DAVID SUFF & FLEDG'LING RECORDS

THE BBC RADIO 2 FOLK AWARD 2006 - MOST INFLUENTIAL ALBUM OF ALL TIME

FC past, present and friends from left: John Tams, Joe Boyd, Chris Leslie, Dave Mattacks, Gerry Conway, Ric Saunders, Ashley Hutchings, Chris While. In front: Georgia Lucas (only child of Sandy Denny & Trevor Lucas) and Dave Swarbrick

Photo by Alan O'Leary
www.copperplatedistribution.com

Richard Thompson - RT: THE LIFE AND MUSIC OF RICHARD THOMPSON (Free Reed)

I'm certain to be preaching to the converted here!... Maybe it's just the rarefied circles I move in, but, while accepting that not everyone regards Richard Thompson as a musical deity, nobody would deny that he's commonly regarded as one of world's very finest (a) guitar players and (b) songwriters - and even (though to a less wide extent) (c) singers. Let's be honest, this lavish new box-set might not exactly be considered a tool for convincing any unbeliever, but it certainly can't help but provide some very persuasive evidence for the defence. Richard has already been a significant presence on most of the Free Reed boxes to date, a fact which is as much an indicator of his influence on other musicians as a measure of his general stature and importance within the folk-rock arena (let alone the music scene as a whole). As is often observed, Richard features regularly in the charts - but charts that are based on quality rather than sales!... while there can surely be no argument that he's produced some of the most enduring songs written in the English language.

So (and perhaps even more so than previous Free Reed sets in the Revival Masters series), RT is a set for the fans/cognoscenti, in that it offers a different slant on Richard's familiar released recordings. Hallelujah! all but ten of its 85 tracks are previously unreleased, with the remainder comprising seven from the “have never been widely available” category, and three featuring examples of Richard's session playing. And a large number of tracks feature performances of songs that have never before been released by Richard in any form! If you're a fully-committed Thompsoniac (is that an actual word? - hell, who cares?!), you'll either already have purchased this set or else have placed an advance order for it. If you're even contemplating buying the set, then Richard's name will need no introduction to you, for if you have any interest whatsoever in good music of whatever persuasion or genre, then you'll at least have heard (and appreciated) one or more of his songs performed by someone else somewhere. And there can't be a single reader of this piece who doesn't have at least one little piece of RT in his/her collection somewhere - as performer, either solo, with Linda, with his own band, or with Fairport, or in a session context, or as songwriter. Put simply, the breadth and quality of Richard's achievements are phenomenal, by anyone's standards, and the man's been responsible in some way for a considerable number of my own most treasured musical experiences of the past 35 years, period.

So, what exactly does this typically enterprising new set give us? The clue lies in its subtitle - An Alternative History: in other words, although it inevitably contains elements of a career-retrospective, it's emphatically neither a thematic exploration nor a chronological overview, choosing instead to hone in on aspects of the man's talent and musical personality (though inevitably these will overlap and intermingle, just as the music he produces - and the songs he writes - are a “creative collision of different musical forms or genres” encompassing a vast emotional and stylistic range. Having said which, Richard's an auteur, in that his own personal stamp is imprinted on everything he produces and his own creative “voice” is unmistakeable. Not only is Richard a songsmith in the true sense - ie. a storyteller par excellence, an undisputed master of “Tales In Real Time” (those initials again!) - but he's also Master of the Hook (both melodically and lyrically, ie. he has the experienced popster's knack both of creating a catchy melody, and the ability to hook the listener in straight away with an opening line or riff). After all, as Richard says, “at some point all popular music is folk music”.

