5 Records with Richard Thompson

“As Picasso said, ‘The muse will find you, but it needs to find you working,” states Richard Thompson. He should know. His steak-and-kidney-pie voice, laser-focused songwriting, and superhuman guitar feats have occupied the core of revelatory recordings since Fairport Convention’s 1967 debut.

Ship to Shore is the latest statement in a solo career that started in 1972 and has long since cemented Thompson’s status as six-string sovereign of British folk rock. It’s further proof that the tireless Thompson’s “get up early in the morning and work” approach to songwriting remains fruitful and the 75-year-old troubadour is as engaged as ever.

This time around, those hours have produced tunes that tackle everything from military PTSD to the rigors of show biz. The haunted “The Fear Never Leaves You” was inspired by a British documentary on the Falklands War. “This was a program about the SAS [The British Army’s Special Air Service],” explains Thompson, “who we think of as extremely tough individuals….and the program focuses on the PTSD of these people. However hardened they were, they couldn’t sleep at night; they couldn’t sit with their back to the door—all the usual stuff for people who’ve been in combat.”

“On the stage, he’d just be kind of mumbling and looking at his shoes and tuning endlessly between songs, not endearing himself to the audience. But the records are magical, and the songwriting is great, and his singing’s great. The engineer who recorded those records, John Wood, said, ‘When we were recording Nick [Drake] with a string orchestra or whatever it was, we’d turn off his guitar and his voice so we could hear everybody else to see if there were any mistakes. Because we knew Nick was fine, Nick never made a mistake.’

“His guitar playing was impeccable, his vocals were always in tune, and it was like a perfect performance every single time. Probably my favorite song of his is ‘River Man,’ which is a beautiful song. It’s a song in 5/4, but it doesn’t feel unnatural. It rolls along nicely. It has lovely guitar playing and a beautiful string arrangement by Harry Robinson. I think Nick had said to him ‘I want it to sound like Frederik Delius.’ So, Harry said, ‘Oh no problem, I can do Delius.’ [laughs] And he kind of did do Delius. I think it’s one of the best string arrangements in popular music. And it’s a brilliant recording. I think it’s 12-string pieces. Nick’s in the middle, and Danny Thompson is playing double bass next to Nick. They were in a semicircle. They did it live. It’s fabulous. I played on another track called ‘Time Has Told Me.’ But that was an overdub, so Nick wasn’t there at the time.”

“The John Handy Quintet—John Handy on alto with bass, drums, guitar, violin — is a very interesting lineup. It had an unusual sound to it in the first place. The guitar and the violin give it a whole different flavor. And it’s recorded live, you hear airplanes going over and everything. The effect just adds to the charm of it, you hear that classic kind of Doppler effect of a plane going over, and the pitch changes as the plane passes over. I think it’s a two-track record, one track on each side.

“One track is ‘Spanish Lady,’ which takes a Spanish mode as well as kind of an Arabic mode and plays around with that. It’s also got a long solo by the alto sax, very beautiful, and then the band kicks in and it just goes to a whole other level.

“On the other side is a slower piece, ‘If Only We Knew,’ also just a beautiful composition, at a time when jazz was experimenting a lot with the boundaries. John Coltrane, Albert Ayler, Sun Ra, all these people who were around were pushing the boundaries of jazz. John Handy’s a bit more melodic but it’s a very interdisciplinary piece of music, where all these other elements keep coming in — unusual for a jazz record at that time or anytime really. A record I’m fond of — I don’t play it all the time, but I might drag it out every five years, and it knocks me out every time.”

“When Fairport started recording, also in the same studio were the Incredible String Band. So, we’d go down as a learning experience. We’d sit in a corner and we’d watch the recording process. We’d watch them creating music, we’d watch how the engineer mixed and recorded it. At the time, for me, it was just part of the furniture. Mike [Heron] and Robin [Williamson] were our friends, we’d do shows with them all the time. We’d hang out with them until they got into Scientology, and then we kind of backed off a bit. But 50 years later, every time I dig it out it’s just an extraordinary record.

“I wish I could say that it’s the birth of world music. I’m sure there’s something before that. But it’s this sense that they’re grabbing stuff from all over the place and making it their own, they’re making it Incredible String Band music. There’s stuff from India, from Ireland, Scotland; there’s the blues, there’s Appalachian music, there’s this whole blend of things.

“They’re playing all kinds of instruments. They were serious instrument collectors. So, they’ve got stuff from around the world—they’ve got percussion and strange violins and things you blow through, and they have shehnai and God knows what, all contributing to the whole. You’ve got two good composers in Mike and Robin, who are very different in style. Mike is very West Indian-influenced. Robin is much more Scotland via the Appalachian Mountains or something. Magical stuff.”

“I enjoy post-Beatles melodic pop, skillfully played and arranged. I think they’re really good writers, Neil [Finn] being the main writer, but sometimes when Tim [Finn] is in the band the pair of them would write and co-write. Just really good songs, enduring in popularity. If you went to a Crowded House concert, which I did recently, the audience is singing along with every word. The lyrics are not simple, the lyrics are very complex.

“I just had a 75th birthday party at the Royal Albert Hall in London, and Crowded House came up as guests. So, I got to play along with them as well, and that was just a thrill. Back in the ‘90s and ‘00s I opened a lot of shows for Crowded House, so they’re friends as well as people I admire. So, high in my esteem. ‘Fall at Your Feet,’ that would be a favorite, I love that song.”

“The Watersons are a singing family from Yorkshire, originally two sisters, a brother, and a cousin. Martin Carthy, who married Norma Waterson, replaced the cousin replaced. [They had] an extraordinary presence on the British folk scene from about ‘65 onwards. There’s nothing quite like them. Harmony singing is a British tradition, but not in the way that they do it. People would always sing on choruses…and someone would sing the verses solo. The Watersons could harmonize [throughout] a traditional ballad, which was very unusual – unknown, almost. A song that would always be sung solo but without accompaniment, The Watersons sing it in harmony, and it’s incredibly effective.

“They’ve got that family thing, that intermodular thing, where the voices blend so well. And they’ve never sung anything the same twice. So, the girls might sing in unison and then branch out in harmony sometimes. Everybody might sing in octaves and then branch out at the end of lines. Mike Waterson might just sing all kinds of harmonies at any given moment. It’s some genius. I’ve never quite figured out how his mind worked. He’s a fantastic musician with an amazing brain. It’s a great record. In addition to traditional songs, you’ve got British music hall songs, you’ve got religious songs that come from, I forget which tradition it is, maybe Quaker tradition. It’s a real mixture, but it’s a wonderful record that I keep going back to.”