Sunday News
Published:
By JOHN DUFFY, Correspondent
Rock critic Kurt Loder once wrote that Americans not knowing the music of Richard Thompson is about as absurd as not knowing about Jimi Hendrix. Or, for that matter, Bob Dylan. For as much as Dylan changed pop music by electrifying modern folk music and at the same time reaching back into the dustbin of American folklore, Thompson was instrumental in doing the same in the United Kingdom.
Dylan's latest album of new material, "Modern Times," debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard albums chart. Thompson, while a revered performer the world over, hasn't charted in the United States since 1982. His influence, both as a member of Fairport Convention and as a prolific solo performer, has had lasting influence on both sides of the Atlantic. Beginning in 1967, Fairport played a largely psychedelic rock derivative of Jefferson Airplane and the Mamas and the Papas.
But two years later, the band began forging a path that merged British-Scots-Irish folk songs, some extending as far back as the Middle Ages, with modern electric picking. In effect, they were mimicking Dylan's conversion, but in reverse. They were a rock band that began mining folk music, as opposed to the pure folk artists who dared to plug in and "defile" traditional music, as many accused Dylan of doing when he premiered electric music at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival to mixed reviews.
For both artists, of course, the shift was a gradual discovery, the result of dissatisfaction with becoming mired in one set of expectations. But the musical journeys of Dylan and Thompson are each marked by a single significant signpost. For Dylan, the watershed moment came in the form of his May 1966 concert at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, England, widely bootlegged and mislabeled "The Royal Albert Hall Concert" until Columbia finally released an official two-disc version in 2001.
For the show's first half, Dylan dutifully played the acoustic- guitar-harmonica-in-rack folk troubadour, though he performed none of the folk standards and protest songs that made him a star. No "Lonesome Death of Hattie Carol" or "Blowin' in The Wind"; instead it was "Desolation Row" and "Visions of Johanna." After the intermission, he plugged into a black Telecaster and, joined by Canadian roadhouse rockers the Hawks, proceeded to divide his audience in half with "Baby, Let Me Follow You Down" and "Leopard- Skin Pill-Box Hat."
Catcalls and rhythmic clapping (not a compliment in the United Kingdom) can be heard throughout, topped off by the famous cry of "Judas!" from the rear of the hall. Dylan's response: He told the band to "play [freakin'] loud," and with his back to the crowd he threw a grenade into their midst in the form of a blistering "Like A Rolling Stone."
But as brutal as the show must have been for the performers onstage - Hawks founding drummer Levon Helm quit the band for a year, tired of being booed for playing what they all knew was incredible music - it proved liberating for Dylan. He was no longer anyone's spokesman. He also completely altered what a live rock performance could be. No longer was the artist expected to dutifully churn out the hits. Each night would be a confrontation and a negotiation, not a programmed nickelodeon. Every rock show since has felt in some way the reverberation of that night in Manchester.
And most importantly, Dylan tore down the wall between folk and rock completely. Forever. For Thompson and Fairport Convention, their concert crucible was a far more pleasant affair, even reverent. Having flirted with folk sounds on two previous albums, Fairport Convention was in the process of diving headfirst into that well in May 1969 when tragedy struck. Coming home from a show, the band's van was involved in an accident that claimed the life of drummer Martin Lamble and Thompson's girlfriend, Jeannie Franklyn, and laid up several band members for months. In December of that year, the group performed at London's Royal Festival Hall for the first time since the accident.
Nick Drake, in one of the few live appearances of his brief life, was the supporting act. Led by a boyish-looking Thompson (barely 20 at the time) and angelic singer Sandy Denny, Fairport brought the threads of folk and rock together on that night, generating a reaction exactly opposite to the one Dylan received. Where Dylan created division, Fairport brought about healing.
Though the sounds themselves were dissimilar - Dylan and the Hawks all street-thug tough and loose, Fairport strident and multilayered - the effect the performances have had on musicians and songwriters is the same. The music Fairport premiered that night made up the bulk of its album "Liege & Lief," regarded as the pinnacle of British folk rock and a favorite in the United Kingdom to this day. Last year, a BBC poll dubbed it the best folk album of all time.
On it, the band merged sea shanties, Renaissance ballads and bawdy barroom tales with rock n' roll volume and swagger. There is no obvious American analogue, but if you've never heard it (shame on you), think Joni Mitchell fronting Crosby, Stills & Nash on an album of Carter Family tunes. For Thompson, the change began simply, by playing folk melodies on a Gibson Les Paul. But as his career progressed, both with Fairport and after his departure in 1971, he began to use the electric guitar as a new type of folk instrument. Or some kind of weapon.
Woody Guthrie is reported to have said that if you use more than two chords in a song, you're showing off. Thompson apparently never heard that adage, or didn't care. His wry, observant, sometimes brooding and morose lyrics, coupled with lifting melodies and ice- pick sharp playing - owing as much to Middle Eastern and Gypsy music as to blues and jazz - are his immediate trademarks.
But his bridging of the sensitive folk singer-songwriter tradition with the sexiness of the guitar slinger has influenced countless bands: Steeleye Span and Jethro Tull (both of which featured former Fairporters), right up through Dexy's Midnight Runners, the Pogues, the Waterboys, the La's and KT Tunstall. So some might rightly call Thompson the English Dylan. The comparison is not likely to go the other direction, but both men hold generations of hearts and minds, musicians and laymen, under their sway.
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