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