Richard Thompson - musician

Interview, Dec, 1994 by J. Mascis

JM: Yeah, it's like having a studio in your house. Friends of mine in England made a studio in their house three years ago. They haven't put out a record since. I would never want a studio in my house.

RT: I've never had one. I've always thought I wanted to, but I mistrust home demos.

JM: I always feel like either a guitar or a place has some songs in it, so if you sit in the same place with the same guitar for too long, you've kind of exhausted all the songs that are floating around there.

RT: Well, a guitar is a room, isn't it? A portable room.

JM: How much do you go back and forth between London and L.A.?

RT: Varies. I'd like to not bounce around so much between the two.

JM: I just rented this house on a lake in Amherst [Massachusetts], but I'm never there. I have an apartment here in New York. I saw this huge rat in London, the biggest rat I've ever seen. It looked like a dog. And I keep thinking the rat's going to be in my apartment, like somehow he got into my luggage.

RT: Was he wearing a suit?

JM: No.

RT: Did he have his hair greased back in a ponytail?

JM: No.

RT: Then he wasn't in the music business.

JM: I've seen all the wildlife on the golf course. Beavers, a fox, a deer family. A huge snake the other day, about five feet long.

RT: Wow. Perhaps they're envious of your lifestyle.

JM: I doubt it.

RT: Perhaps they're on the periphery of civilization. They've seen golfing and they think they can grasp the rudiments.

JM: I never sense that. I sense that they're just like, "You guys are funny." They look at me like, "Whatever, man." I've never done an interview before. I don't know if I'm doing it right. It's kind of a weird thing.

RT: I've forgotten who is interviewing who.