The Making of i want to see the bright lights tonight - featuring richard thompson and linda thompson

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Intro: 

Dan Nordheim: You’re listening to Life of the Record. Classic albums, told by the people who made them. My name is Dan Nordheim. 

Richard Thompson was born in London, England in 1949 and co-founded Fairport Convention as a teenager. Linda Pettifer was born in London in 1947 and grew up acting and later singing in the folk scene as Linda Peters. During the recording sessions for Fairport Convention’s Liege & Lief album, Richard and Linda first met and went on to become a couple. In 1971, Richard left Fairport and the following year, he released his first solo album, Henry the Human Fly. Richard and Linda began playing folk clubs as a duo and decided to record an album together in 1973. I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight was eventually released in 1974.

In this episode, for the 50th anniversary, Richard Thompson and Linda Thompson reflect on how the album came together. Due to Linda’s vocal condition of dysphonia, her daughter Kami Thompson, reads her interview responses. This is the making of I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight.

Richard Thompson: My name is Richard Thompson, and we're discussing  my album from 1974 called I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight. I'm never sure about my own state, you know, it's hard to get a picture of yourself. But I suppose there are things in my past that make me the way I am, and make me write the stuff I do write. And it's not all happy, and I don't always understand that. I'm a fairly optimistic person, and I'm a fairly upbeat person, but when it comes to writing sometimes, it comes out more serious anyway. I think also the fact that I come from a musical tradition where, you know, there's a lot of murders, you know, there's a lot of accidents down coal mines, you know, there's a lot of tragedy, trains being derailed, people dying. This is part of folk music  and to me that's normal. That's my normal, that's right in the middle for me. For some people that's like way, you know, “we're not touching that stuff,” you know, “never going near that stuff.” But for me, that's just serious. And serious is something you sing about. 

I think I was frustrated, maybe not frustrated, maybe just burned out in Fairport. We had an accident in 1969, and I think we're all suffering a bit from PTSD, really, for the next couple of years, and not all decisions were rational. And I think my decision to leave Fairport wasn't necessarily rational, but I just, it was like a gut feeling, I was just really tired and burned out, you know, I've been in bands since I was 12 (laughs). So I thought it was time for a rest, you know, and I just wanted to concentrate on writing, I think. I wanted to see what would develop, and the songs I was writing, at the end of my time in Fairpool, were a bit strange, and I wasn't sure that the band were the place to put them. So I left Fairport, not really knowing what I was going to do, and I ended up doing a lot of session work, which was great. You know, the phone suddenly started ringing, so that was a godsend. And, you know, Iain Matthews said, “Could you play my band?” Sandy (Denny) said, “Can you play my band?” So I was in, you know, two bands that were working infrequently and doing lots of session work. And then, you know, romantically, I was teamed up with Linda.

Linda Thompson (Kami): Hi, this is Kami Thompson. I am the daughter of Richard and Linda, and due to my mother's vocal condition of dysphonia, I'll be reading her written interview responses. I first met Richard in a Chinese restaurant on King's Road. Lots of people there and I was sat beside him, I think. He talked about vegetarianism, as I recall. I had sweet and sour pork (laughs). I was trying to catch Joe Boyd's eye and eventually did. Joe and I went out for a long time, then we broke up. And then Richard and I got together. Both Richard and I loved trad music. I was a folky from way back, and I think when Sandy joined Fairport, she turned them onto that world. I'd been a folkie for a long time, and Richard was quite a new and zealous convert, zeal he's got. I think we fell into singing together. We were sharing a flat, and I was working for Richard Branson. Richard (Thompson) teased that he'd double my wages if I stayed home, which was cute. So I accepted with alacrity.

Richard Thompson: You know, we weren't really seeing each other because I'd be away on the road and Linda would be doing different things. And I said, “Well, why don't we just work together? It'd be a lot easier. You know, we can play folk clubs.” And Linda said, “Ugh, you know, I've done folk clubs. I don't really fancy the idea.” So I said, “Well look, it's a living, you know, we'll get an agent. We'll, you know, drive ourselves around. You know, you sleep in the promoter's spare room. Petrol was, you know, 25p a gallon or something. So it was actually possible to make a good living actually, doing clubs. So we started playing the clubs and while we were doing that, I was writing the songs that ended up on the Bright Lights album. And some of those we had a good chance to play in live before we actually recorded them. 

Linda Thompson: Duos were very uncool in those days, but it seemed like the normal thing to do as we were singing the songs in folk clubs anyway. 

Richard Thompson: Soon as I was teamed up with Linda. I thought, “Well, you know, let's make a record.” My first solo record was Henry the Human Fly, which is the first record I made after I left Fairport and looking back, you know, it's a very eccentric record. I mean some people say, “Gosh, that's the best record ever made, that's fantastic. It's my favorite. You know, you'll never achieve anything better than that record.” And I of course say, “What? Are you kidding?”

You know, it wasn't a great record and, you know, vocally, I thought it was really, not very strong. And Island were not enthusiastic about the Henry record. So we'll just start recording like we did with Henry. We won't tell Island, we'll just send them the bills and see if they notice. Which they didn't for a while, so that was great. So we just went in the studio with, I mean, you know, I knew John really well, John Wood, so he was the studio owner, so I just said, “John, you know, give us a bit of time, we'll make a record. We'll bill it to Island and we'll see what happens.” So yeah we just blocked out time. It didn't take very long either, that record to make. I'd already worked with Pat (Donaldson) and Timmy (Donald) in Sandy's band and on some of Sandy's recordings. So we had a certain familiarity there. The recording process that I used on Henry the Human Fly, was really to put down backing tracks and then overdub everything on top of that. Which was, not uncommon at that point. It's the way we made Sandy's records as well. Sometimes we'd have a guide vocal, sometimes not, you know, you just learn the track and figure out where the emotion came and just hear it in your head. But we were doing most stuff for Henry, just, you know, acoustic guitar, bass drums, you know, that was the live part in the studio. And everything else was added afterwards. So we did the same process with Bright Lights, really, we did all the backing tracks. So I think we were doing four or five tracks a day. 

