Live Review: Richard Thompson, Bristol Beacon 26/05/2024

As explained in the post Is this thing still plugged in? Tap tap, 1-2, 1-2, this was my first rock gig for 4 1/2 years – there has been nothing of any great interest for me in Bristol since covid, but things are now improving.

Richard Thompson is of course an underrated legend – founder member of Fairport Convention, and one of the *the* best guitarists out there. And an excellent songwriter and singer. While he’s recently turned 75, this concert proved that his voice hasn’t faded at all – he still sounds really strong.

He’s touring with a small band – his wife Zara Phillips (not that one, although there was a now-deleted AI-generated article from last year that got things spectacularly wrong) on harmony vocals , Zak Philips on guitar, Taras Prodaniuk on bass, and the incomparable Dave Mattacks on drums.
Philips played a couple of really excellent solos, and Prodaniuk had a couple of mini bass solos as well. DM was as good as ever – subtle when needed, but also able to bash it out.

As for RT, there’s not much that needs to be said – he’s a strong singer, his electric guitar work is absolutely superb, and he played several great solos. But he’s also able to switch into acoustic mode so easily – there can’t be many artists who are quite so good in both rock and folk-ish modes.

This was the second UK show in support of his new album Ship to Shore (there’s something very Wes Anderson about the cover image, I rather like it), and he naturally played a few songs from it – all good, they didn’t sound out of place.
And of course a few older and better known songs – Withered & Died, Turning of the Tide, Al Bowlly, Beeswing, Tear Stained Letter.

I’ll be honest and admit I don’t actually know a lot of his material – but I really rate him as a live performer, so it pretty much doesn’t matter what he plays.


This was my first visit to the revamped Bristol Beacon (Colston Hall as was) – I say re-vamped, but it’s pretty much entirely new apart from the shell of the building, and they had to do a fair bit to that. It looks good, sounded good from where I was (quite close to the stage), and the seats are comfortable.
I’ll be sat in the balcony for Richard Hawley in a couple of weeks, so we’ll see what it’s like there.


A side note: I’ve worked entirely from home for the last 18 months, since I last changed jobs – the company only has offices in Glasgow and London, but I found another employee who also lives in Bristol and it turns out that her husband works at the last place I worked – I recognised his name, but hadn’t actually met him.
As it happened they were going to the RT show as well, so I got to meet them which was really nice.
The totally random thing is that although we bought tickets completely independently, we were actually sat next to each other!


Richard & Linda Thompson at Cropredy in 1980 (photo by my dad, John Hendy)

This was the 4th time I’ve seen RT. Well, there have been other times as he’s appeared at most of the big Fairport festivals I’ve been to – I won’t call it the Cropredy Festival as it wasn’t called that when I went.
My dad was a Fairport fan, and the family went to see them in Northampton on the Farewell Farewell tour in 1979, and we then went to the final concert in Cropredy later that year (my dad’s pictures of the day are on my website of his photos, RT didn’t appear).
We also went to the reunions in 1980, 1981 (at Boughton Castle) and 1984, all of which RT played at – see the photo above from 1980 (I haven’t posted those to my dad’s website as the quality is pretty poor), he’s on the live album from 1981, and I recall the solo during Sloth in 1984 being incredible (albeit from a distance of 40 years).

The first time I saw RT solo was at Spinney Hill Hall in Northampton in 1988 – a theatre at the local girls’ school. My dad had obviously heard about it and I went with my parents. This was in support of the Amnesia album, with Clive Gregson and Christine Collister in the band.
TBH I don’t think my parents were quite prepared for how loud it was, rock concerts weren’t their natural habitat and it was definitely more of a rock show than folk – most of it was fine but they definitely cranked up the volume as the show went on, and Can’t Win towards the end was seriously loud.
The other thing I remember from that show was how clear the sound was – you could make out every instrument in the mix, acoustic guitar, accordion. Strange what you remember.


Compare these prices with the price of the latest concert!

Sine then, I’ve seen him twice, both times at Colston Hall in Bristol in 1999 and 2003.
I can’t really remember that much about the shows. The 1999 show was a full-band show, but with Danny Thompson playing upright bass.
It must have been the 2003 show when I was close enough to the stage to see how he was playing lead lines with his lower fingers and rhythm with his pick at the top – quite remarkable (at least for a non-musician like me) to see someone playing two guitar parts at the same time.

I do know that in 2003 he played Can’t Win, which is a favourite of mine – this is a live version of it from from 1988, which features an incredible guitar solo – the one I heard that was so loud would have been similar. Give it a listen (there’s no video), it’s quite something.

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