Eclectic Company: Richard Thompson Takes My Request

Ending my Irish vacation in New York City, where my siblings and I were going to be holding a semi-surprise party for my mom’s 80th birthday, I landed in time to make it to the last two out of three nights of all request shows by world-renowned musicians’ musician Richard Thompson, at the cavernous yet cozy City Winery. The fans came in from all over the United States and even a few from overseas, having been tipped to the gigs in time to buy all the tickets within a few hours of being released for sale. At the shows, each of us was asked to write out a single musical request, whether for Thompson’s own songs or any others, and those slips of paper were put into a gigantic footed bowl from which RT would pick the night’s set list at random, while we watched with bated breath, thinking “pick me, pick me,” with the same excited fear you get when you’re waiting for sides to be drawn for a softball game.

The first night, I asked for one of my personal favorites – “Al Bowlly’s In Heaven (And I’m In Limbo Now)” – a song that makes me grateful that my dad and his gang who were called up during the Korean conflict, my best girl’s dad and his pals who were in WWII, and the kids I knew in High School who went off to Vietnam, all came back safe, and whole, and had the chance to live the lives they’d planned. With its minor key swingy tune and marching feet rhythmic riff, its reference to British wartime big band leader Al Bowlly, and lines like “we were heroes then / and the girls were all pretty / and a uniform was a lucky charm / that bought you the key to the city,” Thompson sent me back to British and American dance bands and couples in uniform at the USO, a time and place familiar from movies and books. But being Richard Thompson, he sang unsentimental lines which brought me back from the soft focus lenses of so many patriotic movies with a thud — “Well I gave my youth to king and country?/ But what's my country done for me / but sentenced me to misery?/ I traded my helmet and my parachute/ For a pair of crutches and a demob suit / Al Bowlly’s in Heaven / and I’m in limbo now.” And Thompson actually sang it for me, the second night I was there, sandwiching the song between a hilarious version of “The Monster Mash” and a gentle love song to the deity, “Dimming of the Day,” which for me is Thompson’s greatest hit, having charted in a cover version by Bonnie Raitt, among others. (Some of you here in Lake Charles will no doubt be more familiar with the country Cajun version of “Two Left Feet,” Thompson’s song that gave Moss Bluff accordionist Jo-El Sonnier a hit probably 20 years ago.)

Now I know that while a few of you might have seen him paying tribute to Joni Mitchell in the 2000 PBS special, where he covered “Woodstock,” and some of you might have heard him opening for Crowded House (he sang “Don’t Dream It’s Over” with the full Winery crowd on the chorus), and a few of you might even have heard him making fun of LA’s own Britney Spears by covering “Ooops…I Did It Again,” but most of you reading this haven’t heard or even heard of Richard Thompson, perhaps the most important guitarist of the twentieth century, because although his songs have been covered for nearly 40 years by Del McCoury, R.E.M., Christy Moore, David Gilmour, Mary Black, Elvis Costello, The Corrs, Shawn Colvin, Norma Waterson, Maura O'Connell, Lucy Kaplansky, and The Blind Boys of Alabama, just to name a random few, his records haven’t been marketed for sales in the millions and he’s rarely been heard on mainstream Top 20 radio, so he’s always been better known among musicians than he has been among ordinary fans. Then, too, there’s the affectionate recognition by the faithful that he’s a gloomy Gus, singing more of sturm und drang than of either fury or delight. And his songs are too lyrical, too literate, to reach audiences wanting something light and frothy, or beer-soaked and headbanging. And he doesn’t often sing of modern obsessions, except perhaps in his “1952 Vincent Black Lightning,” a love song to a motorcycle and a girl who loves the outlaw who owns it, with the fabulous line, “red hair and black leather / my favorite color scheme,” that makes me long to be 20 again.

So why am I waxing lyrical about him today? Because Richard Thompson songs have formed the soundtrack to my life since I was a pubescent hippie, wanting to sing the deep meaningful songs of my tortured soul, in tattered gauzy garb that all the prettiest girls wore on the album covers of the 1960s. And because I want you to go hear him, as soon as you can (which is in Baton Rouge November 9, more about that later).

Thompson has been a guitar hero since he was just 17, (and you know what I mean), playing in the formidable genre-founding folk-rock band, Fairport Convention, then in a duo with his first wife, Linda Thompson nee Pettifer, and finally on his own as a soloist or in varying band aggregations, for a hardcore fanbase that literally follows him everywhere. Their enthusiasm for his live performances (too numerous for me to count, since 1967) and recorded output (over 60 released recordings of his own, and at least that many more projects to which he’s lent his nimble fingers) has made him the subject of three! retrospective boxed sets of his music — in 1993, “Watching the Dark,” for which I interviewed Thompson and wrote liner notes, and music and art critic Greil Marcus wrote an introductory essay; in 2006, “RT – The Life and Music of Richard Thompson,” almost all previously unreleased tracks, with a Thompson interview, a biographical essay by Brit fan/writer Nigel Schofield; and again, in 2009, “Walking On A Wire,” with notes by Patrick Humphries, a biographer of Thompson, and an introductory essay by my old pal, Variety and Billboard journalist Jim Bessman.

Thompson’s intensity and passion are well-observed on any or all of those boxed sets or on two tribute compilations of other artists' interpretations of his work, Capitol's "Beat the Retreat: Songs by Richard Thompson" and Green Linnet's "The World Is a Wonderful Place: The Songs of Richard Thompson," both released in 1994. You can hear it for yourself on www.youtube.com, and you can buy it direct from Thompson’s website, www.richardthompson-music.com, but even better, if you still can, get some tickets to hear Richard Thompson live in Baton Rouge, on Monday, November 9, at the Manship Theatre (225) 344-0334, where he and another hard-to-pin down singer/writer, Loudon Wainwright III, will be performing their Loud and Rich tour. You will not be sorry.

Jambalaya reader Bill Day sent along a few more mondegreens: from the church hymn, “While shepherds washed their socks by night” and The Lord’s Prayer "Our father, who's Art in heaven.” I love ‘em. Send more to .