The one thing you can say about Richard Thompson without fear of any argument is that he has staying power. The latest album, produced by Jeff Tweedy, even has a kind of joke in the title, as Richard has quipped that Still could be read as, “Is he still going?” The answer is of course a resounding yes, some 43 years after he made his first tentative, post Fairport Convention, foray into the album market with Henry The Human Fly, the lukewarm reception of which hardly augured an outstanding career. Of course, by then, Thompson had already been a significant part of five Fairport albums, released in just three years, the first of which came out a couple of months before Tweedy’s first birthday. But then Henry was quickly followed by his hook up with Linda, and the rest as they say, is history – Richard’s history.
I made the point in my review that his discography, all told, but not including compilations, isn’t far shy of 50 records, some achievement in itself. There’s perhaps a gentle irony in the fact that at this late stage of his career, Richard is enjoying his most obvious run of success. Or at least in the fact that whilst Richard himself is openly dismissive of chart placing as offering a hollow sense of achievement not worth chasing, the latest release is his first UK Top 10 album and is the fourth consecutive album in a run of top 20 placings. Despite his naysaying, I’d wager it’s brought a smile to his lips and possible a chuckle too, especially given that at 66, he’s theoretically of pensionable age in the UK.
Not that he sounds it as he answers the phone in his central London hotel. He sounds chipper enough, although immediately admits that jetlag has got the better of him, “I’m only here for a couple of days, so sleeping is difficult,” he tells me, adding, “I think I’m awake enough to answer questions, or asleep enough – perhaps asleep is better.” There’s the first hint of a chuckle, suggesting he’s actually on pretty good form.
There’s also just the slightest hint of a life lived across the pond. Richard had settled in the States for many years, but to all intents it barely shows, his speaking and singing voices really are the same, with perhaps just the odd word stretching out as he generally talks quite quickly. As he points out, coming back to the UK isn’t a big deal anyway, “It’s not like the prodigal son returning. I’m generally in the UK at least three or four times a year. Besides, these days if you want to stay culturally connected it’s easy to stay very British wherever you are. I have the Guardian as my homepage on my computer and Radio 4 is there in an instant if I want it.”
I ask if he still feels part of the UK’s folk scene. He’s thoughtful for a couple of seconds before replying, “I guess so. Perhaps not in the way that I used to be.” He acknowledges that the annual Cropredy helps him to keep in touch but adds, “I used to know everyone involved, but that not true anymore, although I do try and keep my ear to the ground to find out what’s new and also what old friends are doing.”
We are talking in the first week of release of Still and at this point, it’s too early to comment on how it will sell and chart, although the press reviews, including our own (read it here) have all been unreservedly positive. I ask Richard if it feels like he’s on something of a creative roll at the moment. There another moment’s pause as he considers, “Urrm… I’d like to think I’m always on a creative roll.” There’s another little chuckle and then a more measured response as he admits, “I think the way things have been received recently is very gratifying and I’m not sure what’s really changed, but sometimes if you change some of the superficial things then it draws people in a bit more and adds to the appeal. So having producers on my last two records has probably had a positive effect.” Richard’s keen to make a distinction, however, telling me, “I think I’ve been writing good songs for some time now, so in that way nothing has changed. It’s not the quality, but more the delivery.”
I ask if this means that he thinks of each album as a separate project or considers them within the context of what has gone before and he reveals, “I suppose I might think in terms of, if I’ve just done a lot of acoustic songs then this will be more electric and vice versa, to get some sort of balance between different styles there, but otherwise I like to think of each album differently. Some will be thematic, some not,” he continues, “But I do think when you write a bunch of songs in a fairly short period then they have some sort of commonality.” Relating that to Still, Richard reveals, “The songs for the new album were written quite quickly, over just a couple of months. When you do that somehow you overlap ideas. So in the end these songs definitely feel like they belong together.”
I suggest to Richard that one of real skills is the change in the tone of voice and the viewpoint of the songs and he agrees. “That’s a really useful device. I suppose there are different ways to tell a story and one way is the direct narrative way, more like a ballad. But there’s a shortcut where you can tell the story from the point of view of a protagonist. You chose someone that isn’t you, it might not even be someone you like, but you put the song through them and it says something about them and what they’re seeing, but also something about you. It also means that you can be far more economical and tell a story with fewer words, but still paint the big picture.”
