yeah, and
this is going to sound like a naive question. Are
there great resources that you could go to? Was it
just old records when you started looking back to research
(04:18):
this stuff? What were you looking at?
Speaker 3 (04:21):
Various sources. You've got a great resource in London called
the Social Sharp House, which has a big library of
traditional music and there's what champions of traditional music and
preservas of traditional music. So you can go there and
look stuff up, you know. Yeah, you can get the
Child ballads, you know, the five volumes collected by Francis
James Child, which has like, you know, four hundred English,
(04:45):
Irish Scottish ballads in there. That's another great resource. There
are people who seeing this stuff. It's like a living tradition.
I mean, if you got out to Aberdeenshire in Scotland
in the nineteen seventies. You could have set in the
caravan of Lucy Stewart, you know, as many collectors did,
(05:05):
Kenny Goldstein and Shirley Collins. They all went up to
to to Lucy Stewart because she had an incredible memory
as a repository of traditional music. And after Kenny Goldstein left,
apparently she said, you know, he didn't he didn't get
a half of what I know, so a lot of
(05:28):
stuff might have passed away with her. You know, we
don't really know. So you've got all those resources. And
we learned a lot from people like Alor Lloyd, who
is who was another great musicologist who specialized in traditional
music and also a singer. And what we get Burt
on the end of the phone and say, Bert, we
(05:49):
got this song in Mattie Groves, you know, and we're
missing we like a better verse three. You know, well
what have you got would you know?
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Then?
Speaker 3 (05:58):
So he said, oh yeah, well if you take this
one from this source and that blah blah, you know.
So in a sense what we were compiling ballads from
all over the place really to come up with a
version that we felt really, you really did it, you know,
it really told the story. One of the great things
about some of those old songs it is how colorful
(06:19):
they are in a sense that they describe things in
a very colorful way, in a very immediate way that
suits you know, a rock band actually could quite well.
It suits an electric treatment quite well.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Were there songs that just resisted it you thought, no,
this song, it just belongs to another age. We can't.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
Yeah. Sometimes, yeah, I think sometimes there was a feeling,
you know, that the song was too pastoral and that
wasn't really our lives in the twentieth century, you know,
where we were kind of urban nights or suburban nights and
a song about you know, you know, I Sow the
seeds of love. I think we eventually recorded a bit,
but I was a bit reluctant to do it because
(06:59):
I thought it's too you know, it's too soft. You
know that there are better songs that there are kind
of industrial songs, there are work songs that would fit
the genre, but it would fit you know, the the
electric band setting better. But you know, something like like
Magic Roads. It's just that it's such great language. The
laghage is fantastic you know, you know, a grave, a grave.
(07:23):
Lord rold cried to put these lovers in but bury
my lady at the top. She was of noble kin.
You know, it's really beautiful, clever, you know.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
So did that that in a sense gave you your
vocabulary for your own music?
Speaker 3 (07:38):
I think partly?
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Yeah, for sure, you're known as a very depressing writer.
Of course, because so many of your songs are about
love a band and love scorned being alone.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Well I suppose. I mean, you know thematically, you write
about what you know, and you write about you know,
human states that have been written about for hundreds of years,
so that there are a kind of a tradition. There's
an overlap. But I'd be very interested. I'd be very sorry.
I'm influenced by the language of traditional music.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Now when you get these songs, they wouldn't come with harmonies.
Were they mostly melodies?
Speaker 3 (08:15):
Like?
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Did you have to re harmonize a lot of these things?
Speaker 3 (08:18):
Yes? We did.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Yeah, American music, I guess, because so much is influenced
by blues. Just it's got such a strong resolution, you know,
just heads towards that final chord, and I find a
lot of the music you were playing a lot of
the folk music, it sort of expands, it doesn't have
that that same drive towards sort of the final resolution.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
I think, well, I think people, you know, people like
Davey Graham, people like Martin Cathy developed a way of
accompanying traditional music in a way that reflected more what
you're hearing a solo vocal performance, so that a lack
of resolution. And the way you did that is through
(09:03):
suspensions really you know, through not resolving. So that's the
tuning that the Davey Graham I think it was the
first person to come up with. It's not onlike a
Clarence actually banjo tuning from the Appalachians in the nineteen
(09:25):
you know, thirties onwards. And what is the it's it's
basically D A D A D G A D.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
So he was the first to use like a dead
get suspension.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
Yeah yeah, it's.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
A suspension because it's a it's a sixth yeah right yeah, okay.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
So that some may start that when it may finished
that way as well, which is good, which is just
leaves it open. I mean, it doesn't resolve anything, you know,
is it for you know, something like she moves with
a fair.
Speaker 4 (10:04):
My young love said to me, my parents will, Ma,
my father will like you for your lack a harp.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
Come.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
And she let her hand on me, and then she did.
Speaker 5 (10:26):
Say, what will not long?
Speaker 3 (10:51):
Yeah? Sorry, kind of rings over. You have a nice
thing about those kind of open tunings is if you're
a solo guitarist, you get a bit size, you get
a bit more volume out of the guitar. But because
so many notes are ringing over, gives the illusion that
you're a best guitar player than you actually are.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
I'm going to remember that now. Some of your songs
walking on the wires a song, Yeah, I think of that,
and I know it does resolve in the end, but
it almost feels like it could end on the fourth,
it could end on other tones. The Great Valerio is
another one to me that it feels very much like that.
