Richard Thompson: 1000 years of popular music
Most lists of ‘greatest songs’ barely go back before Elvis. The legendary guitarist’s live show makes amends

If you reckon you have fairly eclectic musical tastes, then get your credit card out, because next month the only show that takes in madrigals and moptops, rounds and rap, courtly dances and Cole Porter, not to mention protest songs and pop songs, will be hitting the road. Until now, Richard Thompson has only presented his extraordinary 1,000 Years of Popular Music at one-off shows in this country, but on January 14 he begins a 19-date tour at the Anvil, Basingstoke.

As the title perhaps hints, the concept for this unique show dates to the last days of the last millennium, when Thompson, the folk-rock singer-songwriter and guitar legend, was asked — along with many other luminaries — to name “the best 10 songs of the millennium” by Playboy magazine.

Knowing most respondents would take “of the millennium” to mean “try to think of something before Elvis if you can”, Thompson determined to give them what they had asked for and set about uncovering great songs that really did stretch back 1,000 years. “I thought, I’ll start in AD1000 with a jumpy little number by St Godric,” Thompson remembers, citing the hermit whose compositions are the oldest English-language songs for which the original musical settings survive.

Unimpressed by Thompson’s scholarship, or perhaps merely unable to get an up-to-date photo of Godric to illustrate the article, Playboy declined to print his list. The seed of an idea had been sown, however, and when the Getty Museum in Los Angeles asked Thompson to perform a show, he unearthed his list.

Since then, he has played occasional 1,000 Years gigs in the gaps between his regular touring, usually accompanied by the percussionist Debra Dobkin (whose CV includes work with Bonnie Raitt and Jackson Browne) and the singer/keyboardist Judith Owen, who just happens to be married to the Spinal Tap actor and Simpsons voice artist Harry Shearer. A typical show might begin with Sumer Is Icumen In, a 13th-century round, and take in King Henry, a 15th-century ballad detailing the diplomatic events that led to the battle of Agincourt, something by Purcell, the sea shanty Shenandoah and a 19th-century tale of the fate of strikebreakers, Blackleg Miner, before arriving in the 20th century.

Once there, the show typically encompasses music hall, Porter, Hoagy Carmichael, the Kinks and Squeeze, then brings everything up to date with a contemporary hit. In earlier incarnations, this was Britney Spears’s Oops! . . . I Did It Again.

On the live album of the show, there’s an audience-sing-along section of Oops in which the audience conspicuously fails to sing along — it says something about the nature of Thompson’s audience that, in a performance packed with obscurities, it’s the Britney song they don’t know the words to. Yet Thompson describes the gigs as “very much a learning experience” for him, too. “Some of the folk stuff we do I know well enough to go and dig around and find the best version, and I know who to tap for ideas on early music, but there’s a lot of research involved,” he says.

Thompson was — deservedly — named one of the top 20 guitarists of all time by Rolling Stone, but he admits that “this show pushes me quite hard on the guitar”. He is, after all, adapting orchestral works to be played by guitar, keyboard and percussion. “There is always the temptation to add more parts,” he muses, “but the naivety of it is important, the ambitious amateurishness of three people attempting all this. We could bring in ‘real’ musicians — experts in each field — but that would turn it into some kind of extravaganza. I prefer it small and imperfectly formed.”

Although there could hardly be a more diverse show, Thompson turns everything into a cohesive whole. “As I put it together, I notice the constants that run through popular music,” he says. “The old three-chord trick has been there all the time . . . though, admittedly, exactly which three chords you use does vary.

“A melody over a drone is something that has been there from early dance music through to rap,” he adds. “Lyrically, there are certain times when protest music emerges, but love songs are always in favour. Music as diverse as nursery rhymes and music-hall songs may start out as political satire or social comment, but their meaning becomes obscure.”

While the show’s title refers to Popular Songs, Thompson unashamedly admits: “That’s a bit of a lie, really. It’s songs we like playing. We don’t always choose from the top tier of popularity. Hopefully, one of the virtues of the shows is digging out songs that may have been neglected.” He talks of his satisfaction in introducing American audiences to the Korgis’ 1980 hit Everybody’s Got to Learn Sometime: “We have a pretty nifty version. Jaws dropped in amazement.” And when he wants to play a Kinks song, he summons up See My Friends: a hit back in 1965, but not one of the band’s absolute classics.

Thompson is cagey about the exact set list for the new tour, but promises “seven or eight songs we haven’t done before”. He won’t be playing Britney this time: “She’s had a hard time recently and I didn’t want it to be seen as a comment on that.” He suggests that the new material should include something by Gilbert and Sullivan, a madrigal and something more contemporary, to be drawn from a shortlist that includes songs by 2Pac, Nelly Furtado and Beyoncé.

If you can’t wait until January to see him, Thompson also lets slip that he is indeed one of the “very special guests” who will be appearing at the Thompson Family Christmas Show, alongside his son Teddy and ex-wife Linda — as well as Bert Jansch, Kathryn Williams, Badly Drawn Boy and many others — on Wednesday at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, SE1.

Mark Edwards