If there were an award for criminally underappreciated rock musicians, British guitarist/singer/songwriter Richard Thompson would be among the favorites.
Thompson has recorded two dozen albums in a career that began in 1968 with the pioneering British folk-rock band Fairport Convention, and many are considered classics. Yet despite years of critical acclaim, he remains the quintessential ”cult” star, unknown to most record buyers.
Perhaps encouraged by the recent late-blooming success of Thompson`s label-mate, Bonnie Raitt, Capitol Records is aggressively marketing the guitarist`s latest album, ”Rumor and Sigh.”
At age 40, Raitt had her biggest-selling album (2.5 million) in the 1989
”Nick of Time” and went on to win four Grammy Awards.
At age 42, Thompson is off to a promising start with ”Rumor and Sigh”-
it has sold more than 60,000 copies only weeks after its release. A national tour, which brings the guitarist and a five-piece band to the Vic Theatre on July 31, is expected to push the record well past his previous best, ”Shoot Out the Lights,” which sold 150,000.
To put things in perspective, that`s about an average week`s work for New Kids on the Block. And Thompson certainly isn`t deluding himself into thinking he`ll suddenly become a pop star in America.
”It`d be fun to have a hit record,” he says. ”It`d mean more money-good. More people at concerts-good. That`s all positive stuff. But I couldn`t tell you if this is a commercial record or not. I haven`t got a clue. ”What went through our minds is, `Well, the last record didn`t sell very well . . . and neither did the one before . . . and this probably won`t sell very well either, so, what the hell, let`s just have fun.` ”
Thompson`s last three records have been produced by Mitchell Froom, and
”Rumor and Sigh” brings that collaboration to fruition. Although not a cohesive statement on par with ”Shoot Out the Lights,” many of its 14 songs are among Thompson`s best, and they benefit from varied and evocative sonic settings: an acoustic ballad (”1952 Vincent Black Lightning”), an accordion- pumping jig (”Don`t Sit on My Jimmy Shands”), a charging guitar rocker
(”Mother Knows Best”), a haunting soul lament (”Why Must I Plead”).
But for all its polish, the record hardly has a freeze-dried feel. That`s because, contrary to common practice by musicians, Thompson doesn`t record demo tapes before the final recording session.
”A lot of energy can go into a demo, and sometimes the energy you put into it you never really have again,” he says.
Thompson also doesn`t compose on his guitar.
”I try to do it in my head. I find it a bit freer. You can imagine much more than you can ever play. When you play an instrument you tend to fall into patterns. Your imagination doesn`t have quite as restrictive a set of codes.” Similarly, there appear to be no rules when Thompson plays guitar. The oblique logic of his solos brings to mind several influences: the free jazz of saxophonist John Coltrane, the modal drone of Scottish bagpipers and the lyrical flights of Irish fiddle players.
”I`ve also been listening to some older guitarists, the `50s jazz guys, because that sounds fresh to me at the moment,” he says. ”There`s a lot of fuzz overkill in rock guitar playing that isn`t necessarily inspiring for me. It`s interesting technically, but it doesn`t take me anywhere new. Sometimes you have to go back to go forward.”
That attitude has been a constant throughout Thompson`s career. His first group, Fairport Convention, sought to make modern British pop out of traditional styles, looking back to centuries-old folk ballads for
inspiration. The tension between the primal imagery of the lyrics and the genre-busting interplay among the instrumentalists often made for cathartic music that stands outside the time it was made.
After leaving Fairport in the early `70s, Thompson recorded a series of haunting albums with his wife, Linda. Before they divorced in 1982, Thompson had forged a more contemporary style, which he explored even more fully on his subsequent solo albums.
Throughout, his writing has focused on a handful of themes: God and spirituality (informed by his Sufi-Muslim faith), life`s desolute and drunken outcasts, and the collapse of loving relationships.
”The drunkard is kind of a free man, he`s not encumbered by stuff like relationships or inhibited by what other people think of him,” Thompson says in discussing a new track, ”God Loves a Drunk.”
”I`ve always thought that was in a sense more spiritual than those TV evangelicals who try to make us feel that you have to be really clean and neat and tidy to be close to God.”
Thompson`s preoccupation with the down side of love led to intense speculation that on such albums as ”Hand of Kindness” and ”Across a Crowded Room” he was writing about his stormy relationship with Linda.
But Thompson, who has since remarried, says the connection between his private life and music ”was incredibly overemphasized. I don`t write songs like that and I think it`s belittling my imagination to say that. It`s all fiction. You have to experience things to feel them, to know what they are, but real life isn`t that interesting.”
He adds that ”there`s a lot of love in the songs, but it`s a more realistic kind of love-it`s like you love someone in spite of their faults. . . . Everyone has pain and difficulty in relationships, everyone gets dumped and has heartbreak-it`s a common human experience to write about. I just happen to think that love isn`t necessarily a saccharine experience, and that popular music has moved on a bit since Bobby Vee.”
What makes ”Rumor and Sigh” particularly enjoyable is that it`s loaded with examples of Thompson`s sly, dark humor: It opens with the raucous ”Read About Love” and ”I Feel So Good” and closes with the thoroughly bizarre
”Psycho Street.”
The last is based on an Australian soap opera on British TV called
”Neighbors,” Thompson says. ”My kids say, `Oh, Daddy, you must watch this because it`s just like real people.` And I say, `Kids, deluded fools, this is mediated rubbish. People aren`t that good looking, people aren`t that nice.`
” `Psycho Street` is like an antidote. It`s about my neighbors, real people.”
The subversive appeal of Thompson`s music is made all the more potent by his self-effacing manner.
”I love that quality in music, but I`m not nearly as subversive as an NWA record or a Madonna record-now that`s really subversive,” he says. ”I don`t admire that. I just have a different morality than they do.
”When my kids find out about these records, I try to show them other possibilities in life-that they don`t have to be slaves to fashion or other peoples` egos.”
All they have to do is study Daddy`s music. Thompson`s career, sometimes at the expense of his commercial success, has been a testament to those ideals all along.