(11:28):
You seem to like these songs that don't have the
just they just have a different I don't know if
it's the form that's different. I don't quite know how
to describe it.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
Yeah, well know you mean, and I do like that,
you know, I like that like a resolution in a sense.
But again, I think it all comes from vocal music.
I think it comes from hearing somebody sing a song
unaccompanied and you imply what the harmony is. And if
you're schooled in you know, you get kind of Mozart
kind of harmony or something, then you're going to accompany
(12:01):
it that way. If you come from a more traditional background,
or if you're Mars and Carthy or Davey Graham, you're
going to interpret it in a different way. You're going
to interpret the harmony as something else, or you're just
going to add a drone to the whole thing and
and just just leave it floating.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Now, do you use a lot of drone notes?
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (12:20):
Does that? Does that come from bagpipe?
Speaker 3 (12:22):
Yeah? Pretty much.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
And so when you're doing that, do you do you
try and you try and use an open string for
the drone?
Speaker 3 (12:28):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (12:29):
And is it always the tonic or.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
They're practicularly it's either going to be the G or
the D.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
It's funny because in you know, a lot of jazz,
it'll be the high note will be uh, particularly in
the piano. Yeah, that's how they'll harmonize a lot of
like little runs and things like you'd have you'll have
the high tonic. And then do you ever use like
the high e for.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
The well, yeah you can, you can do do it
the other way around that exactly.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
So yeah, you also use you use an enormous number
(13:55):
of like trills on your Is that again the bagpipe influence.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
It's traditionally influence you bagpipes, you know, Scottish, Irish fiddle players,
accordion players. There's a lot of grace notes, a lot
of extra notes around the note that that would be
a big part of the expression or where you're playing.
In something like a dance tune, that's pretty much sets
you know, this is the tune that, this is how
you play it. To make it more interesting, you might
(14:23):
add more flourishes and bits and pieces, you know that
(14:45):
kind of you know that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Well, is there any and I don't even know if
the harp is a is a Celtic instrument?
Speaker 3 (14:57):
Sure is? You know the original Western European and instrument
for a companying voice was there was the harp, you know,
the small harp the ballad hop right, So people like
Richard the first Richard the Lionheart, who was a singer songwriter,
thank you very much. His mother was Eleanor Vakatain, who
was a champion of the arts. But if you were
a king or a courtier or something. Among your accomplishments
(15:20):
besides like you know, murdering people, you know, like spiking
people through with a sword or was you had to
dance and you had to sing, and in some cases
you could be a songwriter. Henry the eighth was a songwriter.
Oh yeah. Also I would have accompanied himself on the
on the harp. He wrote songs like black is the
color of my true love's hair, which I'm sure it
(15:41):
is never off your turntable pastime with good company, and he.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Would stroke it out and say blonde is the color?
Speaker 3 (15:49):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, yeah, so we still got Adde
Bollyn's head anywhere. Yeah, check the hair color. Yeah. Didn't
write green sleeves, so that came a little late, but
that was accredited to him for a while. So yeah.
So if you if you're if you're a king, courts
you singer songwriter.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Like all great songwriters, he took credit for things he
didn't actually write. Well, when you're king, very country. Yeah,
when you're king, you say, oh, I think I wrote
this one. Of course you did, your majesty. Is there
any harp influence in your playing?
Speaker 3 (16:24):
Yeah? Any any kind of guitar or covered with with
your finger picking. It's a very hard like and if
if you use, if you use those kind of strings
that ring over, you know, those kind.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
Of tell me what you mean that when you say
strings that are ringing over.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
Well, you know, like like I see, I suppose to
call straight flat picking more jazz style.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
So for people who would be casual listeners, they might
think you were born somewhere on a Scottish glen to goatherds.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Well, that sounds romantic.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
It does, as it turns out. It turns out I'm
really from London, suburban London. Suburban London suburbs are a
wonderful place. It all comes from the suburbs. The Rolling Stones,
the Beatles, inner sense come from the suburbs, you know,
the Kings come from the suburbs fairly close to where
I grew up as well.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
Yeah. Yeah, but my father was Scottish, so that's always
been a strand in the music, you know, and as
a kid I was kind of transfixed by Scottish music,
but by things like bagpipes, you know, hearing bagpipes outdoors
where where you get that that kind of Doppler effect
or that kind of phasing thing. You know.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Oh, even as a kid, you like that.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
Well, you know, just one of the first music I
ever heard was probably going with my parents up to
Edinburgh Castle. I'm watching the military tattoo, you know, with
these incredible pipe bands. I suppose I could have been
attracted to the incredible drumming, but it was it was
more the you know, Scottish use of melody. I think
hit me for very young, my melody and drone, which
(18:23):
you know, it's an old It's an old human thing,
isn't it. You know, in Western European music, you know
that they developed kind of the chord a compliment, you know,
but a lot of cultures didn't go that way though,
that they just had the drone and the melody and
a lot of instidments playing in Unison, that kind of thing,
(18:44):
which I also find very attractive. Although I do like
harmony as well, I like everything.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
Is there something distinctive about Scottish melodies? Are there certain
tones they emphasize?
Speaker 3 (18:57):
You know that there's an interesting Scottish use of the
pentatonic scale. And you know, if if you think of
country music where that comes from, a lot of it
comes from Scottish music. The Scots were a notable ethnic
group in the Appalachians and that you know that that
that classic country you know, major pentatonic scale do you do?