A further (and not entirely incidental) product of the method of presentation of the music on this set is to highlight both the consistency of Richard's output and his dramatic development as an artist, most notably as a singer, progressing from distinctly reluctant ancillary group vocalist keeping well in the shadows to fully-fledged centre-stage soloist and song-carrier of real stature and distinction. And Richard's eminently enviable versatility - for here on this box-set, in all their glory, are paraded examples of the man's many and various personas: The Muso's Muso; The Songwriter's Songwriter; The Compleat Dance-Master (the sprightly morris-on-er with the spring in his step and a twinkle in his eye); The Closet Greaser / Rip-It-Up Rock'n'Roller (“Chuck Beret”?!); The folk troubadour and thinking man's philosopher; The dour crooner and worldly confidante; The rollicking comic (I say I say I say...!). Yet in each one of those manifestations, Richard is integrity personified, always true to himself and slave to no man's expectations.

You'll glean from what I've written so far that I have a very high regard (well, almost unbounded admiration) for Richard and his work. Fair comment - and a ready disclaimer that might deter some readers from continuing any further down the page. But I wouldn't term myself an anorak (a nice modest fleece-jacket keeps me warm just fine thanks)! And I'm not so uncritical that I can claim to have unreserved praise for every single song he's written. (We all have our preferences, and I very probably differ from other Thompsoniacs in that I personally can almost live without: say, Feel So Good, Let It Grow, Valerie even - they're easy songs to fairly quickly grow tired of, if you see what I mean.) But no-one can dispute the sheer consistency of Richard's accomplishment over time, proving the exception to the “law of diminishing returns” principle that typifies the path of most “established” artistes, whereby their finest work is produced in the early years (Richard having produced at all stages of his long career to date songs which have been readily and universally accepted as classics within his œuvre). Richard continues to develop and mature and consolidate, and clearly he's come a long way, from the days when it was primarily his instrumental playing that set him apart from the band (and the band apart from the other bands) to his present status as a consummate, all-round-skilled musician, songwriter and singer - and Lifetime Achiever. And all this despite his often (at any rate initially) determinedly self-effacing view of his own worth and talent (especially in the early years where he infinitely preferred to remain in the dimly-lit background or at least hidden behind one kind of barrier or another - and certainly from the time of Henry The Human Fly onwards, when his perceived, and cultivated, image of a singer-songwriter was presented as akin to being part of a freak-show).

After all that lengthy preamble, you might well question the need for me to expend more wordage in dissecting the five CDs contained within the box (six, if you include the bonus disc available only to the first 5000 purchasers) - but hey, if it entices more folks to buy the set then that's right enough in my book. So let me take my chances with you on this all-consuming fairground ride...

Disc 1 is described as “the nearest you're likely to get to a musical autobiography”, and presents “songs based on specific events and real people”. Yet, with a perfect (and entirely Thompsonesque) sense of irony, the disc (and the whole set) kicks off with the wry Now That I Am Dead, celebrating, um, the fact that Richard's still very much alive (for remember that in music, you don't usually get the accolade of being boxed till you're well and truly boxed!). That song is, however, quite untypical of the bulk of the material on the set in that it was composed not by Richard himself (though it could so easily have been “ghost-written”, you might well say!) but by John French and Donna Blair. And of course it gives Richard every opportunity to “ham it up” (we all know there's a closet music-hall artiste lurking in that gaunt, lithe frame!). Contrasts abound on all five discs, and possibly none more stark than that between Mr. Dead (sic) and Genesis Hall, a Fairport-era classic that's an early expression of Richard's personal mission “to speak for people who don't have a voice”, given here in a stark acoustic 2004 live recording. Then follows another gem, Josef Locke, a poignant character study based on a strange-but-true real-life incident; this item was recorded by Richard specially for the set. After which it's a trip into the tradition for Willie O' Winsbury (much requested because it provided the tune for Farewell, Farewell, yet Richard modestly credits the arrangement principally to Andy Irvine). The quasi-throwaway Don't Sit On My Jimmy Shands (here given in a good-time “audience-karaoke” version, a stage device which can become very tedious on repeated exposure!) is an example of Richard's art concealing art, a character study which cleverly weaves together several strands of his personality by dint of an oblique reference to his Scots ancestry and his love/hate relationship with Scottish dance music, this continuing into Nobody's Wedding. To which Madonna's Wedding is a pertinent, if disposable, parodic response!

