Front Parlour Ballads

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He remembers sitting in Thompson’s living room one afternoon in 1964, hearing the Rolling Stones’ Not Fade Away for the first time. He talks about getting bored of books by Pete Townshend and Keith Richards when they go past the early years: “Once you’re playing Scunthorpe for the 30th time, unless someone gets murdered in the audience, it’s not that interesting. In August of the same year Island released a live Richard and Linda Thompson album, compiled from recordings made during the November 1975 tour to promote the Pour Down Like Silver album. He has also performed and recorded with Teddy Thompson, his son from his marriage to Linda Thompson. Across a Crowded Room (1985) was his last album to be recorded in England and the last to have Boyd as producer.

In one of the most arresting passages of the book, he describes crawling over to Jeannie a few yards away. and Dream Attic (2010)—have been nominated for Grammy Awards, [4] while Still (2015) was his first UK Top Ten album. The album is superb in its own right, but this 'DualDisc' version which includes the full album in 5. A favourite of both Robert Plant and Elvis Costello, Thompson has also been covered by acts as varied as feminist punks Sleater-Kinney, REM, David Byrne and, most recently, Mark Ronson, who covered the 1974 title track of Thompson’s album with first wife Linda Thompson, I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight.He’d already jammed with Jimi Hendrix and supported Pink Floyd; now Thompson’s band had recently finished their third album, Unhalfbricking, with singer Sandy Denny.

The book ends in the mid-1970s, after Thompson converts to Sufism, living a stripped-down life, even getting rid of his furniture at one point. The critics, as usual, acclaimed the new release, but rather more surprising were strong early sales in both the U. The outlook expressed in his songs, his musical style, the subjects addressed by his lyrics have not shown any fundamental change. The acoustic guitar sound we got was great as well - it's a weird guitar, built off centre on a slant; it was custom made by Danny Ferrington.

He is one of the most stunningly gifted guitarists you'll ever see live, and his dextrously fingerpicked mid-song diversions prompt claps and whoops from a crowd that is otherwise quietly reverent. We discuss some the women who’ve made a mark on his life: Shirley Collins, with whom he’s played and toured (“an extraordinary woman”) and Liz Gordon, an American tour booker with whom he had a brief relationship in 1971: she asked him to get her pregnant, as she wanted a child (she told him she was happy to be a single parent). Richard Thompson fell out with Rafferty during this project and was not happy with the finished product.