I ask Richard if there are parallels in the folk tradition and he acknowledges, “In some ways yes. The songs are often sung in the first person, but they are often about other people. For example, A Blacksmith Courted Me, was that written by a girl who’d just been dumped by a blacksmith? Probably not. The songs will have been written by clever people, perhaps school teachers, or just working people who were good with words. Of course, the anonymity means we’ll never know its true origin, but the fact that it’s a strong story that gets sung over and over by different people and through time gets absorbed into the tradition gives the song its power, which is why it survives.”
While we’re on the subject of writing I mention the press release for the record, which quotes Richard saying, “Some songs, you never finish…you let them lie for 20 years, adding a line, changing a verse,” which begs the question, is he always writing? He’s quick in replying, “I guess so. I’m always whittling away. If I’m on the road it’s more difficult because large parts of my brain are pre-occupied with the current repertoire, remembering lyrics and guitar parts for the songs we’re playing. If I’m off the road it becomes much easier to develop ideas and get stuff finished.” I push him as to whether it’s a constant flow of ideas and again he’s quick in his response, telling me, “I think so but it’s up to you as a writer to decide if that’s what you want. Someone came up with this analogy that it’s like owning a shop. If you’ve got a corner shop and you lock the door, then obviously no-one is going to come in, but if you keep the door open and a light on, then someone might wander in, even in the middle of the night. It’s good to be open to the idea of songwriting and staying alert. You could be walking down the street, on a bus or train and an idea comes, or you hear a snatch of conversation that inspires you, but the door has to be open to let it in.”
Turning our attentions to Still, I’m curious about the appointment of Jeff Tweedy and ask Richard whether it was Bob Dylan’s Americanarama Festival of Music that they both performed in that lit the spark. He qualifies, “In some ways yes. I mean I’ve kind of known Jeff through Wilco for about 20 years. We did some dates together at various times. I suppose on that recent tour, however, we got to hang out a lot more and jam together from time to time. We had a good time and it obviously showed through because various people started to suggest he’d be an ideal person for the project.”
Returning to Richards point about using different producers I enquire whether working with Jeff was different to working with Buddy Miller who produced Electric. Richard acknowledges, “Yes, slightly different. Jeff was more interested in the shape and feel of the songs and the way they were played. But in most cases, we didn’t change much from the rehearsals we did before the recording. The interventions were subtle. The same was true with Buddy, but with the recordings we did at his house, we hardly thought about the song structure until it was laid down. Then, if a take didn’t work we’d start pulling it apart and coming up with ideas to improve it. With Jeff we talked a bit more about the demos, but like I say, the ideas were subtle, yet mostly just worked, although the song’s structures remained exactly as they were written.”
As we’ve come to expect Still features some absolutely fabulous guitar playing and fans of his electric guitar playing won’t be disappointed. That said I tell Richard that it’s two of the more acoustic songs that particularly stand out for me, Josephine and Beatnick Walking. He seems pleased and agrees, “Yes to me those are two of the most successful recordings and Josephine is strange. I originally recorded it as a guitar and voice performance. Then I thought it would be nice to overdub a second guitar as a guitar solo and then I had a second go at that, so we had two takes. But then Jeff said, ‘Look what happens when I turn off the original guitar,’ and it sounded better,” Richard laughs, “I’d been playing this sort of claw hammer style accompaniment and without it, the song just seemed to open up. It was amazing that there was enough separation between the mics on the original recording.”
I suggest to Richard that it’s perhaps the way that the layers work that I particularly like and he tells me, “With Beatnick Walking, you’ve got a ukulele and nylon strung guitar in there. That was one of those songs that you write for yourself that I eventually felt others might get something from. It is a more personal song and I can tell you the exact time it relates to, which was 22 years ago, because my son Jack was in a backpack at the time as he was about four months old. I had this three week tour of Holland, which is a small enough country to mean that we could base ourselves in Amsterdam and travel back and forth. It was an idyllic time, the weather was great and we were able to have lunch at the same café every day. I just wanted to get that rhythm of walking along the canals and enjoying ourselves.”
There’s another laugh as he admits, “Mind you, I never thought I’d live to see the day when I included Rupert Murdoch in a song, but there he is. Unfortunately, I’m slightly addicted to The Times crossword, so I have to buy one of his products, but I’m not happy about it.”
I mention the current of political songs that Richard has tapped into, with Dungeons For Eyes being another coruscating example and he confirms, “That was a charity event that I went to and there was a political figure there who had a past as a terrorist or freedom fighter, depending on which side you stood, but who has now been absorbed back into the political mainstream. Things have moved on. Someone said, ‘Oh, you must meet so and so,’ but as I started walking over my feet just froze. I won’t say who it was, but I can’t forgive and forget what he has done and move on, and that disturbed me as well.”
