THE MADNESS OF LOVE | PAGE 1, 2, 3
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There's a lot of rope in Thompson's songs but not much slack. "There's a rope that binds us," he sang on the desperate "Don't Renege on Our Love," "and I don't want to break it/If love is a healing/Why should we forsake it?" "The Great Valerio" (1973), from the first Richard-and-Linda album, became a signature song for the couple, reinforcing the artistic ties that bound them: The imagery (a performing tightrope walker, a wondering audience, "acrobats of love") was his, as was the challenging score (with a coda from Satie). But Richard couldn't sing the mesmerizing minor-key melody, with its quick shifts in octave, and dropped it when he went solo. By the time of their divorce, 10 years later, the tightrope came back to haunt him. "Walking on a Wire" from the celebrated 1983 album "Shoot Out the Lights," had moments of rock-star indulgence ("I wish I could please you tonight/But my medicine won't come right") and sweaty-palmed terror ("I'm walking on a wire/And I'm falling"), all given voice, again, by Linda.

That Thompson's life had become a sort of high-wire act by then, complete with a gasping public of die-hard fans and rock critic detectives, pained him to no end. He denounced Time magazine's speculation about the couple's demise as "baloney, National Enquirer" stuff. A private, even shy person, he has worked hard to build a devil-may-care persona for his live shows. And you would think by now that armor would be pretty well oiled. Born in North London on April 3, 1949, Thompson had music in his family. His father, a policeman, played big-band guitar while uncles performed in Scottish dance bands. As a teenager he learned the basics of rock 'n' roll in fledgling outfits with names like Emil and the Detectives; American music was all the go, and sound checks still find him running through surf instrumentals such as "Pipeline."

He began playing with Fairport Convention (co-founding the band with longtime collaborator Simon Nicol) in 1967, when he was 17. Within two years the group had built an international following as a sort of English Jefferson Airplane -- more Celtic in its influences but with the same propensity for ragas and other hippie shite. What saved them from becoming another twee Renaissance Faire band was Denny's worldly-wise vocals and Thompson's world-weary songs. Beginning with "Genesis Hall" (on 1969's "Halfbricking"), Thompson showed a great affection for the grave and its promise ("Gloom and Doom From the Tomb" was the title of a tape provided by one fan newsletter; "Celtschmerz" is Thompson's own punning description of his condition). Less than a year later, death came knocking for real. Returning from a gig in Birmingham, their driver fell asleep at the wheel, killing drummer Martin Lamble and Thompson's girlfriend, Genie Franklin.

The band continued, though, and flourished, heartened in part by the example of Bob Dylan and the Band, who were bringing traditional forms of American music to rock to create something fresh. "A lot of mythology is imported into England from America these days, because of popular songs," he said years later. "I'd like to try and validate the use of British mythology in British songs." Though not a pure traditionalist, Thompson's playing was never simply blues-based (like that of almost every one of his British guitar-hero contemporaries), and for a time, deep in his Sufi studies, he dropped the electric guitar altogether. But he was too all-over-the-map to be purely proscriptive: In 1972, after the demise of Fairport, he released his first solo album, "Henry the Human Fly," a sampler of mad (and sometimes sublime) musical experiments. It was, his fans will proudly tell you, the worst-selling album in Reprise Records' history.

But by the next year he had hooked up with Linda Peters (in every sense), a folk-singing friend of Sandy Denny's. The couple's first co-branded album, "I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight," was a feast, though few were partaking. It was not released in the United States until a year later, and Thompson's future as a succes d'estime -- beloved by critics, ignored by record buyers -- seemed guaranteed. Was it the songs? Though more poetic than your average rock tripe, they have an emotional truth and immediacy that doesn't require study (less obscure than Elvis Costello's, for instance, less mannered than Tom Waits'.) It could have had more to do with the shifting beats, the eclectic use of, say, hammer dulcimers and accordions. "I suppose there's music that I want to hear that I don't hear other people doing," Thompson has said of his trademark sound, "and because it doesn't exist, I have to do it. Or else become a seething psychopath."

The songs of "Bright Lights" had a weight, and a variety, that stood out. Love and religion -- and perhaps a little time -- had focused Thompson's vision, and the great songs held depths, reflected in Linda's aching voice and his supple playing, that most rock songs never touched. "When I Get to the Border" was no drug-dealing Eagles riff (as Robert Christgau noted); it was a song about dying and looking forward to it. That outlook was essentially unchanged over the next five albums. "Wall of Death" (1983) compared the last hurrah to an amusement park ride of incomparable thrill: "You can waste your time on the other rides/But this is the nearest to being alive." In its cover of "Wall of Death" on the 1993 tribute album "Beat the Retreat," R.E.M. reduced it to pop jangle, all hooks and chorus. Richard and Linda's version is stately and somehow patient, like lovers in a suicide pact. In reality they were just getting a divorce.

Touring the states solo in 1981 (Thompson has always had a number of side projects going and has appeared on more than 50 albums in the last 30 years), Richard met and fell in love with concert promoter Nancy Covey. The Thompsons had known rifts before; Linda had left him twice when they were living on the Sufi commune, the second time when she was pregnant with their second child. "I really wanted to stay away that time but I worried about being a single mother with two children. Three people from the commune came to my parents' house to tell me that Richard had returned home from a trip to the Middle East and had sat down crying, 'Where's my family?' Well, that did it for me. Back I went." But this time he was the instigator.

The Thompsons' demise fueled the rumor mills and was evidenced with the release of their masterpiece, "Shoot Out the Lights." If this were just Richard's saga of marriage and divorce it would rank with such tear-stained testimonials as "Blood on the Tracks" or Willie Nelson's "Phases and Stages." But by giving Linda -- the object of his devotion, the victim of his betrayal -- these songs to sing, he lent his lyrics a special poignancy. It seemed like the fulfillment of a prophecy: It had been six years earlier she had sung her husband's words on "Shame of Doing Wrong": "Please don't make me pay for my deceiving heart/Just hold up your lamp and let me in." The song crescendos with the ultimate lover's lament, "I wish I was a fool for you again," sung over and over, a call and response in hell. The album won countless accolades, made myriad 10-best lists (including those for the decade) and spawned one of the strangest tours of all time. "On that tour was the best she's ever sung," recalls longtime Thompson producer and Hannibal record chief Joe Boyd. "It was so intense. It was as if Richard had spent six or seven years writing songs for Linda to sing when he left her." Determined to soldier on, Richard and Linda played legendary dates, as emotional and tumultuous as a pro wrestling match. She hit him over the head with a Coke bottle in Toronto, stole a car in New York, smashed all the mirrors in the dressing room of one dive. "The promoter said, 'We had the Sex Pistols here and they weren't half as destructive as you,'" Linda recalled. "I was thrilled of course. I'd been so well behaved in marriage that it was a real catharsis."

N E X T_P A G E .|."A good half-octave" singing range

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