Since The Thomp is bigger around here than The Beatles, Elvis, Aretha, Bruce Springsteen, U2, Madonna, Westlife, Beyonce, Metallica and Iron Maiden combined, I thought a small notice regarding the fact that the very same person was recently interviewed on BBC Radio Ulster by Ralph McLean could be welcome.
Fast forward to the second hour if you haven’t got the patience to hear the whole thing, even if you should, as McLean has excellent taste in music.
Enjoy!
Not a single Thimpson fan here? I KNEW it. 😉
Thimpson? Are you from Väckelsång?
See, I told you you wouldn’t find any Richard Thompson-fans on The AW.
Thimpsons.
For dhry-cleaning etc.
Perfect!
Still not a single proper comment on a Thomp-thread. How is that possible?
Remarkable. Have his acolytes flounced?
I’m not so much of a fan these days so didn’t feel motivated to listen but I am surprised at the lack of a response. Is it the Northern summer?
Well, it’s a link to an interview which I haven’t got round to listening to yet and Richard Thompson interviews aren’t scarce, kind though it was of @neela to think of the legion of Tommo fans here. I’m sure I’ll get around to it, possibly while fondly gazing upon my ticket for the Royal Albert hall birthday bash in September which landed on my doormat at the weekend.
Shall see you there.
I’ve never understood this ‘Tommo’ nickname. I always use Thompo -it is derived more accurately from his name. See also King Crimson > Crimso (not Crimmo)…
‘Crimso’ seems to be used a lot by Robert Fripp in reference to his band.
And I thought it was us antipodeans who were supposed to the rampant truncaters.
‘Fancy some Crimso with yer tinnies at the barbie this arvo, Wellsy?’
‘Arvo’ always sounded like a bridge too far to me. Where would it end? ‘Tomorrow morning = tomozza’?
Jeff ‘Thommo’ Thomson.
RT could be ‘Thommo sapiens’
Rampant Truncaters? TMFTL.
Has to be said in a guttural Northern voice a la “Tungsten Carbide Drills??” (TMFTL as well)
“The Crims” or just “Crim” seems to be more commonly used.
I suppose how you say his surname, I hardly pronounce the p so Thommo is more correct to me.
However I never call him Thommo or even Thompo.
Usually say Mr T ( though I suppose that could be a bit confusing)
There is a term in linguistics which describes the way a rogue ‘p’ has a habit of inserting itself between the letter ‘m’ and a soft sound fooling it. Say the word ‘warmth’ and it is likely to sound more like ‘warmpth’; I live in Chelmsford which is generally pronounced more like ‘Chemps-fud’ (the letter ‘r’ being redundant in Essex as well).
My guess is that the original name was Thomson, but because of this phenomenon the Thompson variant became common. Thompson himself claims that the family name was Thomson until a few generations ago when a descendant found a door plate, or possibly and entire door, with that spelling on it, helped himself, and the rest is history.
I’ve noticed Colin’s Thompo references, but as the soft ‘son’ sound doesn’t exist in the shortened form neither does the ‘p’.
Maybe this contentious issue is why American fans always refer to him as RT.
Found it – it’s an example of ‘stop consonant’ epenthesis, where ‘a stop consonant is often added as a transitional sound between the parts of a nasal + fricative sequence’.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epenthesis
There may be something in the pronunciation thing, as you say. I often do the i newspaper’s Zygo (or some word like that) word linking puzzle, one aspect of which can be ‘a word that sounds like…’ After a few goes at the puzzle, on its first appearance, I realised that a common problem was that the puzzle setter was using a south England accent/pronunciation for word rhymes. So I do my best to ‘think like an Essex or Surrey speaker’ sometimes in order to complete the thing.
Of course, leaving the P out, it should really be ‘Tompo’ or ‘Tomo’ (the H is silent, and there’s no second M in the full name).
I pity the fool who says it’s a beret!
I am Mr T @hubert-rawlinson. Not sure there is room for two of us.
