The Thompsons met in 1969, while Richard was working on Liege & Lief, the fourth album by Fairport Convention, the pioneering British band heвЂ™d co-founded when he was 18. The existence of latter-day collaborations like LindaвЂ™s 2013 song вЂњ LoveвЂ™s for Babies and Fools,вЂќ one of a handful of recordings theyвЂ™ve made together since the 2000s, proves the lasting power of a partnership that seemed doomed from the start.

As lovers, they could be violently incompatible, but as musicians, they were soul mates. вЂњAnd then I think, вЂOnly Richard, really.вЂ™вЂќД¬an you blame her? Though both Thompsons have made fine albums since the collapse of their romantic and musical relationships in the early 1980s, there is something singular in the blend of her gracefully understated singing and his fiercely expressive playing, a heaven-bound quality that redeems even their heaviest subject matter, which neither can quite reach on their own. вЂњWhenever I write something like that I think, вЂOh, who could play the guitar on that?вЂ™вЂќ she recalled later. It was a lot like the songs Richard used to write for them in the old days: Despairing, but not hopeless, with a melody that seemed to float forward from some forgotten era, and a narrator who canвЂ™t see past the walls of his own fatalism. Four decades after Richard and Linda Thompson released 1974вЂ™s I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight, their beautiful and terrifying first album as a duo-after their music failed to attract significant commercial interest after the conversion to Sufism, the three kids, the arduous years spent living on a religious commune after he left her for another woman just as mainstream success seemed within their reach after she clocked him with a Coke bottle and sped off in a stolen car during their disastrous final tour-after everything, Linda was working on a new song about the foolishness of love.

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