Word: lindas
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...Linda, the daughter of a vaudevillian who billed herself "Vera Love, Specialty Dancer" ("I'd be scared to ask her what 'specialty dancer' meant; it may have been something risque," Linda says), had grown up outside Glasgow and had never had a singing lesson or any overriding interest in the musical life. "I'm one of those idiots who will do what the man I'm involved with does," she says. "If Richard had been a bricklayer, I would have been a fantastic bricklayer." No question, she is a fantastic singer. Not trained, not technical...
...Lights does not get heavy air play or make a dent in the charts-pitiless clarity not being a commodity eagerly sought in the Top 40-but it receives reverential notices. It also gets the Thompsons to America, Richard's first real visit in ten years, Linda's first ever. Their appearances become events. They are rites of passage for novitiates, acts of communion for initiates. The Thompsons in performance put on shows of acetylene brilliance, but these events for them are something else entirely. They are an ending...
...partnerships hi rock. There is between the partners now the usual portion of blame and bitterness and confusion. All the clarity comes in Richard's music. He sings: "It's so hard to find/ Who's going to cure/ The Heart of a Man in Need." Linda sings: "It's only the pain/ That's keeping you sane/ And gives you the mind to travel on." And together: "Let me ride on/ The Wall of Death/ ... This is the nearest/ To being alive...
Pirandellian reflecting pool. Are the songs refractions of a fractured relationship, or are the Thompsons re-enacting and reliving the songs? Is it life that is caught in the chorus, or the people? "Richard has a very spiritual side of him," Linda explains. "I think in a lot of ways he is scared of the nonspiritual side of him, so he tends to gravitate toward something that's spiritual to help him from going completely over the top. He just does everything with a vengeance, with a vengeance." The memory of a line from the Thompsons...
...Scotland Yard detective who played guitar in police bands ("He wasn't good. I'm sure he won't mind my saying that"), spent his boyhood listening to early rock coming from his sister's bedroom and from the cafe down the street. He met Linda more than a decade ago, through a mutual friend in Fairport Convention, the late Sandy Denny...