理查德·汤普森

Richard Thompson (born 3 April 1949) is an English songwriter, musician (primarily a guitarist), singer and record producer.

Thompson first gained prominence in the late 1960s as the lead guitarist and a songwriter for the folk rock group Fairport Convention, which he co-founded in 1967. After departing the group in 1971, Thompson released his debut solo album, Henry the Human Fly, in 1972. The next year, he formed a duo with his wife, Linda Thompson, which produced six albums, including the critically acclaimed I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight (1974) and Shoot Out the Lights (1982). After the dissolution of the duo, Thompson revived his solo career with the release of Hand of Kindness in 1983. He has released 20 solo studio albums. Three of these —Rumor and Sigh (1991), You? Me? Us? (1996), and Dream Attic (2010)—have been nominated for Grammy Awards, while Still (2015) was his first UK Top Ten album. He continues to write and record new material and has frequently performed at venues throughout Europe and North America, and occasionally further afield.

Music critic Neil McCormick described Thompson as "a versatile virtuoso guitarist and a sharp observational singer-songwriter whose work burns with intelligence and dark emotion". His songwriting has earned him an Ivor Novello Award and, in 2006, a lifetime achievement award from BBC Radio. His 1991 song "1952 Vincent Black Lightning" was included in Time magazine's "All-TIME 100 Songs" list of the best English-language musical compositions released between 1923 and 2011. Thompson was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2011 New Year Honours for services to music. Many varied musicians have recorded Thompson's compositions.

His memoir, Beeswing: Losing My Way and Finding My Voice, 1967–1975, was published in 2021.

Early life and career (1949 to 1972)

Richard Thompson was born at 23 Ladbroke Crescent (off Ladbroke Grove), Notting Hill, West London, England. His father, a Scot, was a Scotland Yard detective and an amateur guitar player; several other family members had played music professionally. He was the younger brother, by five years, of sister Perri, who became a fashion designer. While attending William Ellis School in Highgate, he formed his first band, Emil and the Detectives (named after a book and a movie by the same title), with classmate Hugh Cornwell, later lead singer and guitarist of the Stranglers, on bass guitar. When he was a teenager Thompson moved with his family to Whetstone, near the northern end of the London Underground's Northern line.

Interviewed in 2003, Thompson said:

Listening to Buddy Holly in 1956 was the point at which I wanted to pick up a guitar, although I didn't actually manage to do that until 1960 ... I played Shadows songs in school bands until I started hanging around with the guys that became Fairport Convention, and we would play Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Richard Fariña ... the American singer-songwriters. We would go to Dylan's publisher and ask for songs that hadn't been recorded. We were interested in lyrics, and we were pretty idealistic.

Like so many musicians of his generation, Thompson was exposed to and embraced rock and roll music at an early age, and he was also exposed to his father's jazz and traditional Scottish music record collection. His father had seen Django Reinhardt play in Glasgow in the 1930s and played guitar himself. He was later described by his son as "a bad amateur player ... with three chords, though, unfortunately, not C, F and G." All these musical genres were to colour Thompson's playing in the years to come.

American producer Joe Boyd said:

He can imitate almost any style, and often does, but is instantly identifiable. In his playing you can hear the evocation of the Scottish piper's drone and the melody of the chanter as well as echoes of Barney Kessel's and James Burton's guitars and Jerry Lee Lewis's piano. But no blues clichés.

At the age of 18 Thompson co-founded folk rock group Fairport Convention. Largely on the strength of Thompson's playing, Boyd took them under his wing and signed them to his Witchseason production and management company.

Boyd said:

And there was this group of very nice Muswell Hill grammar school boys and a girl playing American music. Leonard Cohen songs, and Richard Fariña songs, and Bob Dylan songs, all being done in a kind of West-Coasty rock style. And then came the guitar solo, and Richard just played the most amazing solo. He played a solo which quotes from Django, from Charlie Christian, you know, an incredibly sophisticated little solo. And that really amazed me, the breadth of his sophistication... and so, you know, at the end of the gig I was in the dressing room saying 'would you guys like to make a record?'

Shortly thereafter Thompson, already acquiring a reputation as an outstanding guitar player, started writing songs seriously. This seems to have been out of necessity as Fairport Convention was at first essentially a cover band.