Linda Thompson: Tracks were done in two days. I think, I was pregnant and I started having difficulty singing. So I think I held the proceedings up for a while. In a four-track studio, it was 15 hours of getting the drum sound, whilst you sang a guide vocal, three or four hours on guitar and bass while you kept on singing, then we would get to record the song, by which time my voice was so tired, so I just did the best I could and scarfered. 

Richard Thompson: We did the vocals fairly quickly, Linda was singing really well. And, you know, it wasn't laborious, there was no sticking points. Sometimes you get the red headed stepchild of a track that holds you up and doesn't seem to ever want to get recorded, but just everything that we tried seemed to work, and we just kind of breezed through it. And I think the whole record only took, I think the actual recording only took three or four days. Maybe five days. And the mixing didn't take much longer. It was a notoriously cheap record. I think we made it for two and a half thousand pounds. which even by 1972's standards was extremely cheap. Was it ‘72 or ‘73? I'm not quite sure. For the overdubs, everything was pretty much in my head and I did write out charts for everybody. So we had, uh, you know, a couple of crumhorns, Richard Harvey and Brian Gulland, came in and those guys are classically trained. So they just, you know, just read it off. Like, “Take one, that's fine, that's easy.” What else do we have? John Kirkpatrick on accordion, a really quick musician, also reads very fluently. So, that kind of stuff's easy. So, you know, an easy process, an easy process. Bright Lights is one of those happy records where everything worked. 

On this record and on the previous record, Henry the Human Fly, I was really thinking about songs and I almost forgot to play guitar or I didn't think it was important. And I certainly wouldn't think this is a place to play an extended solo. You know, I wanted to get as many songs onto the record as possible. And in the days of vinyl, of course, yeah, you had a certain, certain time limit. Otherwise you lose volume and you lose low end on the recording. So yeah, I was just being economical really. And you know, the times I do play solos, I'm really just playing like a chorus or something. It’s not that much at all. I think I was reading Bound for Glory by Woody Guthrie and he said, “Oh, you know, inspiration is easy,” or, you know, “song titles are easy, here's a few now.” And he could have a page of, you know, “Freightman's Blues” and, you know, et cetera, et cetera, you know, like loads and loads, loads of titles. And I thought, “Well, okay, amongst other ways of being creative, I might do that from time to time, you know. There's other ways of starting a song, but sometimes just the title can be inspiring so I just write out a whole bunch of titles, you know a couple of pages and I thought, “Oh some of those are quite interesting, I'll start working on those.” And some of those songs did end up on the Bright Lights album strangely enough. I think who was going to sing what was pretty clear at that point, and we probably worked most of that out, singing it live, in the clubs. I can't think on that album of anything that got switched. When we did the Shoot Out the Lights album some years later, there was some switching between who sung it, who sung what song. But I think for Bright Lights, things are pretty much stuck with the same vocalist once established.

Linda Thompson: Richard mostly gave me the best songs to sing. I also requested to sing all the slow ones. He didn't tell me how to sing. I didn't tell him what to play. We didn't collaborate in that way. It was unspoken stuff. 

Richard Thompson: When I was working with Sandy (Denny), she really had strong ideas about what she wanted, and what she wanted to do. Although sometimes she'd kind of, she'd act like she's flailing around and bounce ideas off other people. She kind of knew what she wanted, but she didn't know how to get there. But once she got there, “Okay, she made her mind up and that was it.” You know, with Linda, I was doing more of the writing and she was more of an interpreter. So we were able to really to have more discussion about how we wanted songs to be approached. Who was going to sing the song, what kind of record we were going to make sometimes. All of those things. I think Linda almost liked to hand the responsibility over to me, for some of the, you know, the larger decisions about a record, which is fine. I was happy to do that, but it was much more of a collaborative effort for the most part. And I don't know how many tracks Linda sings, how many I sing, I think she sings the majority of tracks as far as I remember. 

“When I Get to the Border”

Linda Thompson: I don't remember “When I Get to the Border” being recorded. I guess we used it as an opening track because while not exactly up tempo, it isn't a ballad. Good song. 

Richard Thompson: “When I Get to the Border,” I don't really remember writing particularly, which is sometimes the best way with most songs. I think lyrically it's kind of optimistic or is it? I don't know. I'm not sure what the border represents. Does it represent like, you know, death in the afterlife? Maybe. Is it just somewhere you escape to like with drugs or something? Maybe.  I'm not sure really what I was thinking. I'm not sure I ever really wanted to nail down the definition of it. I'd rather leave that to people's imaginations. But you know, “If you see a box of pine with a name that looks like mine,” you know, that means I'm dead, you know, basically. Metaphorically or literally. So I think people have to take that song as it comes and how they interpret it. But I remember thinking, you know, of the arrangement and how we were going to do it, where the harmonies come in on the bridge, and what we were going to do at the end, which is this kind of a back and forth jam almost. I think the idea that I had in my mind was I wanted to integrate the electric guitar into the tradition. So I wanted it to have equal footing with, you know, an accordion or a fiddle with a traditional instrument. So we do this thing at the end where we go backwards and forwards for, you know, eight bars, seven bars, between that, the guitar and everything else that plays on the record. So, you know, there's a hammered dulcimer on there, there's a mandolin on there, there's the crumhorns are on there, the accordion’s on there, tin whistle’s on there as well. It just moves back and forth and everything is written down except for the electric guitar which is improvised. 

