Description
Richard Thompson, The White Horse Band and Me
A Personal Muse
by Scott Thomson
Richard Thompson (RT) entered my life as surreptitiously as one of his fine guitar accompaniments.
It was the early 1970s.
My friends and I, all teenagers, used to play snooker and listen to our records every Friday and Saturday night.
There was a sea of heavy rock ’ n ’ roll to wade through as the lads brought a steady stream of Led Zep, Sabbath, and Deep Purple albums for our listening pleasure.
In the mix, someone brought the ‘History of Fairport Convention’ because they were intrigued by the cover, and the rest is history.
I was hooked.
It seemed, strangely, that folk music could be cool.
I knew I liked Fairport, particularly when Sandy Denny was singing, but why?
Well, Sandy was very good, and that’s a worthy enough reason, but as it turns out, although I didn’t know it at the time, she was, and still is, the definitive voice of the British folk-rock scene that emerged in the late 1960’s.
But it was more than that.
When you listen to ‘Who Knows Where the Time Goes’, it’s the tasteful electric guitar behind Sandy that makes it the classic that it has subsequently become.
Who was responsible?
Well, RT of course.
At the time of first listening, this small detail eluded me.
I just liked the song.
At 19 years old, RT wrote the seminal, ‘Meet on the Ledge’, which is now the closing song for the Cropredy Festival in the UK.
What a cracking song!
Check out a wonderful modern version of the song by Counting Crows, lovely.
But I digress.
Sandy and Ian Matthews did the singing on the original because, apparently, RT preferred to hide behind the amplifiers at this stage.
He also wrote ‘Genesis Hall’ about this time, with that great line alluding to his father’s occupation: ‘My father he rides with your sheriffs, and I know he would never mean harm’.
Richard’s dad was, indeed, a policeman down in London from Glasgow, where he no doubt had learned why policemen were necessary.
‘Crazy Man Michael’ followed, written with the help of the fiddle whiz, Dave Swarbrick, and he showed you could still write a medieval folk song in the 1960s.
Incidentally, check out Natalie Merchant’s version of the same.
Maybe better than Fairport’s, I suggest – whoops, controversy!
You will note that Richard is a Thompson, with a ‘p’, unlike me.
But this wasn’t always the case.
Most Scots spell the name ‘Thomson’.
The story goes that his great-grandfather ordered a brass plaque for the front of the house, which was misspelled with a ‘p’, this kind of thing happens all the time to us Thomsons.
Rather than order a new one, he just changed the spelling of his name!
You have to laugh, that’s a very Scottish thing to do.
My ‘Thomsons’ all hail from Lewis, then Glasgow, and on to Edinburgh, so I wonder sometimes if we share a common link?
Maybe. But there are a lot of Thomson’s in Scotland!
Richard had a ‘kind of’ middle-class upbringing in North London and became something of a guitar nerd, shunning the American blues-style guitar hero road happily adopted by some of his peers (think Eric, Peter, Jeff and co), searching for something uniquely British instead.
His Fairport pals were in for the ride and shared the vision, particularly Ashley Hutchins, a major mover and visionary behind Fairport, and of course, he went on to do the same with Steeleye Span.
Arguably, Fairport was at its best with Sandy, Dave Swarbrick, Simon Nicol, Dave Pegg and RT in the lineup.
Alas, this collection of big egos (I’m talking about Sandy, Richard and Swarb) didn’t last together long, with Richard preferring walking on a wire as a solo artist and Sandy wanting to spend more time with her Australian boyfriend, Trevor Lucas, and avoid flying.
Richard remained friends with Sandy, despite the latter almost destroying the furniture when RT advised he was leaving the band.
Sandy was known to have a grasp of the English language that would make a seaman blanch, and RT copped a blast.
However, he went on to play on some of her albums and regularly bunked at her flat post-Fairport.
Richard proceeded to record Warner Brother’s worst-selling album of all time, ‘Henry and the Human Fly’, which has been subsequently regarded as an idiosyncratic classic.
With RT dressed as a human fly on the front cover (what was he thinking?), it’s definitely quirky.
You can tell the real folkies, they all have ‘Henry’ buried in their record or CD collection somewhere (I do myself).
Richard chose to sing on Henry, which may have contributed to its desultory sales figures.
However, there are some RT classics in there, including ‘The Poor Ditching Boy’ (the Trads do a fine version) and Shaky Nancy, which I first heard sung beautifully by Dave Burland.
Anyone remember him?
After the nadir of ‘Henry’, Richard spent time as a working musician, filling in as a studio guitarist.
For example, he played on albums by John & Beverly Martyn, ‘Stormbringer’ and ‘Bless the Weather’, Nick Drake on ‘Bryter Layter’ and ‘Five Leaves Left’, and Sandy on her solo offerings.
He also found an excuse to hang around with Sandy’s friend Linda, and soon they were a duo, marrying in 1972, and starting a tempestuous, incredibly productive period as Richard and Linda Thompson.
