“I never thought his music would be my bag. But he never plays the same thing twice and your mind is blown”: The Pretenders’ James Walbourne on discovering Richard Thompson (who happens to be his father-in-law)

Richard Thompson’s quality songwriting and stellar musicianship opened a whole new world for The Pretenders and His Lordship guitarist James Walbourne, as he tells Prog.

“He’s my father-in-law, but that’s by the by. His was one of those names that always kept cropping up but I never thought his music would be my bag at all when I was growing up.

I got into it when I started hanging out with him. And when I saw him play for the first time, it blew my fucking mind! You know when you listen to Robert Johnson records and you can’t work out what he’s doing? I got that straight away with Richard, especially on acoustic guitar, because it’s so hard to master.

He can make it sound as if three people are playing the guitar at once. It’s very impressive – but it’s very musical at the same time. It’s an amazing thing to watch. And you can find the essence of Richard Thompson on both acoustic and electric guitar.

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I think he manages to blur genre lines because the songwriting is so good, and the guitar playing is born out of that. His playing seems to filter the influence of Gene Vincent & The Blue Caps through Scottish bagpipe music. It’s a cocktail of musical ingredients that he mixes so effortlessly.

He’s influenced me in many different ways. His tunings are incredible – I’d mucked about with open tunings when I was younger, but I never really dived into it. When I saw him play the first few times I realised he did it a lot, and so I started using them.

That opens up a whole different world of phrasing, chords and sounds and a different approach to playing. And the way he picks – I can’t do it! I’m not disciplined enough.

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The album I really love is Electric from 2013. That was when I started to get to know him, and I think it’s one of his best. The songs are great. It’s recorded brilliantly and played as three-piece band, which lends itself to the guitar solos really going out a limb. There’s plenty of improvisation there and that’s what makes it really exciting for me.

Artists like Richard Thompson are few and far between; and Chrissie Hynde is one of them. You can watch him and he never plays the same thing twice and your mind is blown. Job done!”