And again, I mean, we did that really quickly, I mean, I did the guitar as an overdub, pretty much first take. So there wasn't a lot of thinking about it really. You know, the stuff I was doing with Swarb (Dave Swarbrick) that started with “A Sailor's Life” back on, Unhalfbricking, that was all improvised, that was just us really kind of feeding off each other and just seeing, you know, where it would take us, really. We had no plan whatsoever. So there we're just listening to each other and responding with an appropriate phrase that answers and then at a certain point we're kind of working together and we're kind of pushing each other and that's what makes that approach very effective. And we did the same thing on the song “Sloth,” the Fairport song, “Sloth,” where we're, you know, again, we're listening to each other and just trying to build some musical tension in that way. “When I Get to the Border,” it's much more, charted really. I mean, it's only me who's doing the improvising. And I kind of had a fairly clear idea of what I might play. So yes, much more pre-planned. And I think it's an enjoyable opening track. I think it kind of sets the mood for the rest of the record. 

“The Calvary Cross” 

Linda Thompson: I thought that “Cavalry Cross” was a momentous track, but I have to admit to being a bit of a heathen about long guitar solos. It may be sexist to say that protracted solos are a male fetish, but there you have it. 

Richard Thompson: I think the guitar riff was probably established fairly soon after the lyrics were finished, and I thought, “Well, this is a nice riff-y kind of song, and I don't really have a song like that, so that would be a nice thing to add to the record.” And there's an introduction, but which is spliced on a different key. That's really me impersonating, the uilleann pipes.  I think I had a really good Willie Clancy record at the time. And I thought, “Well, let me see if I can do some of those things that you do on the uilleann pipes on those bends and some of those trills and ornamentations, see if that works on the guitar.” So that was really that. And there are overlaps between Celtic music and say, Indian music.  Some say, although it's almost impossible to verify, that they have a historical connection. It's possible that the Celts came fron that part of the world, came from Central Asia. Hard to say but there are definitely musical overlaps in that sense so that might seem like the case but it's really just taking elements of irish music, Scottish music and seeing what what happens on the guitar, seeing what works.

This song is called “The Calvary Cross” and for reasons that are not obvious to me (laughs) or to anyone else. think it started with the lyrics and unusually for a song, it doesn't rhyme, there are half rhymes, you know, stretching a point, I think you could just about call them half rhymes. And I was really just kind of, you know, writing stuff down almost subconsciously, stream of consciousness. I think I was doing something else at the time as well. So I'm just scribbling stuff in the corner. I think I realized at a certain point, it's a song about inspiration and about the muse, if you like, you know, the Muse is this figure that drives you. Fairly relentlessly, but you know, sometimes whether you want to or not, you have to obey the Muse in order to reach that wonderful point of inspiration and creativity. 

And there's some interesting backing vocals on that where, I think we have Royston Wood from The Young Tradition, singing the bass. So a really wonderful bass singer and a good friend. And perhaps Sandy's singing on it, Linda's singing on it as well, maybe Trevor Lucas on it as well, doing these oohs on the chorus, and it's nice because I think either either Linda or Sandy's just singing like one note that fits all the chords So she sings a ninth note in the scale that kind of glides over everything because it's kind of really spooky harmony. Which I'm very appreciative of  when we came to do the song live like later, it really came out fairly differently and the improvisational part of it became much longer. I think it was in a different key as well, I think on the record it's in the key of, gosh, the key of E maybe, but it moved up to G. Which is not untypical, you know, when you come to play something live, you want to exploit it and make it something that's more of a live piece. Studio is a whole other thing, really. But, you know, it really is a song about, it's a song about creativity, I think, and about the Muse. I do believe that the Muse appeared to me when I was a teenager at a band rehearsal. And this girl, where it was like, deathly pale girl with dark black hair, red lips, the whole bit, the whole mythological bit, was sitting watching us rehearse. And after rehearsal, no one knew who she was, she kind of disappeared. No one knew who she was, and I thought, “crikey” (laughs). So I've always taken the muse very seriously. 

“Withered and Died” 

Richard Thompson: “Withered and Died” I can't remember where the phrase came from, it's a quote from somewhere, it's a poem or it's a piece of literature somewhere.  But I forget the source. And I think I was looking for something that really suited Linda's voice and the emotion of Linda's voice. And I think that does the trick. 

Linda Thompson: “Withered and Died,” lovely song, young person’s song funnily enough. A song about resignation. 

Richard Thompson: I think lyrically “Withered and Died” is, it's a simple song. There's some commonality, you know, always between things like country music, Appalachian music, British traditional music. You could take a song by Robert Burns, the great Scottish poet and songwriter, and it's not that different from, you know, something that they'd write in Nashville, really, in terms of emotion, in terms of subject matter. So, you know, I'm being slightly generic here. It doesn't mean that I'm not feeling the subject matter, but I'm using phrases that I learned from listening to traditional music and ideas that I learned from, you know, poetry and literature and other people's songs. And I think Linna sings it really, really well. 

And for the guitar solo, I plugged into the recording console. And we did it that way. So it's basically a DI, direct injection, with, you know, a bit of reverb on there, but yeah, you get that nice dry sound, a very sort of low volume, which I think really suits Fender guitars sometimes. You know, a contemporary like Robbie Robertson, was doing that kind of stuff, where he'd just be really low volume and you get this really different sound. James Burton would be another guitar player from that era, playing a Fender. Just, you know, real kind of, um, you kind of hear the fingers working and you can hear that it's just pieces of wire, really, you know, that's what an electric guitar is in that situation. Solid body electric guitar. It's just a bunch of wire and somehow you have to get a tone out of it. And people have been masters at doing that. 

I love doing things in 3/4 time. I think on almost every record I've ever done, there's at least one song in 3/4. Again, I mean, it's an easy song to cut because it's basically three chords. We cut the backing track, probably take one or two. John Kirkpatrick plays a concertina on it, which gives it a beautiful, mellow sound. Slightly haunting, slightly charming quality. You know, it's an easy song, it's an easy piece and I still perform that song.  I really enjoy playing it, and I'm probably going to play it with my band  on an upcoming tour, which I haven't done for a long time. I haven't played it live with a band ever, I don't think. So, that'll be interesting. 