(19:21):
You do?
Speaker 4 (19:21):
You do that?
Speaker 3 (19:23):
That's all over country music and it's all over Scottish
music as well. And so so that there's that pentatonic scale,
there's a there's another Scottish pentatonic scale which doesn't have
a third in it. There's no major or minor.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
I see, So how would you if you were going
to harmonize that?
Speaker 3 (19:56):
You know, the classic way to harmonize Scottish music is
basically to use the the root called and one, so
I k d you use the sea as well as.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
There's almost a mixed Ildien sound.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
Yeah, and it's kind of I would say it's unique
to Scottish music, but it's it's it's fairly unusual and
it's almost a bit lonesome in a sense, you know, Yeah, yeah,
you get this kind of spaciousness. Well, work with that
particular scale, I find which it was suitable for the backpipe,
you know, which is out there you know playing on yeah,
(20:35):
up in the mountains or you know, at the end
of a loch or something. So you know, it's it's
a dimension of music that struck me very young, and
it kind of stayed with me as well, even as
I learn more about harmony and I learned about you know,
you know, ponlytonalism and twelve tone and dissonance and uh
that those basic kind of like drone in the fifth
(20:57):
or or you know that there's still very compeling.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
We'll be back with more from Richard Thompson and Bruce
Headlam after the break.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
When did you first pick up a guitar?
Speaker 3 (21:23):
I think I was probably ten. Yeah, my father was
was an amateur guitar player. You know, no, they're not
actually very good, and one day he bought him a
guitar one of his old army mates. We worked in
a guitar shop in at the West End of London,
and I had this damaged guitar, like the side had
split open in transit, and my father, being I would work,
(21:45):
you know, glued it up and thought this is great,
I'm going to play it. But I grabbed it before
anybody else could get their hands on it and basically
commandeered it. And you know, at that time, you know,
it's kind of a you know, we're talking about nineteen sixty,
you know, rockn roll where it was still around. I
had an older sister who had Buddy Holly Records and
(22:05):
Elvis Records and June Vincent and Jerry D Lewis.
Speaker 4 (22:10):
You know.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
So you know, the guitar was a very hip thing.
And also in Britain you had an instrumental bank called
the Shadows, which they were kind of British Adventures if
you like. But actually much better players are much much
better recorded.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
I wanted to ask you about the Shadows because they
loomed so large. Oh they did in England. People here
would know their stuff because they associated with surf music.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
And Canada as well. Actually, you know, a more local
hotspot for for the Shadows, was that, right. Neil Younger
claims he was a huge Shadows fan, okay, and you
can hear in his playing actually it's used to that,
you know, the wammy bar.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
And everything, right, yeah, and you like them as well well, yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
I mean it was a great sound, of very deductive sound,
and it was something that you could get together with
with your with your friends and and that was the
kind of the beginning of playing in a group, you know,
of learning from each other, which is what happens when
you joined a banner. You kind of pick stuff up
(23:12):
from the other people in the band and you slowly
spiral upwards. We hope you know as musicians. But yeah,
the Shadows were very influential on every body of a
certain age. I mean really, you know, if you speak
to Jimmy Page or somebody, you know, he was like, oh, yeah,
I hate Marvin you know the Shadows.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Yeah, could he play a strat well, well.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
The story is at that time that there was a
band on American imports of instruments for some reasons, so
you couldn't buy a Fender, you couldn't buy Gibson. So
Cliff Richard, who the Shadows, used to back well when
I was at the States because he had a hit
record here and and he brought back the first actual
Fender stratocaster to go into England and he came to
(23:54):
Hank so that was a big thing. And then they
all got kitted out with fenders, you know, so exciting stuff.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
This is has such a distinct, beautiful sound.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
Yeah, yeah, it's all about tone, and you used you know,
like these so fairly primitive these days, but but you know,
to tape eco device it's for portable tapeco machines to
give him a bit of extra reverb.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
There are other players that you've talked about, and one
and again not someone people over here have listened to
is Davey Graham.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
Yeah, he's kind of the first guy through the door,
you know. But maybe mid mid fifties. Davy was acoustic
guitar pler, and I should stress that first of all.
And he was playing kind of a blended style. He
was playing something that had Scottish re roots and he
was part Scottish West Indian roots here he was got
(24:49):
part Guyanese and you know, throwing in jazz kind of
throneous monk and stuff, you know, and kind of blending
it all together with a bit of you maybe Morocco
music into Morocco and kind of soaked up a bit
of music down there, and it kind of blended into
this style that that kind of stayed in a sense.
You know that that influenced Bert Jansch. So Bert jan
(25:12):
had a kind of you know, Scottish English traditional style
with a bit of blues thrown in. You know who
was Martin Carthy, you know, influenced but by by David Graham.
He was just kind of pioneer and in a sense
he was kind of all over the place, you know.
You know, you know you had to kind of discipline
him to to make sense of his music, you know,
(25:34):
because he just sit down and say, oh this is
you heard this tune from Marks, you know, blah blah
blah blah blah. And I said, oh, this is a
this is yeah, this is Miles Davis. You know, he
just be you know, all over the place. So to
sit him down and and and have him more disciplined
but was quite a thing, you know. And you know
he was junkie, you know. Yeah, he had a lot
(25:55):
of issues and it's life. But but you know I
saw him from time to time. I mean, he's a
good man, good man.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
It strikes me that that you're a more disciplined player
that like when you talk about chance putting sort of
blues in Scottish, you don't do that as much like
when you're playing a more bluesy style, which is a
more rock style for you, not you don't really do blues.
