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Playing in the park tomorrow, Richard Thompson still burns
Friday, June 01, 2001 By Scott Mervis, Weekend Editor, Post-Gazette
If quality, not sales, was the gold standard, Richard Thompson would be a top free agent in the music industry right now.
Thompson -- an exquisite singer-songwriter and guitar hero -- could be the best unsigned musician in the world right now, having split with his label of 13 years.
He did leave his fans a parting gift, "Action Packed: The Best of the Capitol Years," 19 songs that demonstrate his talent for jubilant rockers, rich story songs and dark ballads. The record, which also features a pair of unreleased songs as a draw for diehards, emphasizes his storytelling over his smoldering electric guitar work.
"Generally on this kind of record, it tends to be a song collection," says Thompson, who will play a solo acoustic set tomorrow at the Three Rivers Arts Festival. "The guitar hero stuff tends to be on the outtakes and rarities type of album, where I suppose there's no time constraint and more scope for live tracks and more spirited playing."
Thompson, 52, is an artist with several distinct facets to his career. He began at 17 as the guitarist for British folk-rock outfit Fairport Convention, before moving on to a solo career rooted in European folk. From there, he began a much-heralded period with his then wife Linda, resulting in torrid classics like "I Want to See the Bright Lights" and "Shoot out the Lights."
His solo career picks up again in 1983 in the wake of their bitter divorce and finds him moving in and out of harder-rocking ("Daring Adventures") and more-introspective modes ("You? Me? Us?").
Although the situations have changed, with Thompson the quality has generally been consistent, and the Capitol years are flush with great material from "1952 Vincent Black Lightning," a colorful story of a biker on his deathbed, to "Cold Kisses," a vivid tale of jealousy, to "I Feel So Good," a feisty rocker about an ex-con let loose on the town.
Thompson says the collection forced to him to look back and assess a decade-plus of his work.
"Well, I didn't want to, but I suppose I had to. And I suppose it's a slightly imposed time period. This wasn't my 'blue period' or anything," he says, referring to Picasso. "It doesn't have a musical meaning as a period. It's interesting to look at 10 years and think, 'Well, I wrote some pretty good songs. How could I allow myself to write those three songs? Was this a wasted 10 years?' You ask yourself questions, but I'm fairly pleased with the output."
As he shops for a label, probably steering clear of another major, Thompson is out on tour with just his guitar playing a funky mix of theaters, churches, festivals, school auditoriums and even a zoo or two.
"It's a tour of strange buildings. That's interesting, isn't it? Some of the zoos turn out to be really good, actually," Thompson says brightly. "It's always strange in a church. I always feel slightly that I have to be careful what I say. I have to be nonblasphemous, a bit like having your mother in the audience."
Thompson's set list covers the highlights of his career, right on up to the most recent songs, like the unreleased humorous assault on Kenny G called "I Agree with Pat Metheny." What made him venture into a jazz cat fight?
"Disgust, I think. It's a very driven emotion, disgust," he says. "On Pat Metheny's Web site, there's a lot of controversy about Kenny G: The fact that he overdubs himself on a record by the late Louis Armstrong was considered by a lot of musicians as the final straw, so I wrote a song that was a public service, actually."
These duets from the beyond, he says, "always makes me cringe. I'm not sure it can ever work. Even in the same family -- Hank Williams Jr. on a Hank Williams record, Natalie Cole on a Nat King Cole -- even those are kind of horrible, but at least they're family, at least for them it has an emotional meaning, even if for the public it's kind of disgusting. But to equate yourself with one of the giant figures of 20th century music is just hideous."
Thompson, who is unlikely to try any such stunts, has now been putting out records steadily for 30 years, not counting his time with Fairport Convention. And he continues to be as prolific as ever.
Asked how some artists are only good for a few records and others go on for decades, Thompson says, "Both kinds of curves, if you like, should be expected. Some people are only creative at certain times in their life. Sometimes it's when people are young, sometimes when people are miserable. Other artists can be more consistent. I'm not saying there's any advantage to either. Some people have an incredible burst in their life and then burn out, but what they produce is just stellar."
In pop music, he says, the assumption has always been that the most dynamic stuff will come from the young. He sees that changing as the music becomes more and more multigenerational.
"You wouldn't expect a novelist to get interesting until they were 35 or 40 years old and you wouldn't expect them to stop being interesting until they were 80," he says. "Filmmakers, the same thing. A painter, how bad was Picasso at 50 years old? I think it's just a matter of perception. If there are those around still attempting to do it, it's a laudable thing. We should be encouraged rather than put out to grave -- as long as it's interesting and valid and creative."
Thompson, for one, would seem to have all three covered.
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