“I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight”

Richard Thompson: “I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight,” speaking of The Band again, they have a song called “Cripple Creek” off the brown album, one of the greatest albums ever made. Really fantastic album. Album of great playing where they do this kind of halftime double time thing where there's that, this kind of double time rock and roll rhythm. But the drums are playing half of it. And sometimes the guitar's playing double, sometimes the guitar's playing half. And people come in and they drop out and they keep it going but it, you know, it has a great tension to it that really works. And I thought, well, I'd love to do a song in that kind of rhythm that also reflects my Celtic roots. Cause it's also a lot like the rhythm of a reel, like a dance reel. Yeah I think there's traditions in certainly in rock and roll, and going before that, you know, back to the swing era, you know, the jazz era and back in British tradition as well, there's kind of, you know, let your hair down, Saturday night songs. Often in a dance rhythm, you can dance to them and it's a lighter kind of a lyric as well. You know, it's “I'm just gonna have a good time. Let's not get too serious here. You know, it's been a tough week. Let's let our hair down, you know, let's have a few drinks and enjoy ourselves.”

Linda Thompson: “Bright Lights,” fun, up-tempo-ish, throwaway vocal approach, really. Doubled vocals in the chorus, I think

Richard Thompson: Linda sings a lot of styles of music really well. She's a good singer of traditional music, you know, Scottish, Irish music, English music, but also she grew up listening to A, the Everly Brothers, huge Everly Brothers fan, and B, Connie Francis, she's a big Connie Francis fan. And I think you can hear a little bit of Connie Francis in what she does here. She doesn't go all the way, she still kind of sounds, you know, quite English about it, but I think there's that influence in the kind of lipstick on your collar kind of influence. And the backing vocals, Linda harmonized with herself, I think she did three parts with herself, you know, that all adds to the mix with the horns and everything. And so we recorded the track, we recorded it again, I think electric guitar, bass, drums, I overdubbed another guitar on it. I  think I used my old ‘52 Telecaster on the original track, which had slightly microphonic pickups so you could get a slightly weird sound with it and then overdubbed a Stratocaster on top of that. And we thought, “Well, wouldn't it be fun, haha, to go up to Manchester and put some horns on, from one of the great silver bands, up in the north of England.” So, we booked time at Stockport, in Stockport at Strawberry North Studios, which is owned by a bank of 10cc.  And we charted it for five pieces, from the CWS band, the Cooperative Society Band, from Stockport. And so that was for, tuba, euphonium, tenor horn, and two cornets. One of the cornet players was a very famous guy called John (Derek) Gardside, who was an absolute  virtuoso on the instrument. Some of the silver bands achieved a very, very high standard of musicianship. They could all, you know, play in orchestras and play classical music, and some of them did. Just tremendous players. In terms of, you know, charting stuff, I was self taught. Before doing the brass arrangement, I bought a book on arranging for a brass band, which was invaluable. Just so you know the ranges, you know, you don't make a fool of yourself. You write parts that are actually playable. That's all very important. And I suppose, I think we did the brass first and we added the vocals later so nothing is stepping on anything else really. There's plenty of room on this song for just about anything. 

There was originally a horn intro on the whole piece, which we couldn't nail. We couldn't get it in time. So we basically ended up just dumping it and the guitar brings the song in. Time was running out for the studio and running over would have meant paying everybody twice. So we didn't fancy that so I think we eventually ditched it and just the guitar brings the song in and the horns come in for the choruses, obviously. These days I could have stuck it in Pro Tools and just tightened it up a bit. Perhaps I'll go back and do that one day, if I can ever find the recording again. That's a very characteristic British sound for brass instruments. There's a whole tradition of, you know, factories having their own band and those factories are becoming very competitive about the quality of the musicians So you have famous bands like like, you know, the Black Diamond Mills band, the CWS band, (Williams) Fairey Engineering, you know, just great musicians. And on the radio on BBC radio every year, there'd be the brass band competition like a two, three hour program. I think where, you know, the bands will compete, they play test pieces  And, you know, you have the semifinals of the finals and they'd be crowned champions for the year, which is a big deal, you know? And it's a particular, you know, the silver, what they call silver bands where they're playing basically silver plated instruments rather than brass plated instruments. It's a slightly more mellow sound. It's a little bit sweeter and it's just very, very characteristic. It's got this kind of slightly, slightly melancholy sweet quality to it. And traditionally you only found that in the North of England. But with the popularity of the music, you know, some of the factories in the South of England would also have their own bands that would join in the competitiveness of the whole thing. But it's a great tradition and it's still very much alive today. And I was happy to tap into it. That might've been the first time that  a silver band had been used on a pop record. If I may call it a pop record, you know, pop slash rock record. And a few other people tried it after that, but I think we were the first. 

It's an interesting song, that actually came out as a single as well, off the album. And after the fact, some people said, “Oh, we should have released it, not at Christmas. You know, you got lost in the Christmas rush. Should have been a hit, blah, blah, blah” (laughs) But once you've done it, there's no going back, really. So again, that's a song that I still play live. I still play quite a lot of these songs live, even though it's, you know, 50 years later. 

“Down Where the Drunkards Roll” 

Linda Thompson: I like “Drunkards.” Although it's pretty good, I got mighty sick of hearing “Drunkards” in folk clubs through the years. 

