Folk Icon Richard Thompson Takes On "1,000 Years of Popular Music"
By Andrew Clayman
Published (with edits) in The Scene (Cleveland), January 2008
See also: Alternate Richard Thompson Feature in The Metro Pulse
Richard Thompson is far too amiable to play the role of the unsung hero, but if a myth ever were ascribed to him, it might tell of a man who, when offered the choice between the life of a brilliant singer/songwriter and a guitar god, sacrificed stardom to become both.
Of course, in fairness, Thompson’s four decades of impossibly stellar folk-rock have hardly gone unnoticed. Critics have lauded almost every lick and lyric he’s crafted along the way (Rolling Stone ranked him #19 on their 2003 list of the greatest guitarists of all-time), and his fellow musicians, from David Gilmour to Elvis Costello, R.E.M., and Emmylou Harris, have covered his work with reverence. Still, the man known affectionately as “RT” has remained almost inexplicably anonymous to the masses, often reduced to little more than a quirky High Fidelity reference. Out of this injustice, however, has grown a freewheeling spirit that’s helped Thompson remain as vital, distinctive, and exciting as at any other point in his career. At 58, he sounds better than he ever has, a great example of an artist refusing to rest on his laurels.
“Well, I don’t actually have any laurels,” says Thompson, showcasing his trademark wit with a sarcastic clearing of the throat. He then pauses a moment before attempting a more serious explanation for his prolific creative output. “I don’t know. I’m always very dissatisfied with what I do. I always think that there are other places to go, that I can do better, and that the work can reach a higher standard. I suppose it’s good to be a little restless. You know, I haven’t achieved very much at all, and I’d like to achieve something. So I’m always driving myself forward. I’m always thinking, ‘well there’s the next project, but how about after that? Let’s have another project and another project.’ I’m always thinking in terms of projects. And it’s just one step in front of the other. It keeps me going down the road.”
One of Thompson’s on-going and particularly popular projects goes by the somewhat self-explanatory title, “1,000 Years of Popular Music.” It began innocently enough, in 1999, when Playboy Magazine started asking musicians to submit their lists of the “Greatest Songs of the Millennium.” Of course, what they were really looking for was a list of the best songs from the past 50 years or so (bias of the living), and most contributors played along accordingly. Thompson, however, chose to be the chap who takes things literally, and provided Playboy with a carefully researched list of songs dating back to the Dark Ages. His list, predictably, was never published, but Thompson was inspired, and in the following years, he developed the “1,000 Years” concept into a live show, as well as a CD and accompanying DVD, released in 2003. The show is revamped and back on the road this year, with Thompson again accompanied by his 1,000 Years cohorts, vocalist Judith Owen and percussionist/vocalist Debra Dobkin.
“Well, this show, it’s kind of a revue of popular music, from about 1,000 AD on,” Thompson explains. “I must say that we did cheat a bit, and that it really is songs that we like playing, rather than songs that were really popular, in some cases. But, you know, it’s impossible to truly say, ‘well, here’s what popular music was like,’ so it is rather skewed and prejudiced. But we do take on a really wide range of music— an absurdly wide range of music-- starting with various forms of early music up through Elizabethan, madrigals, carols from the 18th century—and there’s probably more of a concentration on music from 1900 onward, just because that’s more what we and the audience are familiar with. So, you know, we cover Gilbert and Sullivan, and jazz, gospel, country, and, well, everything!”
It should be noted that “everything” has also included covers of songs by the Kinks, Squeeze, Prince, and even Britney Spears (an impressively unironic version of “Oops, I Did It Again”). As extensive as Thompson’s personal reference library of the millennium canon may be, however, he still needed to do some digging for many of the show’s extreme oldies.
“The research is really enjoyable,” he says. “It’s very interesting to find all these things that are kind of forgotten really. And I think one of the joys of the show is to present unfamiliar music to the audience, and say, ‘look, here’s this kind of music from 1400 or 1800 or 1900-- isn’t this interesting? Isn’t this great popular music?’ And perhaps the audience will be inspired to go and find more of the same.”
Often, this is the same sort of process that unfolds when people discover Richard Thompson’s own music for the first time. For some, it starts by hearing his guitar playing as a shy teenage prodigy with the seminal English folk-rock band Fairport Convention, or his studio work with the legendary Nick Drake. For others, it’s the landmark albums he recorded with his ex-wife Linda, including I Want To See the Bright Lights Tonight (1974) and Shoot Out the Lights (1982). And over the past 25 years, a whole new generation of admirers has gravitated to Thompson’s remarkably versatile solo material. These fans can talk to you about different “species” of RT songs, from the up-tempo electric rockers (“I Feel So Good,” “Razor Dance”) to the tear-jerking folk ballads (“Beeswing,” “1952 Vincent Black Lightning,” “Drifting Through the Days”), to the epic, curtain call anthems (“Shoot Out the Lights,” “Wall of Death”).
On his latest album, last year’s Sweet Warrior, Thompson even displayed his prowess for the protest song, delivering the hard-edged, anti-war epic “Dad’s Gonna Kill Me,” which is written from the perspective of an American soldier in Baghdad (hence, “Dad”). Thompson believes that protest music is still capable of being a vital element in today’s society, just as it was when his career was first beginning.
“I think, right now, with a fairly unpopular government and a very unpopular war, people respond to a song like (“Dad’s Gonna Kill Me”) very well. There’s a time and a place for political music, and, depending on the times, you can vary the immediacy of a political song. You know, sometimes, you want a veil pulled over it—something a bit more metaphorical and subtle. But other times, you just have to stand up and say, ‘well, this is the way it is, folks,’ and be quite naked about the intent of the song.”
Such honesty doesn’t always pay immediate dividends, but here’s hoping that the new millennium comes to appreciate Richard Thompson as much as he appreciated the last one.
