Richard Thompson will release a new memoir, his first ever, titled “Beeswing: Losing My Way and Finding My Voice 1967-1975” next April.
Described by it’s publishers as “an intimate look at a period of great cultural tumult, chronicling the early years of one of the world’s most significant and influential guitarists and songwriters.”, the book will be published in the UK by Faber Books and in the US by Algonquin.
“Thompson packed more than a lifetime of experiences into his late teens and twenties. From the pivotal years of 1967 to 1975, he matured into a major musician, establishing the genre of British folk rock with the era-defining band Fairport Convention, only to depart for a duo act with his wife, Linda, at the height of the band’s popularity. His discovery and ultimate embrace of Sufism profoundly reshaped his approach to everything in his life and, of course, the music he wrote thereafter. In this intimate memoir, Thompson recreates the spirit of the 60s as he found, and then lost, and then found his way again, and takes us inside life on the road in the UK and the US, crossing paths—and occasionally sharing the stage—with the likes of Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, and more.
Like Patti Smith’s Just Kids or Marianne Faithfull’s Faithfull, Beeswing vividly captures the life of a remarkable artist during a period of creative intensity in a world on the cusp of change.”