Richard Thompson: I think the inspiration for “Down Where the Drunkards Roll” was a club in London at the time called The Howff, which was run by our friend, Roy Guest, who was also a promoter and a folk singer. Roy was, you know, a character, a personality at the time, and he decided to open this club in Chalk Farm in London.  And it became a bit of a late night drinking club where we'd stop by sometimes on the way home after a show. And we'd play there sometimes. I think Sandy played there, various people from the folk scene played there. It didn't last that long. It might have only lasted like six months to a year. But I think I had that in mind when I was writing this song. And I describe, you know, “See the boys out walking, the boys with their, you know, dressing green velvet, silver buckles,” all this good stuff. You know, people were dandies in those days, where people would hunt the second hand shops for cast off Victorian clothes. And, you know, it was a real hippie thing to dress in this mishmash of cast offs. You know, you could see a picture of Jimi Hendrix at the time, to get some idea of the, like the old British military jacket and the, you know, the silk scarves and the paisley and the velvet trousers and, you know, this whole kind of thing, this whole very hand me down look that was kind of unique to the time though. It was unique and eccentric to the time. So I'm kind of describing the clientele and it described, you know, the troubled woman who comes to the club and probably drinks too much, doesn't know what to do with her life. Yeah, “Down Where the Drunkards Roll.” 

The bass voice you hear on the chorus, I think it's Trevor Lucas, who was Sandy’s (Denny) boyfriend, became Sandy's husband, adding some low harmony. Also on that song is the Appalachian dulcimer and I think Simon (Nichol) added the dulcimer just as another texture, you know, it's another nice acoustic texture and I love the relationship between an Appalachian dulcimer and an acoustic guitar. They kind of add to each other, you know, they emphasize different overtones. It's a nice blend to have.  And I think I put an electric piano on it as well. I think I put a Clavinet, a Hohner electric piano on as well. In those days, studios also had instruments lying around, so I think they had a harmonium in the studio, which I used to use. Or I took mine in, I can't remember exactly, but I think that they had one inhouse. And, you know, Island Studios at the time had a Flute Organ, which was rather exotic, Rack Studios had a, I think one of only three like, big Yamaha synthesizers. Rack had one, Stevie Wonder had another one, and somebody else had another one, but it was quite a rare, a rare thing, but you could jump up on that and just add some of those things to your record. And I was acquiring a collection of bits and pieces. So, you know, I had my own mandolin, I had a hammer dulcimer, I had an Appalachian dulcimer, various tin whistles, stuff like that, a few keyboards. So it's nice just in terms of texture to do things that weren't just playing the guitar.  As I said, this is a cheap record and in order to make a cheap record, you didn't want to employ too many people coming in and adding things. And I couldn't afford to have an arranger come in and arrange things, so I had to do it myself, really. Some of these things were born of necessity. As I said, I mean, it's one of those records where most things worked, the first time. So, you know, a track like, like, you know, “Down Where the Drunkards Roll” would have taken us, you know, half an hour at tops, you know, it really didn't take very long. 

Well, sequencing was always fun (laughs). I inherited the Joe Boyd track sequencing method for LPs. We have two sides where you cut out pieces of paper, you know, rectangles of paper to the right size that would represent the length of the tracks. So, you know, a song that was one minute thirty would be like an inch and a half. You worked out a scale, then that became the length of the track. And then you could cut out each track to the right size. And then you could see fairly visually, how long a side is. So you say, “Well, that's too long. I'll put this one on the other side. I'll move that one back here that balances the time up better.” So, you know, all about running time, really. from side to side. So that was always a big factor in sequencing that kind of went out when CDs came in. And in some ways it made it harder. It was nicer to have more restricted choices. So you'd be thinking, “Well, we need a lead track for side one and we need a finishing track for side one. We need a finishing track for side two, very important, it finishes the whole album. And we need a lead off track for side two. And what we think is the weakest track on the album goes at the middle of side two.” That was like a rule, you know, everybody did that. And it was often a matter of thinking, “Well, the first three tracks, what are we going to have? There's something that leads into something else.” And there's ways of doing that as well. You know, you think in terms of tempo, do we want to keep the tempo up? Do we want to have three up tracks and then we get kind of slower? Do we want to have contrasting tempos, so we have a lead off track that's fairly up tempo, then we go slower, then we go, you know, faster again. Do we have everything in the same key for the first three tracks? That was something like Sgt. Pepper, I think the first three tracks are all in the same key. So there's various things that work. And you kind of know when they work, you know when they don't work. You also calculate the gap between tracks and sometimes that's like two seconds, sometimes it's three seconds. Sometimes you continue the tempo from the song before. So if it goes 1,2,3,4, stop, and in your head you keep counting 3,4,1,2,3,4 bang, next track starts. But all those kind of tricks, you know, were very important in sequencing vinyl. But sequencing this I think was fairly easy, I think once we figured out a reasonable length, balance for each side. I think we pretty much had it, “Down Where the Drunkards roll” was a side finisher. “The Great Valerio” was obviously gonna finish the whole thing. 

“We Sing Hallelujah” 

Linda Thompson: I like doing backing vocals. I was good at harmonies as I recall. Singing with Royston Wood on “Hallelujah,” I had completely forgotten that. I must have loved it. He was a fine singer. Loved the horn arrangements. Crumhorns, fab. 

Richard Thompson: I think it was a fairly early decision to get crumhorns, playing on this. Crumhorns for those who don't know, are these curved double reed instruments that were medieval into renaissance era. And there's a band called Gryphon, in the UK at that time, kind of blended early music and popular music. And two of the players, Richard Harvey and Brian Gulland played crumhorns. So I asked them to come in and play on “We Sing Hallelujah” and play on “When I Get to the Border,” which they did extremely well. It's a very characteristic sound. These instruments are not oboes, they're not sweet. You know, they're kind of, you know, slightly nasal, you know, and a bit farty, you know, they've got this kind of percussive quality as well. But I think it suits the track really well. And yeah, the track just talks about, you know, hard times and is it worth it and all that sort of stuff, but, you know, we have faith in, perhaps in God, we have faith in the seasons, we have faith in the process. 

“We Sing Hallelujah,” a very traditional British traditional sounding song. And I think I'd been reading something like, there's a book called Popular Music of Olden Time. I think it's published by Dover, I can't remember who actually wrote it or compiled it. And just looking through that, looking at some of the song examples from, you know, 17th, 18th, 19th century, I think was inspirational for this song. And it's almost a song that you could say, I could see it in a musical or something, you know, some worker or something, some slightly downtrodden person sings this song, you know, there'd be a cowboy equivalent in Oklahoma or something, you know. But I could see it as a kind of a character song as someone's singing about, you know, their hard times, almost a sort of a Celtic version of the blues, if you like. 