You tend to play a little more formally. Is that true?
Speaker 3 (26:22):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (26:22):
Or is that unfair?
Speaker 4 (26:23):
Well?
Speaker 3 (26:24):
I think not so much. Formally it's different. You know.
I think I realized in about nineteen sixty seven that
there's a lot of competition in London for blues guitar players,
you know. You know, but in my school back yet
we were playing blues r and be all that kind
of stuff. But at a certain point, I thought, you know,
you know, yeah, you've got a piece of green out.
You've got Rick Klatton, You've got Mick Taylor. You know,
(26:48):
you've got all all these blues players and it is
a crowded field and I'm just naming, like, you know,
three of them, but there's like twenty, you know, just
just in life.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
I think there's twenty named Jimmy yeah alone.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
Yeah. So so I thought, well, you know, I'm really
going to be different. You know, the the you know,
the blues and I says that they don't have a
place in my vocabulary, but but Kelsey music does. And
you're in Kelsey music. You also you have you have
bent notes, you know, you have a kind of soulful
kind of phrasing, you know. So I thought, well, I'll
(27:20):
I'll exploit that more than the blues. Inevitably, I've got
technique that probably comes from BB King. I mean that's
just something I learned at school. You know, there is
you know, if you're brato, you know kind is your
vibrato like his? No, But everybody's just different. But yeah, so.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
You made you mentioned you mentioned bent notes in Scottish music,
Well what tones are you bending to and from?
Speaker 3 (27:46):
Then? From Scottish Irish music, there's more bends in Irish
music for sure, mostly going up to the but bending
up to the seventh, right, bending up to the octave,
bending up to this to a second, I.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
See, And that's more Scottish, that's more Irish and more
Irish pardan me is that is that because the instruments
they were using.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
Yeah, you know, Scottish pipers now under the influencer of
Irish pipers bend notes they're they never used to. But
the bending is it's more of a vocal tradition in Scotland.
Like work songs in the Hebridies, you know, you have
you have more notes that get the kind of bend
up to the note that not much going down, but
a lot of times bending up to the note. You know. So,
(28:39):
so I tried to develop a different vocabulary. Really, I
didn't want to sound like all these other blues players.
I've always thought it was kind of cultural exploitation and somehow,
you know, all these white guitar players in London, you know,
but but buying chess records. Never been to Chicago, you know,
never been to Mississippi. But you know they love the music,
(28:59):
absoutely love the me is it? But I thought, well
is that enough? You know? Is it enough to love it?
At what point? Are you just like like a kind
of a slavish imitator, you know, a dilet hands, you know,
a colonial exploit. This is all go through my head
when I'm like, you know, eighteen years old, you know,
I thought, well, well, you know, you know, the interesting
(29:19):
stuff for me, like when you know, when the Yardbirds
were playing, I'm a man, you know, I thought that
this is you know, pathetic. You know when you think
of the nobility of the original version, you know than
the Muddy Waters version, It's like it's just got sexual authority.
It's such a nobility to it.
Speaker 4 (29:37):
You know.
Speaker 3 (29:37):
The yard Bud's just sounded like little boys, you know,
and they couldn't do the feel, you know that the
feel of the rhythm section, it was all wrong. But
you know, but I thought when the yardbirds did original songs,
it was far more interesting when they did for Your
Love or something. Thought well, this is actually a really
good pop song and the blues influences coming in, and
that's fine, you know, I thought that was a more
(29:57):
interesting use of influences.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
In your book, you mentioned being on stage I think
just once with Jimmy Hendrix.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
Oh but probably three times.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
And what was that like.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
We used to play this late night club called the
Speakeasy in London, and you know, birds would roll in,
you know, usually after midnight from playing out of town.
You know, they come back from Birmingham, my magister, and
they'd be hungry so that they come in and to
eat really but there was always a live band on
(30:29):
and there was a dance floor. We used to play there,
you know, a couple of times a month at least,
you know, and Jimmy would, you know, about one o'clock,
two o'clock in the morning, after a few drinks, would
want to get up and play. So you just sit
in with us, which was fantastic. Bit intimidating, of course,
but it was a nice experience and he was a
(30:50):
very sweet man in my.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Experience, did he because he played a left guitar, right.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
He just take my guitar and then turn it upside
down and play with great facility either way, you know really.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
Yeah, did he string his guitar that way or did he?
I'm not sure he strung it.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
I mean for a left handed guitar player. Yeah, but
he could play mine basically upside you know, he turned
it upside down and figure out everything in the reverse
genius will or will.
Speaker 1 (31:19):
Out he gave it back to you. Did you just
smash it and leave? That's quite something.