There’s another side to it that comes across in Long John Silver, with unscrupulous business dealings cutting a fin through water. “That’s the great thing about being a songwriter,” Richard admits, “When someone annoys you, you don’t have to go out and smash a window, or kick the cat, you can turn it into a song, feel better about it and get your own back as well. He’s a real person and a real shark alright and he’s, ‘Done me wrong,’ as the old blues songs say.”
The album’s tour de force is the closing Guitar Heroes and I suggest to Richard that there must have been a certain satisfaction in documenting all of the people who had lined up to tell him he needed to get his life together. “Yes, that’s a revenge song in a way,” he confesses, “But it’s all true, people telling me, ‘Your life is going to be a ruin because you haven’t done your homework,’ and the girlfriend questioning the relationship and the parents threatening to kick you out, it’s all true.” I suggest it has lots of potential for expansion and Richard laughs, “Yes the really good thing is it’s a modular song. You can keep the same guitar players and change the quotes, or swap out the guitar players. It has the potential to get much shorter or very much longer depending on how I feel and I should probably work up an acoustic version for all of my acoustic guitar heroes.”
I mention Bill Kirchin’s incredible and very funny extended take on Hot Rod Lincoln and Richard admits, “Yes I’ve heard about that but never seen him do it. The inspiration for Guitar Heroes was a 50’s guitarist, a guy called Thumbs Carllile who had a very unusual technique, laying the guitar flat on his lap. He released an album called The Springfield Social where he impersonated all of the great Nashville guitarists including Les Paul and that was the slow burning inspiration.”
We’re running out of time as I’m approaching the end of my allotted half hour, but I have to comment on the time that Richard seems to allow for answering fan emails and also maintain an incredible web archive. He acknowledges, “I just think it’s something that you have to do these days. It’s no longer enough to be the tortured poet. I have to be on Facebook and so on. Some of it’s a chore, but it can be really interesting interacting with fans, finding out what they think. It’s just the age that we live in, you have to get on with it.”
I also mention the songwriting workshops, having recently spoken to Simon Gill of the band Clype, who there will be more on in due course, and Richard immediately enthuses, “Oh yes, Simon is a really great songwriter. I did this workshop in Aberdeen and I was so impressed by the standard, it was incredible.”
We conclude with a look ahead to the forthcoming tour in September and I start by telling Richard that I first saw him 40 years ago at Birmingham Town Hall, along with Linda and still have my original copy of Hokey Pokey, the current album at that time. Richard is immediately enthuses, “Was that the band with John Kirkpatrick in,” which I confirm, “That was a great line up.”
Mind you the current trio is special too, although I wonder if it’s easy to strip the carefully crafted studio recordings back for the live shows, but Richard assures me, “No not at all. Some people get very caught up in trying to recreate the album exactly and so hire two keyboard players, triggering samples and stuff, but that’s never bothered me. Taras and Michael are such great musicians anyway and there’s more immediacy, plus it’s louder, so I don’t think you miss the fact that there’s no rhythm guitar. As long as we’re playing a good approximation of the songs with the right spirit, then I think the show stands up for itself.”
There’s no argument necessary there either as you can see for yourself when Richard’s Electric Trio hit Europe in time for Tonder Fest on August 27th with UK and European dates right through until the second week of October with his trio as well as a solo date at Purbeck Valley Folk Festival on August 28th.
Interview by: Simon Holland
RICHARD THOMPSON ELECTRIC TRIO – UK TOUR DATES
28 Aug – Wareham, Dorset Purbeck Valley Folk Festival (solo)
30 Aug – Shrewsbury Shrewsbury Folk Festival
01 Sep – Dublin Vicar Street
02 Sep – Perth Perth Concert Hall
03 Sep – Aberdeen Aberdeen Music Hall
05 Sep – Edinburgh Queens Hall
06 Sep – Gateshead Sage
08 Sep – Liverpool Philharmonic Hall
09 Sep – Salford Lowry
10 Sep – Sheffield City Hall
12 Sep – Nottingham Royal Centre
13 Sep – Birmingham Symphony Hall
15 Sep – Cardiff St. David’s Hall
16 Sep – Bristol Colston Hall
18 Sep – Ipswich Regent Theatre
19 Sep – Cambridge Corn Exchange
20 Sep – London Royal Festival Hall
Still is Out Now via:
Also available via: Amazon | iTunes
Read our review of Still here.
Photo Credit (with Jeff Tweedy): Zoran Orlick