Richard Thompson Announces First Ever Memoir, ‘Beeswing’
The new book will focus on the star’s early years and his work with Fairport Convention and with former wife, Linda Thompson.
Richard Thompson has announced the upcoming publication of his first ever memoir, Beeswing: Losing My Way And Finding My Voice 1967-1975.
Tracing his life from his childhood, through his Fairport Convention days, and into his music and life with the former Linda Peters, Beeswing is, in the words of publisher Algonquin, “an intimate look at a period of great cultural tumult, chronicling the early years of one of the world’s most significant and influential guitarists and songwriters.” The memoir will be published on April 6, 2021 in the U.S. (by Algonquin) and April 15 in the U.K. by Faber Books.
Richard Thompson has been one of rock’s MVPs since the mid-Sixties. He was a founding member of Fairport Convention — the band that invented the merger of rock and British folk — and his subsequent, musically timeless albums with his ex-wife Linda have long been revered: Their 1982 Shoot Out the Lights made Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. He’s also earned the respect of many of his fellow musicians; his songs have been covered by Elvis Costello, Emmylou Harris, Robert Plant, Bonnie Raitt, Dinosaur Jr., Bob Mould, and the Pointer Sisters, among many.
In the book — most of which focuses on Thompson’s artistic life and work through the late Sixties — he recalls onstage jam sessions with Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin during his Fairport years and writes of the shocking 1969 van crash that killed Fairport drummer Martin Lamble and Jeannie Franklyn, Thompson’s girlfriend at the time.
Thompson also remembers watching the Stones record part of “Sympathy for the Devil” and his encounters with Nick Drake and Pink Floyd. He recounts sneaking a peek at Joni Mitchell’s notebooks when she and Fairport shared a bill in 1968 — and refutes those rumors that he was once asked to join the Eagles.
For Fairport Convention fans, the book is pegged as “a gold mine of information about the writing and recording of their first albums, Thompson’s relationship with original singer Judy Dyble, and the late, great but troubled Sandy Denny, who succeeded Dyble in Fairport.”
Beeswing also chronicles Thompson meeting and courting Linda Peters, their marriage, and the creation of enduring Richard and Linda Thompson albums like 1974’s I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight. Thompson also details his conversion to Sufism — including that shaved-head ceremony — and the strain it put on the Thompsons’ marriage, which ended in the early Eighties.
In a snippet provided to Rolling Stone, Thompson also writes about his early days growing up in Notting Hill, west of Central London, and how he developed a stutter at age six. “The causes of this are not always clear — my mother thought it started for me after a bout of dysentery, but there was probably a psychological factor,” he writes. “I lived in fear of my father, who could be drunk and Calvinistic — a common Scottish combination — so I never knew when I was going to get whacked.”
Beeswing is dedicated to the late writer Scott Timberg, who helped Thompson develop and write the book and died last December.
Listen to the best of Richard Thompson on Apple Music and Spotify.