Speaker 3 (31:23):
No, he didn't set fire to it. He didn't smash it.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
But no, I was thinking, maybe you did. Well, I
can't do that anymore.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
Well, think with Hendrix. I mean you could kind of
figure out what he was doing, you know, harmonically, it
wasn't that that uh, you know, it was sophisticated. There
was basically a blues play. But he could always up
the game. You know, he could always play with his teeth,
you could have sex with the guitar, you know, he
could you know, play behind his back. You know, he
had all the tricks that he'd learned, you know, playing
(31:52):
on the chitpland circuit in America. But yeah, it was
an interesting presence on the on the London music scene,
and I think he intimidated all those guitar players, the
Claptains of Jeff Becks, so that they were totally intimidated
because in a sense, you know that they've been learning
off records and they developed this way of playing the
blues and R and B. And then this guy turns up.
(32:14):
He's kind of the real thing, you know, and he
can take it to another level. You know, they're all,
you know, they're utterly intimidated. That's a great story of
I think one of Jimmy's first bigger performances in London,
and it was the week that Sergeant Pepper came out
and all the guitar players turned up, Pete Townsend, Jeff Beck,
(32:38):
Eric Clapton, I think Paul McCartney was there as well.
There was sitting in the audience, you know. And of
course Jimmy's opening song is Sergeant Pepper's Learning Hearts Club,
but which he learned knowing that that there'll be a
beatle in the in the audience, so of course he
like destroys it. You know. He plays it pretty straight
for about a chorus and then and all hell, let's
(33:01):
loosen and he goes into his stratophoric Jimmy and at
the end of the song, you know, these guitars can
pretty out of churning. He's just destroyed the tuning. So
he says, Hey, Eric, are you out there? Meany Clapton
And it's a little sort of puny for yes, and
(33:24):
he says, could you come and tune this for me? Oh? Yeah? Anyway? Yeah,
So yeah, he was He was the presence on the scene.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
What was it about London? I guess England at that point.
I mean the Beatles and the Stones are sort of
you know, they broke the ice. Yeah, but there seemed
to be so many You were playing all the time.
There were clubs, there were colleges, and there was John Peel,
who's this huge influential figure who was recording guys like
(33:54):
you before anybody else.
Speaker 3 (33:57):
What to start with it with John Peel? John Peel,
what was a British DJ? You kind of emerged about
sixty seven, you know, with the rise of psychedelia, flower power,
and he had a show on the BBC. They had
a couple of sho he had a late night show
and he had a show where bands would come into
the studio and record, especially for that show. So you
(34:19):
come in and if you had a new record out,
you'd record, especially for the BBC, four songs and they'd
be broadcast and anybody and everybody. It was on that show.
You know, Pink Floyd had come in and spent hours
trying to reproduce their latest record, which they spent you know,
months on. But they manage it, you know. And his
(34:40):
producer was a great guy, Bernie Andrews did just a white,
wonderful character. The engineers were great, you know, and the
BBC somehow allowed this to happen in a sense that
you know, the BBC, we was very conservative, but let
things slip through sometimes, you know, like Munty Python's flying
cycle or something. I mean, they just allowed it all
to up and because they weren't really paying attention. Yes,
(35:02):
so that's the radio. In terms of places to play,
there were a lot of places to play. There were
clubs first of all, you know in London you had
half a dozen clubs where everybody would play. So that
was great because that was a kind of a fallback,
you know that that's income. And also at that time
every university in London I was basically free. There was
(35:25):
no fees for tuition, and also they all had entertainment
budgets from the then socialist government in Britain, so they'd be booking,
you know, these incredibly anti establishment bands like Soft Machine
and Pink Floyd, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, you know,
and fairpoorl Convention Thank you very much. So in a sense,
(35:46):
you know that this whole countercultural thing about was subsidized
by the British labor government. So Pink Floyd you had
probably owe their existence to Harold Wilson more than anybody else.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
They should thank him on the sleeve.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
I think I should have a special album dedicated to Horrid.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
Because you know, there's an argument in the United States
now but protectionism and tariffs and all these things. It's
interesting to think back at a time that the government
said no, you know, BBC had to use live performances.
They didn't want taped music because they're very strong unions
colleges needed to hire live musicians.
Speaker 3 (36:21):
Well, it's extruding. It was a thing that didn't last forever,
you know. Again, I mean that kind of changed. I
think the other good thing about that time was that
the record companies hadn't figured out what was going on.
You get these moments in music where the business is
lagging behind the creativity, and that's when things really pop,
(36:42):
you know, that's when stuff is exciting. And it took
them a while to catch up. The same thing happen
with punk, you know, but basically it took about two
years to figure out what the sex Pistoles were up to,
you know, but by which time a lot of stuff
had slipped through. So you had record companies scrambling to
sign everybody, and they pretty much did, I mean, any
(37:05):
any band you know, of any shape or size was
basically signed just in case, you know, in case they
were the next big thing. So that was good, you know.
So you have people making records that maybe wouldn't have
ever made records peep, like the Incredible String Band, and
they made, to my mind, fantastic records, but they might
never have been signed.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
How important was live performing for you back then? In
learning what it was?
Speaker 3 (37:29):
Everything? You know, I think it was and it still is.
The light Live performance is always the focus because it's
that thing that happens, is that transaction that happens between
a performer and the audience in which the performer is
almost just like like the conduit for creativity.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
Is that how it feels when you're up there?
Speaker 3 (37:50):
Yeah, a good day. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
You mentioned in your autobiography that I guess just because
of the kind of clubs you were playing in the demands,
you get pretty good at doing long solo.
