“I DON’T know why I keep on making records,” says Linda Thompson cheerily. “I just get bored of walking around Marks & Spencer so I think, ‘Well, I’d better do something.’” Thank goodness. Born Linda Pettifer and raised in Glasgow, as Linda Peters she first made her mark in the late-’60s London folk scene, part of a crowd that included John Martyn, Nick Drake and Sandy Denny. After marrying ex-Fairport Convention guitarist Richard Thompson, the pair made a run of superlative folk-rock records in the ’70s and early ’80s, her understated empathy and spellbinding voice, true as silver, dovetailing with his sharp, yearning songs. “I do like the ones that are very sad,” she says – and there were plenty of those. When they split in 1982, Thompson was largely silent for two decades. Her singing career has been blighted by dysphonia, a neurological condition causing spasms which constrict the vocal cords. “I can’t sing any more,” she says. “I don’t do it now. It can be hard enough for me to even speak.” Yet she still makes music, assisted nowadays by numerous members of one of the great musical dynasties. Later in 2023 she will release a new album consisting of other artists recording songs she has written. “The usual suspects!” she laughs. “The Proclaimers are on it and John Grant and I wrote a song together and he recorded it. It’s done, so hopefully that will be out this year.”
THE BUNCH
ROCK ON
ISLAND, 1972
