Amplifying acoustic instruments more than a little is really cheating, and everything becomes a compromise.
– Richard Thompson
Art was my favorite subject at school, and to me the Who were like an art project.
– Richard Thompson
As the writer, you're always a presence in the song. If you get close to what human beings are like, you're writing about common experience. We all do much the same things, so if you nail somebody, then you've also nailed yourself.
– Richard Thompson
But music can save your life sometimes. It probably saved me from working in a bank or something. That's a kind of salvation right there.
– Richard Thompson
I have to remind myself not to set boundaries.
– Richard Thompson
I just like to entertain myself by sitting down and writing songs.
– Richard Thompson
I like the idea of playing in unison with yourself.
– Richard Thompson
I like to sit and watch TV while noodling on the guitar, because sometimes your fingers just discover things by themselves.
– Richard Thompson
I probably wrote three-quarters of the songs without an instrument in my hands.
– Richard Thompson
I suppose the mindset for a band show is more that you overpower the audience. That sounds rather totalitarian, doesn't it?
– Richard Thompson
I take notes all the time, too. You know, something terrible happens to you, and you think, Bastards. I'm going to write a song about that. And then you do.
– Richard Thompson
I try to look for the good in everybody, regardless of the way they're labeled.
– Richard Thompson
I try to make songs visual and tactile to kind of put you into the action.
– Richard Thompson
I want people to come to my music without prejudice. I want them to get the music first. And who I am isn't that important. If they like the songs to me that's a good thing.
– Richard Thompson
I'll try to imagine something and see what happens. But it usually winds up being about something fairly concrete and close to home.
– Richard Thompson
I'm always making a conscious effort to be viable and accessible.
– Richard Thompson
I'm glad there are a lot of guitar players pursuing technique as diligently as they possibly can, because it leaves this whole other area open to people like me.
– Richard Thompson
Imagining playing the guitar is a slightly looser thing than playing it. You can hear more things sometimes. The fingers of your imagination aren't quite as hidebound as your real fingers.
– Richard Thompson
It's amazing what some people read into songs.
– Richard Thompson
It's an honor to have this job and, to me, the greatest thing is to be up on stage and to feel that connection with an audience.
– Richard Thompson
It's fun to sing sad songs. And it's fun to listen to sad songs. Enjoyable. Satisfying. Something.
– Richard Thompson
It's hard to tell where one tour ends and the next begins. I'm generally touring most of any year. I'm just generally out there doing it.
– Richard Thompson
Music is a great healer, a great diffuser of things like racism. It cuts through boundaries, and it's a very positive force in the world.
– Richard Thompson
People want to hear about the extremes of human nature. They want things that are larger than their own lives, and more romantic, and not necessarily of their own experiences.
– Richard Thompson
Popular is a tricky word. People in large numbers don't always have the best taste. I prefer to concentrate on songs that are deserving, but slightly too arcane to be in every household - the also-rans, the misfits, the hidden jewels.
– Richard Thompson
The best thing you've got going for you is individuality.
– Richard Thompson
The thing I do, really, is a communication with audiences more than any achievement through records.
– Richard Thompson
There's a part of me that wishes I'd never said one single solitary word on any subject publicly. Then I could have been the tortured poet, and there's so much mileage in that. But it's too late to stop now.
– Richard Thompson
To stand up on a stage alone with an acoustic guitar requires bravery bordering on heroism. Bordering on insanity.
– Richard Thompson
Well, first of all it's entertainment. That stops us becoming too pretentious or thinking we're great artists.
– Richard Thompson
What I wanted to hear didn't exist, so it was necessary for me to go out and create it.
– Richard Thompson
When you stand up acoustic in front of an audience, you really are a man without any clothes on. And that can be fun - it depends how much of an exhibitionist you are, I suppose. I quite enjoy it.