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Concert
Review by Nick Morgan |
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RICHARD
THOMPSON 'SOLO'
Lyric
Hammersmith, London, Tuesday 23nd August 2005
by
Nick Morgan |
| I’ve
got a nice book on my desk – it’s a
sort of ‘Richard
Thompson meets Bert Weedon’s
Play in a Day’. I bought it a few years ago,
and excitedly sat down, guitar in hand, to try and
work my way through the first tune, ‘Banish
misfortune’ a traditional Irish double jig
(technical eh?). I reckoned after an hour or more
that I’d made a pretty decent fist of it,
not least as the neighbours hadn’t started
banging on the wall. It was at that point that a
CD fell from the book’s rear cover. |
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| As
I played it the blinkers of self deception fell
from my eyes (and ears), for there was Richard
Thompson himself, bashing out a version of the
tune that sounded nothing like the unfortunate
mess I’d just made of it. But that’s
what happens when a mere mortal pits himself against
a genius. And whilst I know Serge gets uncomfortable
with this reverential stuff (“no Nick, my
Whiskyfun readers aren’t interested in the
music, they just like the jokes”) I put
it on record now that Mr Thompson, in terms of
both his writing and guitar playing is close to
being Genius Number One. And he scores satisfyingly
high on the Eccentric to Bonkers scale too.
That’s
why we’re sitting in the delightfully restored
late nineteenth century Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith
(cf. ‘Frank Matcham's, famous ornate fin-de-siecle
gilt and velvet auditorium’), - a suitable
venue for one who clearly has a deep affinity
with the British music-hall tradition, even if
the theatre is artfully camouflaged by a hideous
and soulless concrete shopping centre. |
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It’s
quite a blokish audience, many of them with the
trademark West London linen jacket, jeans and open
necked casual shirt look, that yells ‘Chelsea
and Fulham 4X4 Brigade’. But I can put up
with them for one night, especially when it’s
Richard Thompson promoting his new album Front Parlour
Ballads with a solo concert. Well that’s what
it said on the ticket. But it turns out (to our
delight) that ‘solo’ includes the very
singular Danny Thompson, best known I suppose for
his time with Pentangle, John Martyn, and more recently
playing bass on the Blind Boys of Alabama’s
outstanding Spirit of the Century album. |
| Thompson
and Thompson have been touring and recording together
for over ten years – on stage they nag and
argue like an old married couple, but as far as
the music is concerned they have a deep and silent
understanding – each knows what the other
will play and when – they are, to be frank,
more like Siamese twins, joined at the hip, than
Mr and Mrs. |
| Did
I mention that they are both converts to Islam?
Oh yes, and as for that new album stuff, well it
does get an apologetic mention once or twice (“You’re
wasting your time Richard”, yells one wag
in the stalls, “we’ve all already bought
it”) but we actually only get a handful of
songs from it, ‘For whose sake’, ‘Let
it blow’, ‘Old Thames side’ (which
I think must have been written in the hope that
Dick Gaughan would cover it) , and the deeply sinister
‘When we were boys at school’. |
 |
Which
takes me onto another subject. Thompson (Richard)
seems like a really nice bloke – he gives
us an improvised weather report when asked by an
obvious Cropredy veteran “will it rain Richard?”,
beginning “well not in here”; tells
a few football jokes, larks around with his missus
Danny, and totally plays the fool singing ‘Hots
for the smarts’ (“Here’s one for
all you clever girls out there – you know
who you are”) – but the bleak and stark
bitterness that informs so many of his narrative
songs suggests he might have the sort of dark side
that most of us would do well to avoid, better off
taking a vicarious tour through the songs instead.
But then I thought, maybe he just sees the dark
side in all of us, as he knowingly explores the
sordid dreams (‘I feel so good’) and
secrets (Johnny’s far away’) of suburbia’s
bedroom drawers. Because if you don’t know
by now, Thompson writes and sings obsessively about
the English suburban landscape in which he was brought
up, and from which he obviously never quite escaped,
despite the fact that he lives in California (where
it never rains). Think front parlours and mock Tudor
architecture. “I just want to be middle class
…I just want to be free’ proclaims the
aspiring social climber of ‘Crawl back’.
Hang on – enough of the purple prose. It’s
a fantastic night. He plays an amplified acoustic
in a bewildering array of tunings, and goes easy
on the pedals. And I’m reminded that he’s
not afraid to hit the occasional bum note when he
improvises around his often discordant melodies
(on that bloody tuition CD – which is now
an ashtray by the way – I seem to remember
that he says about half way through, “well,
at this point you just make it up really”
– helpful or what?). And that of course is
one of the ideas behind Front Parlour Ballads, recorded
in his garage, warts and all. He only forgets the
words to a couple of songs, and of course performs
That motorbike song solo, and this time gets it
right. |
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In
addition to the new songs we go back to his collaboration
with ex wife Linda for songs such as ‘Hokey
Pokey’ and ‘A heart needs a home’,
for which he is joined on vocals by (a somewhat
nervous) daughter Kamila, who also sings on ‘Persuasion’
and ‘Keep your distance’. |
From his more recent work ‘King of Bohemia’,
a very forceful ‘Outside of the inside’
(“this is a fundamentalist’s theme song
which I wrote after 9/11. I don’t like fundamentalists”),
‘Mingus eyes’ ‘Al Bowley’
(no Jon, not a music hall bish-bash, but a fierce
anti-war song) and then finally ‘Wall of death’,
a great finish, and it seemed to me at the time,
a wonderful epitaph for us all – “Let
me ride on the wall of death one more time …this
is the nearest thing to being alive”.
Complaints? Well it would have been nice to hear
Thompson work his way through the new album as we
missed out a lot of great material. But apart from
that it’s hard to fault. Danny Thompson’s
bass playing was quite exquisite, and Thompson delivered
top bananas on both guitar and vocals. Sorry Serge,
this one was a 97 point five star hit. - Nick
Morgan (concert photos by Kate) |
Check
the index of all reviews:
Nick's Concert Reviews
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