Reprocessed, by Matt Patterson

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Richard Thompson: Solitary Life

Okay, I know I'm biased when it comes to the BBC. Caveats aside, I've just finished watching a time-shifted (twice! by me and my employer) BBC Four documentary about Richard Thompson, broadcast last Monday on BBC Two.

I first heard Richard Thompson through, I think, Andy Kershaw on Radio 1 in 1999 or so (God, those were good shows), and then again via Later about the time that Mock Tudor came out. There were lots of things which drew me in: a certain quality to his voice, his exceptional guitar playing, but mostly it was the songwriting. The narratives were so tightly constructed, the phrasing so poised, the words and music so wonderfully woven together that I was sucked in immediately.

The documentary was excellent, mixing archive footage with pretty candid interviews from former bandmates (he was one of the founders of Fairport Convention), his family, his ex-wife and ex-musical partner Linda Thompson, as well as extensive interview footage of him in his home (where he performs some of his songs, some of which are intercut in the programme with archive performance footage, which is interesting).

I didn't know massive amounts about his history, apart from the Fairport link, so the shift in his songwriting from dark, existential, introspective songs to the witty, incisive (still dark, often blackly humourous) character-driven narratives which so drew me in was something of a surprise. The shift was especially surprising given the quiet, thoughtful Thompson of today revealed in the documentary's interview footage. By way of contrast, he and Linda Thompson's last album together as a musical and marriage partnership could, with hindsight, have almost been a narration of their marriage's imminent self destruction.

Of course, there are depths and layers clearly in evidence in the music. It seems very unlikely that his music could be the work of someone without great depth, so the range his songwriting has spanned isn't surprising after the fact. (An early contributor to the documentary said of him 'There's no point calling him the English Bob Dylan, since I might as well call Bob Dylan the American Richard Thompson'.) This subtlety of the words and their performance, where insight is carried not only in his turn of phrase, but in intonation and timing, is remarkable. The desperation of Dry my tears and move on from Mock Tudor is evidence enough of that.

Nothing was explicitly said in the documentary about the long-term aftermath of his first marriage, which left two children. I don't know why this was: their son, the guitarist Teddy Thompson, has collaborated (separately) with both his mother and his father, and Linda was interviewed at length in the programme. The near-term aftermath was covered, and produced something extraordinary: the tour of America which established Richard Thompson there. Having very recently separated, the couple were persuaded to tour Shoot out the lights, the soundtrack to their disintegration. By all accounts the shows were amazing, haunting: the material had a poignancy, and raw delivery to match, which grew out of the tensions between them, with the shows somehow walking the wire, holding together.

While quite a lot was said about their conversion to Sufi Islam several years before their divorce (he is still a Sufi), it seemed to relate mostly to their time in a commune. I wonder what deeper effect it's had. From what I understand, Sufism is at the mystical end of Islam, and the mystical and devotional tradition must provide a lot of fuel for a songwriter. (I sometimes wonder what Bob Dylan the Christian might have done had he been able to escape the evangelical Christianity he fell into for a more rounded and mature faith, rather than by leaving the way he came.) He talked very briefly about the stabilizing and focussing effect of the ritual of daily prayers, which makes a lot of sense (I've been becoming more and more interested in my own faith's monastic and liturgical traditions, and the resource they provide for creativity and art) and I got the feeling that he could have said an awful lot more very interesting things.

With all that said, I should point out that I enjoyed the programme enormously. It was a good documentary about a remarkable talent, who has an equally remarkable back catalogue. I've yet to properly explore that, but the programme has given a new impetus to go and look.

It's also a very good advert for the quality of BBC Four's output, which seems to have a very good signal to noise ratio. I really must buy a Freeview box...

Not forgetting:

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