‘I pity the fool’ who thinks there are only two Mr Ts.
@SteveT
Allegedly LT suggested FT rather than RT in days before they came back to sharing the occasional stage and studio. The T referring to his fielding capabilities as silly mid off on the annual Cropredy sunday cricket match
I went to a celebration of Sandy Denny at the Troubadour on the 30th anniversary of her death. As well as the musicians there was a discussion panel of people who knew Sandy – Joe Boyd, Karl Dallas and Linda Thompson. At one point Karl mentioned Thommo and said, ‘I call him Dick’ and Linda dead-panned, ‘Yeah, that’s what I call him too.’
I like the fact that Karl Dallas was named Karl after Karl Marx. Interesting bit of information.
Michael Keaton’s real name is Michael Douglas, but Michael Douglas’s real name isn’t Michael Douglas.
He’s RT to me. A mate calls him Tommy which is all wrong.
In my circle he is generally referred to as ‘Richard Fucking Thompson’ (in a tone of admiration). I’ve settled on ‘Richard’; I reckon 30+ years of fandom has earned me that familiarity.
I saw Chris and Kellie While and they introduced “Persuasion” as being written by His Royal Highness Sir Richard Thompson.
If Smash Hits were still going I daresay he’d be Sir Richfingers of Thompworthy.
@colin-h
I wish it was still going, wasn’t it fab?
No.
I never was interested in reading Smash Hits at the time and never felt I was missing anything. Wrong demographic.
I’m certain that if I found a huge cache of back issues now and forced myself to read them I’d find it extremely tedious going. Smart-arsery has it’s place but only really works at the time. Never in retrospect.
I know Persuasion through the Tim Finn version – it was a co-write
Try this…
@twang That’s lovely. I must confess that I’d not heard of Chris and Kellie While (or either of them) before, They’ve got great voices.
Persuasion is one of my favourite ever songs, a go-to song after a bad day. There’s something about the melody that I find really soothing. I know I have posted it before, but here’s RT and TT twenty years ago.
Yes that’s lovely too. Chris and Kellie are mother and daughter -from the Albion Band strain of folk, where Kellie replaced Chris. They tour a lot and are well worth seeing at your local folk club. Very funny too. I’ve got a few of their albums which are lovely.
The melody, which I like, came before the Tim Finn lyric, which I confess I have always found rather ordinary. I don’t much care for the … pauses either. It was on Richard’s soundtrack album for the obscure film Sweet Talker.
@timbar & @gatz & @pajp
Well, well. I have the Sweet Talker album and also the Tim Finn single of Persuasion and I’d not made the connection before.
Interestingly (to me, anyway), I see that the writing credit on the RT soundtrack instrumental is “Richard Thompson / Peter Filleul” – PF played keyboards and co-produced the album. But the writing credit on Tim’s single is “Finn / Thompson”. Poor old Peter – he might have missed out on some royalties!
Addicted To Noise: Speaking of Crowded House, you played the song “Persuasion” last night.
My understanding is that song is your music and Neil Finn’s words?
Richard Thompson: They might be Tim Finn’s words, I think. It started as a film theme for a film called “Sweet Talker,” which was an Australian film and went precisely nowhere. The tune was a bit different. But Tim Finn liked the tune and said, ‘Let’s do some words, do it.’ I said, ‘I can’t do anything. I’m stuck.’ He said, ‘I’ll go in and do it.’ So he went in and wrote the words and changed the tune a bit, which was a good idea. Neil Finn put the bridge on. I had never written words for it, so that was great. And it was a song Teddy knew from the Tim Finn album that it was originally recorded on. So Teddy said, ‘Well, I know this one. Can we do this one?’ I said, ‘Oh, great. I sort of know this one myself.’ [laughs] It was a nice meeting point for us as a song to record together.
And here they are together on Jools.
Do people call you JR, Twang? Or… well, ‘Twang’?
Mostly call me JR. Other than here. Amongst other more choice names.