Speaker 3 (38:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
I don't know if you watch the Get Back documentary,
but there's a scene that always sticks out to me,
which is George Harrison is talking about Eric Clapton. He said,
you know, he can just play and play and play,
and Harrison says, I can't do that. Yeah, he can
solo within the confines of a song.
Speaker 3 (38:17):
Oh absolutely, And George would kind of figure out a
solo as well. He wouldn't be improvising a solid necessarily,
but for use improvisations. Oh yeah. But that's as the
school that I came out of. That that was what
was not only permitted at the time, but expected at
the time. So if you're a band and you had
a guitar player in the band, the guitar player will
(38:37):
be expected to stretch out. Yeah. I mean that's the
same thing in the States, you know, with the psychedelic
bands from San Francisco, you know the quick Silver Messenger
Service or something. You know, there was no real restriction
on how long a solo it would be. It could
be two minutes, it could be half an hour. You know,
it depended on you know, probably the you know, the
drug balance of the band, and you know, how people
(38:59):
were feeling and how the audience were responding. You know.
So that's just the school I came out of. So,
you know, I go and watch bands and I'd see,
you know, it's a sep of people like Jeff Beck
and playing a ten minute solo, and I think, okay,
fair enough.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
And it never that was never intimidating. You always had
not the charms.
Speaker 3 (39:17):
I mean, it was something that we did because maybe
we hadn't rehearsed, you know, more than an hour of music.
Sometimes you'd be playing three sets at the aforementioned speakeasy
and you think, well, okay, third set, we'll just do
a longer solo and on this particular song, you know,
that'll be that'll be half a set. So that was
another consideration. But and I just got used to it,
(39:39):
you know, and in a sense, you know, into the seventies,
I'm still doing the same thing. Sometimes I'm hoping the
audience isn't falling asleep, of course, But but it just
became a thing, and after a while, you know, the
audience expects it. You know that the guitar nerds and
the audience are waiting for the guitar solos. You know.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
I guess it's hard for me to think of you
in that way because you are such a your songwriting
is so strong and your songs are so well constructed
as forms, and I tend to think of those players
not being great songwriters.
Speaker 3 (40:12):
Understand, Yeah, but I wouldn't do it in every song.
And some songs you almost want to have a surah
that's pretty much written, you know that you refer back to.
You might do little variations on it, but it's kind
of part of the structure. But then maybe a couple
of songs in an evening you might just let go
and figure that the emotion of the song will carry
(40:35):
you into the instrumental passage. You know, you start off
with a lyric and the lyric has a certain emotion
to it, and you think, well, I'm you know, maybe
you don't even think about it. You just go instrumentally
and if the band goes with you, that's great, And
you know, you might play for another ten minutes, and
it's still it's still musical. You know, you're not being
(40:58):
self indulgent necessarily. You know you're just being carried on
the way of whatever the song is. You know the
emotion of the song, and you kind of know when
you get to the end.
Speaker 2 (41:09):
One last break and we're back with Richard Thompson.
Speaker 1 (41:16):
We've talked a lot about your playing. When did the
writing start for you?
Speaker 3 (41:20):
Well, writing can be inspired by anything. It should be
inspired by anything. So it's good if you can have
the flexibility to start with a melody, or start with lyrics,
or start with a riff, start with a hook line,
just to get you started.
Speaker 1 (41:35):
You know, some people are collectors of folk music, but
some people you learn to sort of transform it. When
did you know? Was there a song a time you
thought I found my voice? I know this is mine now?
Speaker 3 (41:48):
Well, probably in the sixties. I'm playing with Fatball Convention
when we started to play traditional music with electric instruments,
and at that point I thought, okay that this is
this is where I begin in a sense, this is
this is a vocabulary I need to learn, and somehow
(42:09):
I'm going to stay with this and I'll add to
it and I subtract from it. But basically this is
this is going to be my musical vocabulary, and at
some point I think it gets more influenced by jazz
and by classical music harmonically. I'm not afraid to kind
of extend that vocabrary pretty much anywhere. But I think
if you've got a strong route, if you've got a
strong basis, yeah, then you're free to bring other things
(42:32):
into it and it's still your music. So you can
say that's a great idea in that Jamaican song, I'm
just gonna I'm going to grab that. I'm going to
incorporate it into what I do, and it won't sound Jamaican.
It I sound like what would I do. Yeah, I
think at a certain point you have a distinctive vocabulary
and songwriting as well. I mean, I mean, it's the
(42:52):
same point I figured out, like this, this is the
kind of song I want to write. This is a
song that has roots in where I come from and
and I'm not going to lose that. But I can
also I can change the rhythm sometimes, you know, I
can import a rhythm from somewhere else. I can use,
(43:14):
you know, this Indonesian something or other. You know, that's
an inspirational idea, you know, but you can kind of
make it yours. I think people have always done that.
Speaker 1 (43:23):
And you know, you had this just explosion of great
songs for Fairport, and then later when you're playing with
your then wife Linda, you were writing for two really
great singers. You're writing for Sandy Danny, and then Linda
tell me about how you went about that.
Speaker 3 (43:40):
Yeah, I think it is possible to write with somebody
else in mind. So you can say, I'm going to
tailor this song to someone else's voice, someone like Genesis Hall,
you know, with tailored to Sandy's key and to Sandy's
wonderful wide ranging abilities as a singer, you know, like
she could really do justice to it. So the whole
(44:02):
way the chorus goes and moves off to sing anything.
