{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"165: Richard Thompson: "1952 Vincent Black Lightning"","description":"This week on StoryWeb: Richard Thompson\u2019s song \u201c1952 Vincent Black Lightning.\u201d For Jim, in honor of his birthday My husband, Jim, and I love this song by Richard Thompson and its signature line, \u201cred hair and black leather, my favorite color scheme.\u201d In fact, the first concert we saw together was Thompson playing at the Boulder Theater, and of course, I sported a black leather motorcycle jacket. When Thompson sang the song, one of his most popular, and got to this particular line, Jim called out, \u201cMe, too!\u201d Thank goodness, Jim is not a heckler \u2013 and he didn\u2019t disturb the concert \u2013 but I loved it! I\u2019m guessing many red-headed women have gone to Richard Thompson concerts in black leather jackets. Thompson\u2019s \u201c1952 Vincent Black Lightning\u201d is a perfect story song. It\u2019s short \u2013 just four stanzas \u2013 but it really tells a story and packs an emotional punch in that compact space. There are two, maybe three characters \u2013 the thief James Adie and Red Molly, of course, but James\u2019s 1952 Vincent Black Lightning is almost a character, too. This \u201cfine motorbike,\u201d as Red Molly calls it, is legendary in the U.K. The Vincent motorcycle company \u2013 based in Great Britain \u2013 made motorcycles for only four years and made fewer than thirty of this particular bike in 1952. In an interview, Thompson describes the 1952 Vincent Black Lightning as \u201can object of myth, a rather wonderful, rare and beautiful beast.\u201d Or as Red Molly says, \u201ca girl could feel special on any such like.\u201d What I (and so many others!) love about this song is that Thompson has written it to sound like an old English ballad. It is the perfect ballad. It has a limited cast of characters whom we care about almost instantly. There is an object of beauty \u2013 or more accurately, two objects of beauty: Red Molly and the 1952 Vincent Black Lightning. There\u2019s a romance, some crime, and an untimely death. But the fun twist is that the old-sounding ballad is about a man and his motorcycle \u2013 as if even the modern world can be the stuff of ballads. Or as Thompson said in one live performance, \u201cIt\u2019s a simple boy-meets-girl story, complicated somewhat by the presence of a motorcycle.\u201d Thompson explains the origin of the song: When I was a kid, that was always the exotic bike, that was always the one, the one that you went \u201cooh, wow.\u201d I'd always been looking for English ideas that didn't sound corny, that had some romance to them, and around which you could pin a song. And this song started with a motorcycle, it started with the Vincent. It was a good lodestone around which the song could revolve. It\u2019s not surprising that Richard Thompson would write an old-time ballad about a motorbike. After all, as a founding member of the Fairport Convention in the 1960s, he was at the forefront of the English folk rock movement. According to one source, Thompson\u2019s early group brought \u201ca distinctively English identity to rock music and helped awaken much wider interest in traditional music in general.\u201d AllMusic.com points out that in his songwriting, Thompson has \u201clong displayed a flair for adapting the tenets of the [English folk] style to his own contemporary works.\u201d This song, says AllMusic.com, \u201ctakes a story old as the hills (good woman falls for noble criminal) and brings it into the present day without robbing it of a bit of its emotional power \u2013 and it has a killer guitar part to boot.\u201d American Songwriter says of the ending, \u201cYes it\u2019s a clich\u00e9, but Thompson imbues their last goodbye with such genuine emotion that it transcends all the times this story has been told before.\u201d The song, which has developed almost a cult-like following, was recorded as part of Thompson\u2019s 1991 album, Rumor and Sigh. Time magazine included the song in its list of 100 songs since the magazine began publishing in 1923. Time says the song is \u201ca glorious example of what one guy can accomplish with just a guitar, a voice, an imagination and a set of astonishingly nimble fingers.\u201d The ballad, says Time, \u201ctakes you to the emotional edge of love and theft, then soars right over it.\u201d If you want to truly geek out on this amazing song, visit Sing Out! magazine for an incredibly thorough discussion of the way the song has evolved over years of performances, both by Thompson and by other musicians who have covered the song. If you\u2019re not familiar with Richard Thompson\u2019s \u201c1952 Vincent Black Lightning,\u201d take a listen \u2013 and see if you don\u2019t get a lump in your throat as James says goodbye to Red Molly and his fine motorbike. You can listen to the song online \u2013 but better yet, you might want to purchase Rumor and Sigh, the album on which he released \u201c1952 Vincent Black Lightning,\u201d as there are lots of other great songs on the album as well. And if you fall in love with Richard Thompson\u2019s music (and really, who wouldn\u2019t?), you might want to add RT: The Life and Music of Richard Thompson, a five-CD box set that features classic, rare, and previously unreleased Thompson recordings. And if you want to learn to play like the fleet-fingered Thompson, check out his book Richard Thompson Teaches Traditional Guitar Instrumentals: Unique Arrangements of Irish, Scottish and English Tunes. Visit thestoryweb.com\/Thompson for links to all these resources and to watch Richard Thompson perform \u201c1952 Vincent Black Lightning.\u201d ","author_name":"StoryWeb: Storytime for Grownups","author_url":"http:\/\/storyweb.libsyn.com\/webpage","html":"