Lonesome and lovelorn then provides an unofficial theme for the next few tracks: the (perversely?) bouncy Walking The Long Miles Home comes in a composite version taken from two separate 2000 tour performances with Danny and Teddy, then there's an unmissable solo Withered And Died. Beat The Retreat, here (like Withered And Died) captured in an intimate, intense live rendition, demonstrates Richard's impressive and economic command of imagery and allegory, then we walk the emotional and thematic tightrope with two of Richard's finest ever creations. The first of these, The Great Valerio, brings a bit of a lapse in sound-quality, but this is wholly excusable in view of its importance and rarity, being a tremendous and intensely powerful early live rendition by Richard with Linda from within a 1972 Albion Band concert (and oh how I yearn to hear the rest of that gig!); it's followed by an absolutely killer performance of Walking On A Wire (the studio version was great, but this 1982 live performance reduces me to a quivering wreck every time I hear it, such is its unnerving, vertiginous claustrophobia, its amazing, bold juxtaposition of lyric and instrumental savagery with such acute tenderness of insight). The starkness continues with the bleak realism of Never Again and The End Of The Rainbow; these are presented in stripped-down versions, as is the reflective King Of Bohemia, a fine example of Richard's ability to evoke an acute sense of place, time and emotional state through lyrics that (to paraphrase Nigel's note) resonate with all the atmosphere of tradition. Then it's back to earth (and modern society) with the strange Killerman Gold Posse and the “industrious” Lotteryland, before the home stretch brings a definitive reading of the durable Now Be Thankful (from 1994) and a beefy mid-90s Big Band performance of Shoot Out The Lights (not, as claimed by the booklet note in a rare departure lapse from accuracy, a “stunning solo acoustic version”), the disc closing with the “difficult”, politically sensitive Outside Of The Inside, given in a searing solo studio rendition from 2003.

Onto Disc 2, which I see as potentially the most contentious of the six: subtitled “Finding Better Words: The Essential Richard Thompson”, the RT songs represented thereon in previously unheard recordings have not been chosen by the compiler but instead “selected in worldwide Fans' polls”. Personally, I'd never consider I Feel So Good or Cooksferry Queen among the 17 most “essential“ RT, not by any criterion, and I've always felt From Galway To Graceland uncharacteristically sentimental for Richard (though I'll admit that it receives the best possible advocacy from Richard himself in this Fairport-backed 1996 Cropredy performance). Although I rate Gethsemane highly, I wouldn't place it within the top 20 most “essential” Thompson opuses, although the performance on this disc is one of the best I've heard him give. And (a bit of a surprise, in view of its usual role within the set as a storming rocker and vehicle for stratospheric axe-sparring), Tear Stained Letter returns us to the dubious world of audience-karaoke in a solo rendition from 2002 which shows that “Mr Doom & Gloom” could have a ball with the best (he leaves the crowd to carry on singing the chorus as he exits stage left!); well, even a ragged performance can have its charms... There can, however, surely be no quibble about the inclusion of “the usual suspects”: Bright Lights Tonight, Waltzing's For Dreamers, Down Where The Drunkards Roll, 1952 Vincent, Dimming Of The Day, Beeswing - all, I suspect, meeting anyone's criteria for “essential” Thompson creations. Wall Of Death makes the first of its two appearances on the set (as do Substitute, Withered And Died, Beeswing and End Of The Rainbow - though the last three mentioned appear as covers rather than performances by RT himself), and Meet On The Ledge is the first of three versions to be included (though the others occur on the sixth, bonus disc). A crowning glory of Disc 2 is the exclusive, brand-new studio recording of Crazy Man Michael. Spine-chilling to the last breath, this masterly solo acoustic rendition demonstrates in one fell swoop just how far Richard has come interpretatively too; only returning to the song comparatively recently, Richard admits he still finds it a demanding song to sing, and he wrings every last nuance from the allegorical and emotional import of this archetypal modern transformation ballad. Disc 2 is completed by Time To Ring Some Changes, I Misunderstood and a brilliant unrecorded obscurity, the “pæan to self-assertiveness” Push And Shove (described in 1988 as “the best song the Rolling Stones never wrote”!).