So I'd be quite comfortable doing something which would really
use all of our range. And for Linda, you know,
I'd write songs and then we would discuss them and
we say, okay, you should sing this one. Uh, you
know this one is it's more of a kind of
a male song where but perhaps I should be singing
(44:23):
this one. You know, it's it's more what we could
emotionally identify with.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
Really, you know, you are considered the two of you
are considered the authors of one of the great breakup
albums of all time. But you say that's actually not
the case. That wasn't the shootout the lights was coincidental.
Speaker 3 (44:40):
But I think it's a it's a journalistic lazy cliche evenstance.
Speaker 1 (44:44):
In some ways, I'm a lazy journalist. That's why I
use it.
Speaker 3 (44:48):
It wasn't aiming at that's you. But I'll take it
a previous you know, written reviews and stuff, and people
will like a bit of scandal anyway that don't exit,
so that they'll play that up. Plus, you know, the
songs were written, you know, a year, two years earlier
in some cases, so we've been living with the songs
(45:08):
for a long time. And I'm sure you know the
songs kind of subconsciously reflect on what's going on in
your lives. But you know, to me, it's just an
album of songs, some of which I still enjoy and
some of which I still perform. Yeah, it's funny when
you've got albums that are sort of you know, forty
five years old and fifty five years old and you're thinking,
(45:29):
oh gosh, I'm still playing this song, so it must
be a good song if you're still if you're still there.
Speaker 1 (45:35):
Did you always relate to them at the time, because
you've also written story songs, You've written songs about different
people other people. Yeah, in a sense, one of you know,
your big hits, fifty two Vincent black Lightning. It's not
about you, but in some sense it must have been
about you.
Speaker 3 (45:51):
Well, you know, the envy is about me. When I
was a kid, one of the neighbors had a vincent
black shadow which I thought was just the most beautiful
thing I've ever seen, this, absolutely incredible. So I remember
that when I started writing the song. No, you know,
I make things up and make up stories. That's a
(46:11):
valid thing to do, I think as a songwriter.
Speaker 1 (46:13):
Can I ask you about a few individual songs from
your solo career Waltson for Dreamers, which is just futiful?
Do you remember writing that?
Speaker 3 (46:23):
Yeah, started with the title, you know, I think just
as sometimes I just wrote right down titles, you know,
just for fun and preferably as you know, as streamer
consciously as I can. And again I think I'm making
something up, but maybe it's about me. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (46:40):
Can you talk about persuasion? Which saying with your son Teddy.
Speaker 3 (46:46):
Well, I read that an instrumental for a film, Oh yeah,
with a slightly different melody, and it's an Australian film.
And my friend Tim Finn, who was actually from New Zealand,
but I think he was living Australia at the time,
said I like that tune. Can I put some words
to it? So so we kind of sat down and,
(47:06):
you know, tried to co write a lyric, which is
a very difficult thing to do. So I said, Tim,
take it away and just run with it, because you know,
I'm struggling here to to to find some mutual experience,
so we can we can really write about So he
went away and wrote the lyric and he recorded it first,
(47:26):
and then I thought, well, I like this song, so
I'll do a version, And then I did a version
with Teddy and that those are very popular kind of
radio here actually, and whatever. Whenever I sit in with
with with Teddy or he sits same way with me
and we sing a few songs together, that's when the
audience wants to hear.
Speaker 1 (47:48):
You reminded me of your relationship with Tim Finn that
you've done a few songs with Crowded House, and you
did a very famous guitar solo on Sister Madly. It's
just so different from everything else on that album. Unexpected.
Speaker 3 (48:04):
Yeah. I did a lot of tours, were opening for
Credit House in Europe and in North America, and we
became good, good friends, you know, and I would usually
sit in on their set and we play System Madly
or something else you know at the time, and credits
are great because they'll they'll kind of do anything on stage.
(48:24):
I mean, they'll mess around that, they'll mess up their
set list, they don't really care, and it was always
great fun to play with them. So, you know, I
got to do the you know, the record, the System
Madly record. In fact, last May, I did a seventy
fifth birthday I just give my age away, Good Heavens
seventy fifth birthday constantly in London at the album Hall London,
(48:47):
and and Credit House came and played on that, so
you know, I just I just sat in with them
for a few songs, which was great, you know. So
we got to do Weather with you and Don't Dream
It's Over and Lovely, one of my favorite bands. I
think I think Neil is one of my favorite songwriters
(49:07):
without Squeeze on the on the bill as well, which
is my favorite British band.
Speaker 1 (49:14):
You did a great solo version of Tempted Yeah, which
I would think a song that there's no way you
could do that solo, but you was.
Speaker 3 (49:22):
I think we had somebody on percussion and when we
did it and I think Judith I was singing harmony.
He said so, so it can't be done. It's not
an easy song because that the harmony is really tricky.
Glenn till Brooker, who writes the melodies, you know that
he loves. He's kind of moving basslines and it's sort
of unexpected jazz. Course it could sneaking into a pop song.
Speaker 1 (49:42):
The very the very complex songs it is yeah yeah,
and his guitar playing is very.
Speaker 3 (49:48):
Guitar playing is complex. The lyric is complex, and the
usual rule of thumb which Squeeze ignore all the time,
but get away with it is you know, complex lyric,
simple melody, complex melody, simple lyric. That's the sort of
standard you know from the Brial building days or before
you know, but squeeze get it, get away with it
(50:10):
with the complex lyric complex melody. They just somehow they
do it, you know. So that's really nice kind of
(50:41):
shifts and lots of majors of mine minus the major stuff.