Linda was Richard’s voice, and what a voice!
The songs Richard wrote for her to sing are arguably the best of them all.
There were six Richard and Linda studio albums, and the list of great songs is long indeed.
‘A Heart Needs a Home’, ‘Walking on a Wire’, ‘Wall of Death’ (check out REM’s version), ‘Shoot Out the Lights’, ‘Never Again’, ‘Bright Lights’, ‘Down Where the Drunkards Roll’, such great stuff.
They went back to basics and toured UK folk clubs
At that time, that meant up to three gigs a week, and a reasonable living, believe it or not.
Richard later said that he had never felt richer than that period of his life.
Those were the times when folk clubs met once per week all over the UK.
A creative cauldron for aspiring musicians.
No wonder so much good music came out of that period.
Richard and Linda also found the time to produce three children and join a Sufi commune.
Linda, interviewed much later, was asked what life lessons she gained during this time.
She replied, ‘not to enter sects’ or something like that.
Richard stayed a Sufi for the rest of his life and remains so today.
Listen to ‘Dad’s Gonna Kill Me’, from the Sweet Warrior album.
His unique slant on the US intervention in Iraq through the eyes of an American GI is interesting.
As a Sufi, I wonder what he really thinks about that, as well as most other Middle Eastern conflicts.
The Richard & Linda show sadly did not last, and after 10 years of marriage, they went their separate ways.
But they had one last tour together to honour, in the USA, the highlight of which was Linda kicking Richard in the shins on stage.
Richard moved to the States, married another, Nancy Covey, and built a new career.
He also found his voice.
He teamed with Capitol Records and produced some great albums and some of his best songs, including ‘Beeswing’ and ‘Vincent Black Lightning 1952’.
Modern ballads, I suspect these will be sung forever.
‘Vincent’ was a massive underground hit on Public Radio in the USA, apparently at one point, their most requested song ever.
Richard’s guitar playing, on acoustic or electric, was always something out of the box.
Now that he had developed his voice, that gave the songs, and the playing, justice.
He played differently to most, with a key element being the combination of flat pick and finger picking that gave songs dynamic range and variation, except for ‘Vincent’, which uses a combination of fingerpicking and fingers.
The use of part chords and unusual harmonic dissonance added to the mix.
One of my favourite YouTube clips is Richard playing ‘Vincent’ with Susanne Vega and Louden Wainwright III on stage with him.
The look on Suzanne’s face is priceless, no mug herself, she looks bemused.
Louden, however, looks like he wishes he was somewhere else.
Richard is loved by the folkies, but is no folk purist.
He has always operated, comfortably, between folk and rock genres.
He has pushed the boundaries, and if you haven’t seen his ‘1,000 Years of Popular Music’ DVD, you should.
Here, he navigates with aplomb between medieval baroque, folk, country, pop, and rock’n’roll, all with an acoustic guitar, and able assistance on voice and keyboards from Judith Owen, and percussion by Debra Dobkin.
He has a great sense of humour, too.
Just watch his cover of ‘Whoops, I Did It Again’ for the Britney Spears impersonation.
He’s still releasing albums, the latest is ‘Ship to Shore’.
Maybe it’s the third marriage, this time to Zara Phillips, that keeps him going, but I prefer to think it’s just innate creativity.
We haven’t seen him in Australia for quite some time.
Maybe he hates air travel as much as I do and he’s long overdue.
Richard, if you ever read this, get yourself down here, we miss you!
You are a living legend.
And so, to ‘The White Horse Band’.
In 2024, my good friends from ‘Cap in Hand’, Dave Spira and Nigel ‘Muddy’ Walters, kindly asked me to sing ‘Vincent’ for them at a Newcastle Folk Club gig.
The audience response was very positive, and we had such fun that the seed of an idea emerged.
Why don’t we put together a band to produce a show featuring the great songs of Richard Thompson that we all know and love?
We Thomsons had actually done something similar, back in the day, with our old band ‘Beeswing’.
Thus, the White Horse Band (WHB) was formed from an amalgamation of Cap in Hand (Nigel and Dave), ‘The Thomsons’ (Jenny and I), and Traditional Graffiti (Nige and Brad Newhouse).
Brad freely admits, somewhat sheepishly, that nobody ever smuggled Fairport Convention albums into his snooker parties and thus he was brought up on a steady diet of 70’s rock’n’roll.
Well, at least it wasn’t 80’s disco.
Brad is coming up to speed nicely after a WHB management decision to delete all but RT music from his playlists.
The White Horse Band had their first gig in December 2024 at the Django Bar, Camelot Lounge in Marrickville.
The place was packed, and what an atmosphere!
The gig was so successful that Django asked the WHB back for later this year.
The WHB plans to take the show to folk clubs and festivals near you.
If you have a favourite RT song, let us know, and we might just squeeze it into the set list.