Disc 3, subtitled “Shine In The Dark”, is a sequence of “epic live workouts”, vehicles for some groundbreaking and inspirational creative improvisation (an important facet of Richard's musical talent), invariably a showcase for some stunning musicianship not just from Richard himself but from his cohorts too. Although, keeping things in perspective, it's Richard's supreme prowess on acoustic that's the focus for Ghosts In The Wind, with its keening, almost devotional, modal-style coda. After which the disc is then given over to a formidable succession of blinding electric guitar workouts, embellishing songs that are already superb in themselves; it's an awesome collection alright, even though it excludes Tear Stained Letter, which I'd have thought an obvious choice (too obvious perhaps, then, in view of the number of superlative workout-versions already available? - but then again, we get a version of Calvary Cross here too - not that I mind!...). Astoundingly vital playing lifts the already vicious Put It There, Pal (a song I'd underrated on You? Me? Us?) to another plane entirely. More than anything else, this disc highlights that Richard has a really special gift for conjuring up out of that fretboard some epic, and incredibly inventive, solos that embrace the widest stylistic gamut of virtually any master-guitarist (however skilled in their own field) that you could name (he's equally well-versed in the musical mores of dextrous folksome fingerpicking, delicate ambience-conjuring, trad-session-tunes, rock'n'roll, deep twang, wailing rock and screaming angst). On the version of the ever-flexible Sloth included here (taken from a 1982 performance from the final Richard & Linda tour, with Messrs Nicol, Zorn and Mattacks in support), there's a distinctly free-form, almost Grateful-Dead-like feel to the proceedings surrounding the solo passages (it's rather a pity, then, that there's a noticeable blip, what sounds like a mastering glitch in the transfer, at 4:45, just as Richard's solo is getting going). Another highlight of Disc 3 is the momentous yet rarely-heard Drowned Dog, Black Night, captured in a Band version from the 1997 Cambridge Folk Festival. (One small point: the opening line or so of the introduction to the track notes for Disc 3 appears to have been excised from the book's text ...)

Onto Disc 4 now, “The Songs Pour Down Like Silver”, which in dealing exclusively with cover versions by Richard of songs penned by other writers (exceptions being three tracks on which Richard played as a session musician), is arguably the least substantial of the set, at any rate musically. Generally speaking, the emphasis is on fun, with Richard displaying a gleeful schoolboy-like delight in regaling his audience with almost casual runthroughs of material you wouldn't normally associate with a sensitive singer-songwriter (!), that in lesser hands might just come over as mere ephemera yet with RT you get the feeling as much that he's testing the water, pushing the boundaries, surprising, taxing and challenging his audience while making the serious point that it's all grist to the mill (see his 1000 Years Of Popular Music thesis). So we get not just a plangent (and indeed curious) Hawaii-recorded cover of Nick Drake's Time Has Told Me (remember, Richard has sessioned on Nick's original version), an “updated” Phil Ochs number and a full-blown Who medley, but also versions of songs by Cliff Richard, Britney Spears, George Formby and Plastic Bertrand! Inevitably, not everything works and some of it is in the end quite disposable, but the disc's still worth having, not least for gems like the traditional Napoleon's Dream (by Richard & Linda acappella at a folk club in 1973), a brief but lusty shanty Sally Rackett (performed authentically as a worksong - well, as accompaniment to the task of string-changing at a gig in Iowa!) and the Job Of Journeywork (one of two tunes recorded for a rare guitar demo book - surely there would have been room to include the other one too?). The ragbag nature of this disc is emphasised by the presence of three already-available album tracks by other artists (Norma Waterson, Dave Burland and Judith Owen) on which RT played session guitar (and/or sang) - logical though their inclusion is in bringing together many of the strands of this disc. (The disc also includes four bonus tracks, yet track notes for the middle two of these are absent from the relevant section of the otherwise reliable book.)