Speaker 1 (50:46):
I was going to mention you did a it was
a Kennedy Center honor or something for Joni Mitchell, and
you played Woodstock. Now the rumor was you weren't supposed
to play Woodstock that night.
Speaker 3 (50:59):
Yeah, the Stone Temple pilots Withdrew at the last minute.
I don't know if someone was ill or you know,
whatever reason. So I had now, which in a sense
is good. But because I didn't have time to think
about it, I thought I was, okay, well, you know,
let me pick a key. I'll do it in d
you know. And I tuned it to a modal tuning
(51:20):
as well. And I thought, well, I don't really know
the tune. You know, the lyrics are going to be
on the auto que, so I'll I'll get the lyrics
from there, but I kind of know them. But sometimes
you think think you know something and you don't. And
I just went went out cold, and you know, I
didn't have time to get nervous. I didn't have time
(51:40):
time to think about what I was doing, you know,
I didn't have time to think there's journey out there
on the balcony, So you know, sometimes you just had
to shut stuff out and concentrate. So that was good
and people seem to respond to that very well. But
basically I was just making it up, you know, honestly.
Speaker 1 (51:58):
So tell me, for steners, you say it's a modal tuning,
what do you mean by that?
Speaker 3 (52:02):
That look like a dad gut down d D.
Speaker 1 (52:08):
Does that mean it relates to a particular mode or
when you say modal.
Speaker 3 (52:13):
It's called a modal chuning. I think because you have
suspensions in it. You know, yeah, you could, you'd have
a modal tuning with a second in it, but this
one keeps saif keep that going, that's right. But for yeah,
(52:45):
for whatsuck, I just.
Speaker 4 (52:48):
Charted. God, you was walking a lot, that's me.
Speaker 3 (52:53):
Where are you going? You're telling me? So, you know,
the open tuning gave me a lot of leeway in
terms of whatever the hell I was going to sing
us a melody and how I was going to fit
the words. But I got away with it. You know,
it's not nice sometimes. Yeah, we're professional musicians here, We're
(53:13):
supposed to be able to do this. Kind of stuff
we're supposed to able to rise to the moment.
Speaker 1 (53:17):
I did want to ask you about a couple more songs.
First of all, fifty two vincent black Lightning, which is
always a great moment in your concerts. What did what
went into that? We talked about the lyrics. It was
just envy what went into the well? It sounds like
a traditional rock and roll song in some ways, but
(53:39):
it's got a very different feel.
Speaker 3 (53:41):
Yes, so it's I mean the tune is very very simple,
nacial melody.
Speaker 1 (53:55):
Just a little bit of it. So we can tell
me what your Meandian.
Speaker 3 (53:59):
Read to James, that's a fun motor by could feel
special in his social.
Speaker 5 (54:09):
Life, says James, too, red boy, what's up to you?
Speaker 4 (54:16):
It's an some black light in nineteen fifty two, and
I've seen you in the corners.
Speaker 3 (54:23):
I'm cafes.
Speaker 4 (54:24):
It seems red hair and black leather my favorite color scheme.
Speaker 3 (54:30):
And they put him off behind and down to box.
Speaker 4 (54:37):
Here that.
Speaker 1 (54:55):
Yeah, so I see, so seize the base note. But
you're now you're using uh capo as well. But but
the tune is in G.
Speaker 3 (55:06):
Well, it's it's a nominal G well, that's it's not
B flat. Yeah. Yeah, it's just kind of c G tuning.
So it works well for you know, the key of uh,
you know where am I? Okay? The brief like Cad
and the Beef, And I thought I'd invented this tuning,
(55:30):
of course, and I've discovered that they've been using it
in Hawaii for you know, the last hundred years.
Speaker 1 (55:36):
Well, they didn't write that song, but.
Speaker 3 (55:38):
But in Hawaii there's something like two hundred guitar tunings.
You know that they basically explored everything. So so it's
it's easy to be late to the game.
Speaker 1 (55:48):
There's so much more I want to ask you, but
it's you've been very, very generous.
Speaker 3 (55:52):
I have been incredibly generous.
Speaker 1 (55:53):
Yes, you have been incredibly generous, very English, which I appreciate.
Speaker 3 (55:57):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (55:57):
And what's what's next? You did a great album last
Ship to Shore.
Speaker 3 (56:01):
Yeah, I keep writing stuff. I don't know where it
comes from, but I'm still writing songs, and I'm excited
about about the songs I'm writing, and I'm thinking I
want to get back in the studio and put on
another record as soon as possible.
Speaker 1 (56:14):
What an absolute treat.
Speaker 3 (56:15):
Thank you very much. To date.
Speaker 2 (56:19):
An episode description, you'll find a link to a playlist
of our favorite Richard Thompson tracks. Be sure to check
out YouTube dot com slash Broken Record podcast to see
all of our video interviewers, and be sure to follow
us on Instagram at the Broken Record Pod. You can
follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is
produced and edited by Leah Rose, with marketing help from
(56:40):
Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer is Ben Tolliday.
Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries and if
you like this show, please remember to share, rate, and
review us on your podcast app. Our theme music's back
any beats. I'm justin Richmond.
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