Richard Thompson

Richard Thompson was nineteen when he helped invent British folk rock, co-founding Fairport Convention in 1967 and leaving the band before he turned twenty-one. What followed was a decade of albums with his then-wife Linda, among them Shoot Out the Lights, and then fifty years of solo work built on the same unlikely pairing: a guitarist who plays electric leads with the phrasing of a Scottish piper, and a songwriter drawn to thieves, drunks, false prophets, and the people who believe them. Rolling Stone placed him among the greatest guitarists of all time, TIME named "1952 Vincent Black Lightning" one of the hundred greatest songs since 1923, and Queen Elizabeth II handed him an OBE at Buckingham Palace in 2011. He has collected lifetime achievement awards for songwriting from the BBC, the Americana Music Association, and the Ivor Novellos, and his songs have been recorded by Robert Plant, Elvis Costello, and R.E.M. His 2026 album Hippies, Thugs and Heroes was cut live with his touring band in two to four takes a song, a record he describes as less them and more him.