Slick seducer, 100-string guitar
Last updated 05:34, Friday, 25 July 2008
Richard ThompsonSuper cool from his teens and still cool after more than four decades, here he was, Richard Thompson, dressed entirely in slick black and his signature beret, the man who started something new way back when folk was associated with chunky sweaters and bad haircuts.
It was a welcome return to Brampton Live for singer, songwriter and guitarist Thompson. Judging by the packed marquee not a soul was going to miss this treat.
He leapt straight in with Walking on a Wire and the oh-so wonderful distinctive guitar skills that leave you breathless. It’s hard to grasp that such complex and perfect tones can come from any instrument of less than 100 strings, let alone a single guitar.
Lyrics of angst, repressed anger, unrequited lust, paranoia, riotous fun, fear and disappointment were belted out in a voice that is even more powerful than 30 years ago and is undeniably a bellow of maleness. In Hot for the Smarts he extols the virtues of intellectual women, and barely a soul didn’t know all the words to Vincent Black Lightning. Woods of Darney tells a heart-rending tale of war, grief and anonymous death while a mock folksy sea shanty about an imaginary band called the Drones was warmly tongue-in-cheek.
With the Sandy Denny number Who knows where the time goes which Thompson dedicated to the late Sandy, there was an audible sigh of pleasure in the marquee.
It was a long set, stuffed with many of the best of his songs from the last 40 or more years, though never straying too far from the present day. His songwriting is no less quirky, clever and memorable now than all those years ago.
Thompson showed great forbearance when audience members got over-excited, shouting out what they wanted him to play next. He was always going to play the handful of numbers the audience was demanding and the gorgeously honeyed Beeswing was predictably his last number.
For two hours one man held hundreds of people rapt, while they rolled over and let him stroke their souls and warm their hearts.
FI EXON