“Has He Got a Friend for Me” 

Richard Thompson: “Has He Got a Friend for Me” is another song in waltz time. You know, I'm writing it in character. And I think even as I'm writing it, I'm thinking, “Well, this is a female vocal. It'd be nice if Linda sang this.” It's a tricky song to sing because if you put too much emotion into it, it's gonna sound a lot like self pity. And that wasn't the idea there. The idea is you sing it very dry eyed and very cool almost, because everything's in the song. It's all in there. So you don't have to over dramatize it. 

I think as a singer, Linda was very empathetic because a lot of the songs are, you know, in character. You're singing in the first person. And assuming, you know, a role, almost. And Linda had some excellent experience, she was a child star, you know, she was on TV at age 12. Her and her brother went on to be a very well known character actor. But she had that ability to, you know, to assume a role and convince you of it. It's a great thing if you can do that as a singer. 

Linda Thompson: Did my acting background help? Well, I was very young when I acted and it was sporadic, but singing is feeling and reacting. So is acting, I guess. “Has He Got a Friend for Me,” I found that song hard to sing. I didn't love the sentiment. 

Richard Thompson: Again, you know, I'm trying to write in a genre that doesn't exist. I'm trying to write in that crack between traditional music, between Scottish music particularly, and you know, rock music and country music perhaps  But I'm trying to write this from a very English perspective, British perspective. So you know, melodically, again, it's pretty British, has a slightly unusual chord sequence here and there. It was great to have a John Kirkpatrick play on it, was again playing, I think he plays concertina on it, I think. And it's a great vehicle for Linda. She sings these kind of songs really, really well. So wonderful to be in a duo with someone who could master some of the songs that I could write. 

“The LIttle Beggar Girl” 

Richard Thompson: Yeah, the writing process became a bit more liberated, not just writing for me, as the voice of the protagonist or whatever, you know, the voice of the character in the song. Nice to have Linda there as well, so that what was obviously a girl song like “The Little Beggar Girl,” that we could have Linda sing that. 

Linda Thompson: Oh “Beggar Girl” was fun, a good character she was. As to Richard writing from a woman's perspective, I think all people have the same inner feelings, only the pronouns differ. 

Richard Thompson: Coming from the folk tradition, you get used to men singing women's songs and women singing men's songs, you know. As far as, you know, a traditional music audience is concerned, that doesn't matter so much. But it's nice, it was nice for us to have that option. “The Little Beggar Girl,” again, it's a song and character. This is almost coming from the British music hall, which is different from American variety theatre. Music hall was a place where, itt was variety, you'd have jugglers, you'd have acrobats, and you'd have singers. And some of the singers and some of the songs were hugely popular. I mean, hugely popular. And it also crossed all classes, so you'd have the working class, probably the majority of people would be working class, but you'd also have the middle class. And you'd have the toffs, you know, you'd have the posh people, also loved to go to the music hall. And these are the days when, you know, sheet music sold in the millions, in the millions. And you had these huge stars, I mean, massive stars, like Marie Lloyd or something. These are the biggest stars of the time, before cinema. Charlie Chaplin started out in music hall before he migrated to the United States. So that's something that was part of mine and Linda's childhood, where we both had a great love of the musical. And we, you know, inherited that world and that became expressed really I think in this song in particular. 

It has some Irish Melodic qualities, but I think thematically, it's very much in the music hall tradition. It's about a beggar girl, you know, she’s got one leg, you know, she's out in the streets and she's just, as we say in England, she's taking the piss, you know, she's taking the mickey. What's the American term? Making fun of the people that passed by. So it's a fun song to sing, it's a fun song to play. It's in a jig tempo, 6/8 tempo. And again John Kirkpatrick plays wonderful accordion on it. I wrote a part out for him which he got in about two seconds. It was great fun to play it live in the folk clubs before we recorded it. I'm still fond of that song, I haven't done it for years and years and years and years and years. But I'm fond of it. I wasn't thinking about musical diversity really, but it did turn out that way. And it's a good thing. You know, it's good to have different tempos, different melodic ideas, different lyrical ideas on a single album. It keeps people interested. There are records, I can think of a few where you really have one idea and you stick to it. And that's a whole, you know, 40 minutes of experience, which could also work, but I think, it's much easier to have some variety going on. If you don't have it, you're conscious of it, but the fact that we naturally had a good blend there, didn't really think about it.

Linda Thompson: For me, the brighter songs were a respite from the darker ones. I like the dark ones. 

“The End of the Rainbow” 

Linda Thompson: I first heard “End of the Rainbow” in a little folk club in London, and we were doing the Hokey Pokey band with the wonderful Simon Nicol. Simon and I set out, as I remember, and Richard was just doing a little solo bit. When he sang “Rainbow,” Simon and I were stunned. 

