LOCAL>> Richard Thompson – Beeswing: Losing My Way and Finding My Voice

Join Richard Thompson live and get your own copy of Beeswing — an intimate look at his early years and the events that helped shape one of world’s most significant and influential guitarists and songwriters.

Known for his brilliant songwriting, his extraordinary guitar playing, and his haunting voice, Richard Thompson is considered one of the top twenty guitarists of all time. In the songwriting pantheon alongside Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, and Randy Newman, he takes us back in Beeswing to the late 1960s, a period of great change and creativity—both for him and for the world at large.

Richard packed more than a lifetime of experiences into his late teens and twenties. During the pivotal years of 1967 to 1975, just as he was discovering his passion for music, he formed the band Fairport Convention with some schoolmates and helped establish the genre of British folk rock.

That led to a heady period of songwriting and massive tours, where Thompson was on the road both in the UK and the US, and where he crossed paths with the likes of Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and Jimi Hendrix.

But those eight years were also marked by change, upheaval, and tragedy. Then, at the height of the band’s popularity, Richard left to form a duo act with his wife Linda. And as he writes revealingly here, his discovery and ultimate embrace of Sufism dramatically reshaped his approach to music—and of course everything else.

An honest, moving, and compelling memoir, Beeswing vividly captures the life of a remarkable artist during a period of creative intensity in a world on the cusp of change.

Candid and insightful—not unlike the exquisite lyrics to the titular song—Richard’s moving memoir is a beautiful paean to an era and to a life dedicated to the raw power of music.

Richard Thompson is an international icon in the music industry, the consummate musician’s musician, whom Rolling Stone has called one of the twenty greatest guitarists of all time. As an influential songwriter, his beloved compositions have been recorded by such artists as Bonnie Raitt, Emmylou Harris, and the Neville Brothers, and Time includes one of his own recordings on their All-Time 100 Songs list. Richard Thompson’s widely beloved early work within the band Fairport Convention revived British folk traditions, and his duet albums and performances with Linda Thompson are legendary. He continues to write and perform, and to tour widely. He lives in New Jersey.