Disc 5 is potentially the most valuable, though it turns out a bit of an oddity in many ways; yet “Something Here Worth More Than Gold: Real Rarities”, in airing for the very first time recordings that have lain hidden or forgotten for years, does contain among its 15 tracks a healthy proportion of items that will make even the “fan who has everything” drool. Like the original home demo of Albion Sunrise, and a Richard & Linda Woodworm Studios demo of How Many Times Do You Have To Fall. And some pretty fine “songs that got away” from albums (Lucky In Life, Unlucky In Love, Dragging The River, and In Over Your Head, a really captivating fragmentary “working demo” from the Across A Crowded Room sessions), together with a small clutch of invaluable pre-Henry The Human Fly demos which include You Got What You Wanted (a cheeky peep into the evolution of Time To Ring Some Changes). Excursions into cod-country (Shady Lies, Woman Or A Man) provide a contrast, as do examples of the more playful “humorous pattersmith” side of Richard's writing (Alexander Graham Bell, My Daddy Is A Mummy and the scurrilous riposte Dear Janet Jackson). This disc is a notable exception to the Free Reed rule in that it weighs in at only 45 minutes (the first four discs in the set are exceptionally well-filled in the best Free Reed tradition at well over 70 minutes apiece). Given that (as revealed in a recent radio interview) the compiler had unearthed around two CDs' worth of material which could have fitted into the stated definition for Disc 5, I'm left wondering whether a large number of items originally destined or mooted had fallen victim to a last-minute refusal of permission from RT himself or other influential parties... What we have here is worthwhile and welcome, but I still feel slightly shortchanged by Disc 5. As a general principle applying to the set as a whole, I can understand the decision not to include items which hardcore RT fans would already have (and fought hard to get), but on the other hand there's something to be said for making just a few more of the extremely-limited-edition curios available on a set such as this.

Disc 6 is the bonus write-in limited-edition disc mentioned above: it chronicles “RT On FR”, drawing together Richard's contributions (whether as performer or composer) to earlier Free Reed box-sets. These include choice performances by Martin Carthy, Dave Swarbrick, various Albion and Fairport lineups, and recordings made at Cropredy Festival. The principal interest of Disc 6, however, will undoubtedly lie in its five bonus tracks, which are called-on in by a Richard Thompson Band archive track from 1980 (The Gas Almost Works). There's also Elvis Costello's sonorous and atmospheric 1986 recording of End Of The Rainbow, originally recorded for a charity album then subsequently appended to the CD reissue of King Of America. And, although any discerning fan is likely already to own the sublime Grace Notes album version of Withered And Died, I'd consider the trio deeply honoured to be chosen for inclusion on this prestigious set. But very probably the disc's most tempting track is Has He Got A Friend For Me?, which has been specially recorded for the set by Debra Cowan, described as a “huge Thompson fan” herself (but no, she doesn't weigh 22 stone!). The closing item is a brand-new, exclusive rendition of Beeswing, sung unaccompanied by John Clough; though his phrasing may be a little unorthodox at times (at least compared to what we're used to hearing), his reading is affectionate and, importantly, conveys respect for, and understanding of, the original, for (unlike many a performer) he correctly observes the subtle variations within the song's structure that give the narrative much of its poignancy.

No review would be complete without consideration of the stupendous, and copious, 172-page book that straddles the discs in the box. It's a work of art in itself, naturally, blessed with an abundantly attractive layout and containing an amazing array of photographs that genuinely complement what amounts to a veritable goldmine of fascinating information; exactly what one has come to expect from a Free Reed production. Well over half of the book is devoted to a 24-chapter “career overview”; its author (Nigel Schofield) emphasises this is not an attempt at a biography, yet it would disgrace many writings that actually profess to be! It's more of a loosely chronological assessment that necessarily cherry-picks the highlights and identifies Richard's achievements, placed into meaningful perspective by comments from musicians with whom he's worked and in the context of the prevailing musical climate. I suspect that even the hardcore fan will learn plenty from this section of the book!... Then comes a transcript of an “enthusiastic, enlightening and entertaining” conversation conducted in March 2005 between Nigel and Richard, the scope of which mirrors and develops the themes of the discs themselves - the very act of compilation of which Richard sees among other things as a good opportunity to revisit songs which “have a place in a context wider than a single album”.