Richard Thompson: “The End of the Rainbow” is, comes on as a lullaby. And also in Britain, you've got a great kind of lullaby tradition. There's a famous song that Cilla Black used to sing this song, which is a traditional Liverpool song called, Oh, You are a Mucky Kid” (“Liverpool Lullaby”). You know, “you're dirty as a dustbin lid. When he finds out all the things you did, you'll get a belt from your daddy.” You know, it's like, it's really dark, actually. But it's funny at the same time, you know. “You look so helpless lying there with strawberry jam tufts in your hair, you know.” There's this, their drunken dad's gonna come home at some point and like hit everybody and, you know, it's really terrible, really. But at the same time, there's kind of charm to it and it's funny, you know. And I wasn't really consciously, echoing that, but I suppose really I was in some subconscious way, writing kind of a dark lullaby. I think through the centuries, there have been times when you say, “Oh my god, you know, the world's such a mess.” I think we say that now, don't we? The world’s a bit of a mess. But back in the 60s, you had, you know, nuclear war was, you know, the clock was at two minutes to midnight. You didn't know what the Russians were going to do. We don't know what they're going to do now. And back in, you know, 1346, it was the Black Death, you know, people thought that was it. “Well, that's the end of the world, you know, how are we going to survive that?” World War II, they thought, bombing civilians was the end of the world. They thought, you know, “The world will not survive this.” So I was probably in a dark place. But I'm an optimistic person, I'm not a dark person so I think sometimes you get into a state, but it's not a station. It's not somewhere you stay. You pass through a state and you come out the other side and you feel better for it. You know, you can call it depression. I never really suffered from depression, but you'd have a mood sometimes, but you don't stay in that mood. You just express it and you find it helpful. And I found that song, singable, you know, I don't mind singing dark songs. I don't mind singing bleak songs.

Again, you know, structurally, that's a song, that's got an interesting chord sequence. I'm not quite sure what key it's in sometimes, it kind of switches between two keys, and I like the electric guitar on it. Again, it's this very sort of quiet, wiry guitar sound. And I think, for the time, I'm a better singer now, but I think, for the time, I sing it okay. Not a lot of embellishment on it, really. From this perspective, I'm wondering why I sang it and Linda didn't sing it. Or perhaps she thought it was too depressing. I mean, we just had a kid, so she might have thought, “My God, you know, what is this? I can't sing this song.” I don't remember, what went down at the time. But looking back on it, I think she'd have done a better job singing, singing this song. 

Linda Thompson: Was there a chance of me singing “End of the Rainbow?” No, Richard's not that sadistic. I remember I just had a baby and this was her lullaby. Of course people say, “Well you must have been hurt by this bleak view of fatherhood?” But not a bit of it. A great song is a great song. 

Richard Thompson: I think in this song I was never questioning parenthood, I was really just questioning the times that we were living in and it seemed like a perilous world. And I think I'd had a few experiences lately that made me question, you know, certain strains of humanity, you know, but like how violent people could be sometimes. So it's not a happy, you know, it's not Brahms Lullaby exactly. 

My daughter, Muna, who's probably the subject of this song wasn't too happy about this being, you know, the song about her. I'd write another song about her later, which she preferred. But I think she thought, “Oh, what? This is, this is my song. Uh, help. Can't you do a better job than that?” And I could, and I did at some point, but she was a bit upset when she was old enough to realize. 

Having said how carefully and dedicatedly I'd sequence the album, there was one slow track too many really, and I didn't want to drop anything and I didn't want to add anything else. But I thought, “Well I’m not quite sure how we resolve this, but we're just going to have to have a fairly dark end to the album, we're going to put two slow downers, at the end and if people survive that long then, you know, that's what they're going to have to deal with.” 

“The Great Valerio” 

Richard Thompson: “The Great Valerio,” I think started with a visit to the Glasgow Art Museum and I'm looking at a painting of Blondin, the great trapeze artist crossing Niagara Falls. Extraordinary feat, you know of daring and skill and I think that kind of stayed with me and then I was thinking, you know, “How do you express a spiritual ambition?” And I thought, “Well, there's the high wire act up there and everyone's looking at this person with admiration and wonder.” And I thought, “Well, you know, that could almost be like a spiritual teacher. That could be a spiritual leader up there. And we all aspire to do that. But look what it takes to do that. Look at the nerve you need. And look at the concentration you need. You can't lapse in concentration for a second. What does it take to do that? What does it take to be that person?” So I think it became a song of kind of spiritual ambition, spiritual yearning. I see it from this perspective, as a real 60s, 70s sort of hippie-ish sentiment, but that was a time where when people were spiritually very open and very interested, you know, it's a time of people looking East looking to India looking to the Far East for spiritual inspiration. Rather than Christianity, it must be said, For people, you know, following people like Sri Rajneesh, people getting into Scientology, stuff like that, but people generally looking to improve themselves and have a spiritual connection. And in the 70s, 60s, it seemed that that was not only plausible, but attainable. And I ended up becoming a Muslim, I ended up becoming a Sufi, as a consequence of having the kind of mindset that could write a song like that. And I still sing that song from time to time. I really love that song. 

Linda Thompson: I don't really think in terms of songs I sing being spiritual. I just like them or don't. “Valerio” is an elegant song, elegantly sung. 

Oh, I never listened to mixes in those days. Once I've sung, I'm done. 

Richard Thompson: Mixing, again, it was just a couple of days. I think it was a pretty quick process. When we go to Ireland, my A&R at the time was Muff Winwood, who used to be in the Spencer Davis group, the brother of Steve Winwood.  And, you know, Muff was an R&B guy, and I think he just didn't have a clue, what we were trying to do on that record, so it just got shelved. He just, you know, stuck it in the storeroom and didn't think about it. There was also something called the vinyl shortage. So they said, “Well, you know, we can't put your record out because of the vinyl shortage.” You know, “Great.” But I said, “Well, I see other Island records coming out.” They said, “Well, yeah, that's people who sell more records than you do.” I said, “Okay, it's like that, is it?” So it took a year to come out and Muff was eventually replaced as my A&R by Richard Williams, who later became a sports journalist and music journalist. And Richard Williams said, “Well, you know, anything from Richard and Linda in the last year or so?” And he said, “Yeah, there's this record, you know, I don't really like it, you know, I don't think it's very good, we're not gonna release it.” Richard said, “Well, let me have a listen.” So he had a listen and he liked it and then magically it came out a year later. So there you go, a bit of politics and a bit of vinyl shortage.

Linda Thompson: I was busy with the baby and stuff. Nobody even told me the record company had cold feet. Ignorance is bliss, I suppose. 

