Top musicians tend to lead exciting lives, meeting fascinating, inspiring people along the way. All those experiences are fodder for the best songwriters, who often use these characters to populate their songs.
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Richard Thompson drew on several different people he had encountered for his 1994 song “Beeswing.” But the song is ultimately a work of his prodigious imagination, as Thompson envisioned the pros and cons of living lives in the manner of these folks.
Story-Song Master
On his 1991 album Rumor and Sigh, Richard Thompson included the song “1952 Vincent Black Lightning.” The tale of a doomed motorcycle outlaw and his beloved, it proved irresistible to fans of story songs, which are notoriously hard to pull off but can thrill listeners when they’re done just right.
It made sense Thompson would want to return to this specific style of song on his next studio album, Mirror Blue, released in 1994. The song drew on Thompson’s memories of a fellow who used to periodically visit him and his wife Linda in the ‘70s. This guy lived a peripatetic existence and lacked a permanent place to call home.
Thompson also remembered coming across certain performers, such as the British folk singer Annie Briggs, who dropped out of urban society and joined gypsy caravans to live off the land. These two archetypes cohered to form the protagonist of “Beeswing.”
Instead of telling the biographical stories of these people he’d encountered in the song, Thompson used some of the details and constructed something entirely original. To do so, he imagined how living those types of lives could eventually hinder the search for happiness and fulfillment.
Examining the Lyrics of “Beeswing”
Thompson opens the story in the Summer of Love, which most people associate with 1967 or thereabouts. It’s a love story, as the narrator is a young man instantly besotted with a free spirit who works with him in a factory. His words give us an immediate image of her allure and delicacy: She was a rare thing / Fine as a bee’s wing / So fine a breath of wind might blow her away.
Their romance comes with conditions, as she makes clear: She said, “As long as there’s no price on love, I’ll stay / And you wouldn’t want me any other way.” So lost with desire is he that he accepts, even as he notes her unpredictable nature: Like a fox caught in the headlights / There was animal in her eyes.
She insists he take her on the road to escape the drudgery of a working life, and he agrees. But he can’t help but wonder about a domestic life with her: Fire burning in the hearth / And babies on the rug. Unfortunately, she sees this life as a kind of captivity: You might be lord of half the world / You’ll not own me as well.
That schism eventually manifests itself in a physical separation, as she bolts after an intense argument. He recounts how he heard that she fell on hard times in the aftermath of this, and he reflects on her preferred way of life: But maybe that’s just the price you pay / For the chains you refuse.
This realization doesn’t stop him from regretting his attempt to tame her: If I could just taste / All of her wildness now / If I could hold her in my arms today. “Beeswing” has become one of Richard Thompson’s signature tracks, an example of memory intermingling with creativity to create something truly profound and special.
Photo by Frans Schellekens/Redferns
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