Richard Thompson

Richard Thompson

A CAPITAL COLLECTION

Folk-Rocker Richard Thompson Assesses His Career with the Release of a "Best-of" Set for Capitol
Over the course of a career that's nearing the four-decade mark, Richard Thompson has donned many guises -- from unreconstructed folkie to Goth-presaging gloom monger to impish chronicler of (post-) modern life. But while the surface might change with regularity, the core of his troubadour's spirit remains immutable. That's amply evident on Action Packed: The Best of the Capitol Years, which offers a thoughtful look back at the past 13 years of Thompson's career -- albeit a look that neglects side trips like the Golden Palominos and French-Frith-Kaiser-Thompson. Even so, the album does convey plenty of offbeat notions about life, death, pornography, and motorbikes with swerving tales embellished by Thompson's wry observational skills and quietly dazzling guitar work. Although he insists he doesn't like to look back, Thompson did just that for the benefit of Barnes & Noble's David Sprague.

Barnes & Noble.com: When you started playing with Fairport Convention, were you coming from a very traditionalist folk background?

Richard Thompson: Actually, at the beginning, we tailored our repertoire to suit the gig. After all, 15 pounds was a lot of money in those days! So if we were going to play a blues club, we'd learn some blues songs; if we were going to play a folk place, we'd play folk songs. After a while, we became more traditional, quite consciously: We took an ideological stance and said we wanted to play music of our culture and bring that into the mainstream. We were treated, in Britain, as a novelty.

B&N.com: Like most artists with long careers, you have some songs that have connected with your audience more than others: Are they the ones you would expect to do so?

RT: Not always, no. You don't know how things are going to translate, how an audience will react to a song. I don't know if Stravinsky had that problem with The Rite of Spring, but it seems like an eternal problem. [laughs] In general, I find it surprising that the audience seems to prefer ballads and longer songs. I never think they'll want to sit still for six-minute songs with seven verses, but they request those over and above the snappy three-minute tune.

B&N.com: You have a flair for setting up odd dichotomies in your songs: Happy death songs and so on. Is that something you do consciously?

RT: I don't think about it all that much, but it's a basic device I use. You try to lure the listener in with superficiality, and then, once the listener is engaged, you can hit them with something quite dark or morally unacceptable. Once you've done that, they can't back out; they're too involved with the process. I think that irony is a great tool for a songwriter -- a good tool for anyone who wants to do battle with hypocrites and despots. "Short People" is a great example of that.

B&N.com: This album focuses on your "Capitol Years." Do you see your career as a compartmentalized thing?

RT: I think every album is a project, some more conceptual than others. At the end, you may think, That's done, let's move on to something else, but not really. Yes, Fairport was certainly a distinct period, and the albums I did with Linda were as well, but I only look back when asked, not as a matter of course. I suppose it's useful to see what you've done so that you can figure out what to do next, but other than that, I don't really [look back].

B&N.com: Do songs like "1952 Vincent Black Lightning" [a tale of death on two motorized wheels] have much autobiography in them?

RT: Well, I'm not a biker. I love bikes, but I'm not a collector or rider. When I was a kid, it was the one to have. Coming from Britain, I find I have to cheat in manufacturing mythology in song. In 20th-century song -- which sounds really old as a phrase -- America had it all. It's easy if you're a country or a blues writer to just mention place names, or that lonesome train whistle, and you have a song. Songs about British culture just sounded so mundane in comparison.

B&N.com: You've done some soundtrack work, some of it dealing very closely with the British experience, if you will. Do you see it as a challenge to tailor your work, or end up wishing you hadn't agreed to in the first place?

RT: At some point, I wish I hadn't done so. I enjoyed contributing to Hard Cash, which has a political focus, and I think my songs served the film well. It was never actually shown, by the way. The BBC apparently got a daily phone call from Margaret Thatcher -- daily! -- complaining about political leanings, and they decided to pull it before it ever aired.

B&N.com: This album contains one of your more politically incorrect songs, "Fully Qualified to Be Your Man." Can you provide any insight into that one?

RT: It's a boasting song, which I rather like -- you know, a bit of Howlin' Wolf, boasting about manhood. It's kind of hard for a white suburbanite to pull that off, but I thought I could do it by couching it in academic terms. It's a good song -- a stupid song, but good nonetheless. It was largely an excuse to play a lot of guitar in D.

B&N.com: Your guitar playing has always caught the ear of fellow musicians, even though you're not known as a "guitar hero" by the bulk of the public.

RT: Thank God for that -- what a terrible thing to have to live up to! I like to serve the song, wherever it wants me to go, I'm happy to drift along. I'm not really trying to show off too much as a player. If I do something that's flashy, I only use the technique to express the emotion. I'm defending myself when I'm not being attacked. [laughs] It's easier to do as you please when you're the singer, the songwriter, and the bandleader in addition to being the guitarist.

March 27, 2001