Beeswing
Losing My Way and Finding My Voice 1967-1975
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
A Rolling Stone Best Music Book of 2021
“Thompson is a master showman . . . [Beeswing is] everything you’d hope a Richard Thompson autobiography would be . . . It’s both major and minor, dirge and ditty, light on its feet but packing a punch.”
—The Wall Street Journal
Now Featuring an Interview with Elvis Costello
In this moving, immersive, and long-awaited memoir, beloved international music legend Richard Thompson recreates the spirit of his early years, where he found, and then lost, and then found his way again. Considered one of the top twenty guitarists of all time, Thompson also belongs in the songwriting pantheon alongside Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, and Randy Newman. Here the British folk musician takes us back to the late 1960s, a period of great change and creativity for both him and the world at large.
During the pivotal years of 1967 to 1975, just as he was discovering his passion for music, he formed the band Fairport Convention with some schoolmates and helped establish the genre of British folk rock. It was a thrilling period of massive tours, where Thompson was on the road in both the UK and the US, crossing paths with the likes of Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and Jimi Hendrix, as well as a time of heady and explosive creativity for Thompson, who wrote some of his most famous songs during this time. But as Thompson reveals, those eight years were also marked by upheaval and tragedy. Honest, moving, and compelling, Beeswing vividly captures the life of a remarkable man and musician during a period of artistic intensity, in a world on the cusp of change.
“An absorbing, witty, often deliciously biting read, as all rock memoirs should be.” —Los Angeles Review of Books
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
English songwriter and musician Thompson delivers a warts-and-all account of a crucial eight-year period of his life following his cofounding of the folk rock band Fairport Convention in 1967. Thompson breezes through his childhood in West London, where he was first introduced to "music that was not controlled by the grown-ups" by his older sister. By the time he was 18, he was uninterested in anything besides playing the guitar. He harnessed that passion into Fairport Convention, a band he formed with three friends. The band's ups and downs, which included the death of drummer Martin Lamble in a road accident and decisions about replacing members, vividly detail the challenges of maintaining a joint creative enterprise. Along the way, Thompson convincingly argues Fairport Convention left a legacy by electrifying traditional English folk songs, and delineates the artistic impulses behind his decision to quit Fairport Convention to perform with his wife, Linda. Thompson extensively quotes his lyrics and isn't shy about digging into his creative process, but even so, those less familiar with his music will have a bit of a tough time getting into the swing of things. But readers who regard Thompson as a major figure in the arts will consider this a must-read.