The book's final section (before the credits, that is) consists of comprehensive notes on the CD tracks themselves, both in terms of the songs and the recordings' sources. Nigel's notes on the individual tracks incorporate some vital nuggets of perceptive commentary on the songs themselves (that on Walking On A Wire is a case in point, for it voices my own thoughts to a tee yet far more eloquently than I ever could). Similarly, his commentaries on Crazy Man Michael and Beeswing (to pinpoint just two) seem to have probed my own brain cells with uncanny percipience (for instance: for sure, the first time I too heard Beeswing it had the same kind of devastating impact as Mr Fox's epic tale of The Gipsy... yes, Beeswing is definitely one of my desert-island discs, and truly seminal, quintessential Thompson). The track notes contain loads of additional information that will be of interest not just to anoraks, relating to associated bands/artists and their performance/recording histories, and are complemented earlier in the book by a short section where, illustrating that “it all comes round again”, Nigel briefly discusses the thorny topic of repackagings of Richard's rather large recorded output. The book is also laced throughout with some admirably pithy yet wholly intriguing mini-dissertations (on such varied topics as Richard's session work, his early composition Decameron, the writer Ambrose Bierce, and sundry discographical idiosyncrasies), a minor side-effect of these being that it's sometimes all too easy to get sidetracked from the main thrust of the narrative! But the whole book is literate and scholarly, liberally spiced with references to relevant literary precedents and cross-cultural allusions, as well as sharing companionly anecdotes that prove refreshingly uncliquey; the reader feels privileged to be reaping the benefits of Nigel's experience and expertise.

So there we have it. And since every review must by nature include a nitpick or two, so my principal cavil is that perhaps Discs 5 and 6 might have been more fully stocked, but having got that out of the way there's little else I can (or would wish to) quarrel with. Sure enough, any Thompson fan will have particular favourite songs that aren't included on this set - but that's bound to happen with any artist with such a massive (and top-quality) back-catalogue. I miss Poor Ditching Boy, How I Wanted To and Old Thames Side, to name but three, and many will bemoan the omission of Poor Will & The Jolly Hangman in some guise or other I'm sure. And I can accept that Front Parlour Ballads would have appeared too late for any of its tracks to be included. And although care has obviously been lavished on the set's presentation, the design aspects of which display both a delicious sense of fun and a canny attention to detail (nostalgia buffs will appreciate the repro-Beltona sleeve and label design for Disc 6, for instance), the usual exceptionally high Free Reed standard has lapsed just occasionally with some slipshod inconsistencies between itemised and actual (track or cumulative disc) timings.

So finally, will this set appeal to the non-connoisseur sufficiently to be worth the (not insignificant, but nonetheless brilliant-value) £45 investment? It's not really a case of “if you have no RT in your collection then this will do nicely” (though you could say that and get away with it!), but more a case of the set being an essential supplement to the current representation of RT (whether limited or not, and in whatever form) within your existing collection. And I really do mean essential. For, just as the set itself has been a labour of love for compiler Nigel Schofield, reviewing it has been a love of labour (as well as a labour of love) for me, in that I've been able to take great pleasure in the task! No box-set can ever be “the ultimate”, but RT covers all the required bases and thus does its job admirably (if at times mildly contentiously!). It satisfies the Fan and the Faithful, and provides ample starting points for the uninitiated to launch further investigation into the boundless Thompson œuvre. And what's so encouraging and positive, in this world of almost unrelieved real-life doom and gloom, is that Richard shows no sign of slackening-off, or losing his touch (or marbles!); he remains master of all trades while not jacking it in! King of all he surveys, and long may he reign.

www.richardthompson-music.com
www.richard-thompson.co.uk

David Kidman, February 2006

The complete Box-Set plus all its books and both bonus CDs are available at £44.99 plus postage. To order your copy FAX or post the print-off order form from the link below.

www.free-reed.co.uk/rtmailorderform.php

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