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"Everyone has their own clichés" | page 1, 2
Not quite that long. Certainly 15 minutes later. If the band is with you and people are picking up rhythmic accents, five minutes seems like no time at all. Ten minutes sometimes seems like no time at all. I'm always afraid of being over-indulgent. A bit too San Francisco. What's the most indulgent you've ever been? I think I've played for at least a half an hour. Somewhere. If you make this vast instrumental statement, you forget what the song is about. Only a few songs lend themselves to more instrumental excursions. [Pause.] He took a "long instrumental excursion." How deliberate is your playing when you're on -- "excursion." Do you ever resort to tricks or repertoire? To some extent, yeah. I think everyone has reference points. Everyone has their own clichés. It's not like Charlie Parker never repeated himself. [Laughs.] He juxtaposed his clichés into new ways. In popular music you have your clichés and you juxtapose them against each other, and then you build bridges between them. I wondered what you'd be like in person. You're much more serious than your show biz shtick. There's a part of me that wishes I never said anything onstage. Could you get away with that? Oh yeah. There's 10 times the mileage of being the silent tortured poet. If I thought of that early enough, I could have done that -- just shuffle out moody and silent. They think that you must be a genius if you never say anything. If I crack jokes between the gloom it can soften the audience up. Then they don't know the intent of a song. They think, "Is this a joke?" And they might chuckle at the first couple of lines. And then they realize that it's not a joke. But then they're involved in it. And then you can muck them over their heads. You've already sucked them in somehow. Most of your songs have fictional personas -- a dying bandit, a jealous lover prowling through his girlfriend's drawers -- as opposed to being autobiographical -- I don't know. Some. Some, but not all. Do I have to say which ones are which? No. [He then regrets this answer.] Good. I hope it's like a well-manufactured toupee -- you can't see the joint between the real and the nylon. Are you still a practicing Sufi? I was. I'm a Muslim basically. Probably in the 1970s I was more involved in that than I am now. I'm a Muslim and I'm a spiritual person. That's enough to say. Do you pray to ... [forgets the word "Mecca"] Saudi Arabia? That's the direction. [Pause.] I'm certainly not praying to Saudi Arabia. Mecca. Mecca. I do that every day. That didn't come from your tradition? No. It came from being dissatisfied from a Christian upbringing. I've always been the way I am. I didn't know how to codify it, put a name to it. In Islam I recognized something of myself, and who I was. When I met the Muslims, I thought, "This is absolutely who I am. These are my people." How welcome are newcomers to the Muslim faith? I think to shut the door is unforgivable, really. Or to assume everyone else is cursed and damned unless they believe what you believe. Moses is my brother. Jesus, he's one of my lot as far as I'm concerned. Saddam Hussein -- well, he's nothing to do with me. Aren't the most powerful Muslims in the world dictators? They're a bunch of despots. It would be great if what happened to Eastern Europe could happen in the Islamic world. If all those walls could get knocked down. Because they're a bunch of despots basically. They've bred these ultra-radical extremists at the other end. [Pause.] But there are millions of people out there with great hearts. Do you have a sense that there is a global Richard Thompson cult? I think so. I think with the Internet it's become much easier to cultify anyone. I don't pay attention to it. It's not of interest, you know what I mean? I like the dollar, you know. [Laughs.] That's sounds very mercenary. It's nice when people like you -- if people want to know what you've had for breakfast, that's not too interesting. If it reflects on the music, that's great. Speaking of the music scene, is there anything worth following nowadays -- besides you? [Sly laugh.] It's a funny time. It seems fallow. Popular music seems totally empty. I hate rap music. I hate hip-hop. [Pause.] Music has become very unskilled. It's too easy to sit at home with machines and make fairly interesting music. I don't think music is taught in schools anymore. It seems to me that people are just musically ignorant. People in the music business are ignorant. Perhaps it's time to return to real instruments and horns. And arrangements and orchestrations. People once had skill at those things. Like playing guitar? Like playing guitar.
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About the writer Sound off Related Salon stories Ballads and bones Richard Thompson riffs on his new "Voltage Enhanced" and "Nude" double CD, the dubious joys of
being a"musician's musician," and why the Left Banke deserves a tribute album.
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