Re: Richard Thompson (was Re: Sandy Denny)

[avdavid@teal.csn.org (David Ewing)]

greg@deming.eng.ufl.edu (Greg O'Rear) writes:

>david@avalanche.com writes:
>>An equally important member of early Fairport was the GREAT Richard
>>Thompson, guitarist/writer extraordinaire.

>I know he's supposed to be great, but the only exposure I have to his guitar
>playing is on the Nick Drake song "Thoughts of Mary Jane."  He's terrible!
>He keeps playing in the wrong fret so that he's way out of tune with Nick's
>acoustic and singing.  And the little fills he does are rather poor.  I can
>only hope that (1) he was very young, and (2) he was very stoned.  I imagine
>he got better.

I can't remember his playing on this song off the top of my head, but
none of his contributions to Nick Drake's albums are very memorable.
Is this on "Five Leaves Left"?  If yes, I do know the tune, and no,
he sounds nothing like this.

The funny thing about RT's playing is that he is very subdued on record,
but live he is just phenomenal.  While I love his electric playing
(imagine Mark Knopfler, who was very influenced by him, with a lot more
of an edge), his solo acoustic work is really extraordinary.  He plays
a lot of shows with just his acoustic guitar as accompaniment.  If you
close your eyes you'd swear there were at least three guitarists on
stage.




-- 
************************************************************************
David A. Ewing          Avalanche Development Company
david@avalanche.com     Boulder, Colorado
************************************************************************