Richard Thompson: I think a lot of records at that time, that I recorded and the people I was close to recorded, didn't really have a market, or the market was very small. Starting with Fairport Convention, we were never that big in terms of record sales. And then, the work I did with my ex-wife Linda, we didn't sell very well. You know, Nick Drake records sold, you know, terribly at the time. Sandy Denny records didn't sell at the time. So this is all stuff that people discovered later, and it became a cult later, but a long time later. I mean, 20 years, 30 years. Now, I mean, now people are saying, “Oh, Nick Drake, how wonderful.” I wish they'd said it at the time, might have kept the guy alive, you know? So I think a lot of that music was very underrated because there wasn't really, you know, a market for it. It wasn't recognized as a genre and it sure didn't make the charts. 

I think Valerio is an album closer and I think there's various ways you can close an album. Yeah, you can close it on an up note or you can close it on a down note or a reflective note. I think this is a reflective note. And on the end of it, we take a piece of Erik Satie, the seesaw, onto the end of it, just to continue the atmosphere of the song. I think I had a record of Satie's piano pieces, Gymnopédie, and whatever else. I can't remember. All his shorter piano pieces. And that was on the Sports and Diversions (Sports et divertissements). It was the little suite from that. I just love that. It was so eccentric, but so delightful. Very Erik Satie-esque, you know, but he's a real pioneer. He's doing extraordinary things and unusual things that really hadn't been thought of in classical music, so it was in my head at the time. So I just thought what happens if we stick that on the end and we did. The Satie piece just kind of generally spreads it out a little bit longer, a little bit longer, and then it kind of fades away to nothing, and into the reverb, that famous Sound Techniques reverb, and, to me, it's a good closer. It's a good closer. 

Linda Thompson: Does Bright Lights hold up? You tell me. I hate listening to myself, I really do. Speaking of feeling that we'd accomplished our goal implies that we had a game plan we didn't, ever. 

Richard Thompson: Well, I was pleased with it, and I thought we accomplished what we wanted, but I wasn't reflecting on it. You know, it was really a matter of, “Oh, we've got these live shows coming up. Okay, we'll do these songs off the record. We've got these other new songs. We'll do some of these new songs.” Still working, but you know, we're doing the odd TV show. We're doing a bit of radio to promote the record. We did a tour, we did a festival hall show or a Queen Elizabeth Hall show.  But then we kind of moved on fairly quickly to the next record. I think we changed management as well. It was all a bit chaotic, and I didn't really think about it. I didn't reflect on that record until maybe 20 years later, when people said, “Oh, that's a really good record.” And I thought, “Well, I'll have a listen.” I hadn't listened to it for a long time. And I thought, “Well, actually, it is pretty good.” I mean, now I think it's a really good record. Having reflected on it for 50 years. I think the writing was good because I was exploring and some of the things I was exploring were very fresh to me. So I was reacting to some of my influences and it came out quite well. It worked. You know, the next record, Hokey Pokey, was much more problematic. Took much longer to do and is a kind of a mishmash. I like individual songs off that record, but I don't like the whole record. The record after that, I like some things, not all things. I think it's the best record that I made with Linda by, you know, a long shot really. Some people like Shoot Out the Lights. I think that, you know, wasn't recorded as well  in many ways. I like the songs, but not as recorded as well. I like Mock Tudor, which is, you know, much later. I like the last record I did, 13 Rivers. So yeah, I think it's certainly in my top five, maybe my top three.  Maybe in my top, I don't know (laughs). It's hard to get perspective, but I think it's one of the best things I've done. 

I think Linda's career was, you know, really cut short by vocal problems. I think on this record, she's singing great, really, really well. The next record she's singing great. One after that, you start to hear a few difficulties. Shoot Out the Lights, you know, she's spending more time in the studio, trying to get vocals. You know, she had hysterical dysphonia. So, you know, singing, it became more difficult, and I think for now it's almost impossible for her. Her new record coming out is other people, singing her songs, which is, you know, great. I contributed some guitar on her new record, we still get on, we still talk to each other after years of, some difficult years, but we're friends. 

Linda Thompson: Acrimony was intense, but reasonably short lived. It was 45 years ago, it certainly isn't difficult to evaluate the work from then. I think it's the best either of us ever did. However, in the immortal words of Mandy Rice-Davies, I would say that, wouldn't I? 

Richard Thompson: I think records are few and far between that you really enjoy looking back on. But Bright Lights is, I think it's up there. It actually gets into, you know, sort of, you know, best records of the 70s lists these days, which is nice. I think it's one of those records that you just get a bit of magic, and it goes well in the studio. You write the right songs, you make the right recording, you get the right people in, and off you go, whoosh. 

Outro:

Dan Nordheim: Visit lifeoftherecord.com for more information about Richard and Linda Thompson. You’ll also find a full transcript of this episode and a link to purchase I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight. Instrumental music by Chris Forsyth. Thanks for listening.

Credits:

"When I Get to the Border"

"The Calvary Cross"

"Withered and Died"

"I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight"

"Down Where the Drunkards Roll"

"We Sing Hallelujah"

"Has He Got a Friend for Me"

"The Little Beggar Girl"

"The End of the Rainbow"

"The Great Valerio"

All songs written by Richard Thompson

Published by Warlock Music Ltd.

Performed by Richard and Linda Thompson

with

Simon Nicol - Dulcimer

Timi Donald - Drums

Pat Donaldson - Bass

John Kirkpatrick - Anglo Concertina and Accordion

Brian Gulland - Krummhorn

Richard Harvey - Krummhorn

Royston Wood - Backing Vocal

Trevor Lucas - Backing Vocal

CWS (Manchester) Silver Band

Produced by John Wood and Richard Thompson

Recorded Sound Techniques Studio, London

Engineered by John Wood

℗ & © 1973 Island Records Ltd.

Episode Credits:

Intro/Outro Music:

“Tomorrow Might As Well be Today” by Chris Forsyth from the album, All Time Present.

Episode produced, edited and mixed by Dan Nordheim

Additional mixing and mastering by Jeremy Whitwam