For this week’s Song Lyric Sunday Jim is inviting us to play a song from Rolling Stone magazine’s list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, from any of the four versions they have done, in 2003, 2012, 2020, or 2023. His post A Recurring Opinion Survey tells you all you need to know. I thought at first we had done this before, but I was wrong: the previous time was their list of best songs, not albums. After the obligatory research (yes, I admit, I didn’t know all four lists off by heart) I found an album that I bought when it first came out and have loved ever since, so this was a no-brainer of a choice for me. Richard and Linda Thompson’s I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight made all four lists, at #471 in 2003 and 2012, and at #485 in 2020 and 2023. Those might seem low to you, but when you consider how many albums have been released over the years I think it meritorious that a genuine folk rock record is on the list at all, and to be on all four of them is quite something.

I’m guessing that not many will know this album, apart from one or two tracks at best. I’m being self-indulgent and playing you four of them today, to give you a good feel for it. I’m relying on audio-only versions as YouTube isn’t all that forthcoming with good quality live performances – it’s English folk rock, so what chance do I have? Let’s start with the title track:

And as this is Song Lyric Sunday, here are those lyrics:

As regular readers will know, I have long been a fan of Richard Thompson, going right back to his days as a founder member of Fairport Convention and the birth of the English folk rock genre (along with Steeleye Span, of course). I first saw the Fairports in my early days at uni, by which time Richard had left the band to first go solo, for one album (Henry The Human Fly, a forgotten and undervalued classic) and then to form a duo with his then fiancee, and later wife. They played in January 1974 at my uni, the University Of East Anglia, when they were still billed as Richard Thompson and Linda Peters, and they were fantastic. I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight was recorded in May 1973, so they were playing us songs from their forthcoming album: it wasn’t released until April 1974, having had to take its place in the queue at a time of vinyl shortages (miners’ strike times, anyone?). Obviously I can’t remember the set list after more than fifty years, but it’s a fair bet that all ten of its tracks would have been included, along with some of Richard’s earlier stuff.

Although it was initially ignored by reviewers, I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight later came to be highly regarded, and is now viewed as a classic of English folk rock and one of the Thompsons’ finest achievements. Richard was well known in the English folk scene at the time, and assembled a veritable Who’s Who of musicians to play on the album. On that track you will also have heard the CWS (Manchester) Silver Band: brass bands have long been a welcome addition to folk records here, and are also great to hear in concert.

Here’s another of my favourites from the album:

As the video shows, that was We Sing Hallelujah, which featured Brian Gulland and Richard Harvey playing krummhorn (a double reed instrument dating back to Renaissance times, which has made a comeback in folk music here since the Sixties), as well as the wonderful bass vocals of Royston Wood, previously of the English folk band The Young Tradition. They all combine well, I think, in a rousing little anthem.

I’m playing these in any old order so for my third song here, of course, is the one that opens the album:

The same two guys popped up again with their krummhorns on this one, as did John Kirkpatrick, well known as a fine accordion and concertina player back then, who I also saw at uni with his own band. His son is Benji Kirkpatrick, who has been a mainstay of my favourite live band, Bellowhead, and has played in several others too, including his own band and a spell with the latter day Steeleye Span: the English folk scene lives on through its children. And thanks to the wonders of recording techniques, Richard played guitar, mandolin, and tin whistle on that, though I can’t recall him doing that in a live show!

I could play the entire album – it’s that good! – but I said I’d restrict myself to four, so I’m closing with the other track which featured John Kirkpatrick. This one always brought the house down at live shows:

I still have fond memories of Linda acting the coquette while singing that. Sadly, they didn’t return to UEA during our time there: they went back in November 1975, by which time we had left and were having to work for a living, but they played a London date a few days before that so we saw them there instead: on a Sunday evening, if memory serves me right. They are still some of my favourite concerts that I have ever been to: great songs, fun stories in between them, and great musicianship – what more could you want?

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed revisiting a favourite album, and am grateful to Jim for the theme that gave me the chance to do so. I hope you’ve enjoyed the music as much as I have.