Take me through the mountains / Lead me from confusion / Take me by the hand / Through real and through illusion / First light, first light / First light, first light
14 August 2024 | James Porteous | Clipper Media Blues
https://youtu.be/3B68vtjs0rY?si=NUwKx0Say8P-EZP-
First Light is the fourth album by folk rock duo Richard and Linda Thompson. It was released in 1978 on Chrysalis Records.
Writing and recording
After the release of their third album, Pour Down Like Silver, the Thompsons took an extended break from music. They spent much of the next three years living in sufi communes in London and Norfolk.[1][2]
This prolonged sabbatical was punctuated by occasional session work by Richard Thompson and a short tour in 1977 in which the duo performed mostly new, overtly religious material and were backed by musicians who were also practitioners of the Sufi faith.[1]
In 1978 Richard Thompson accepted an invitation from Joe Boyd to play on Julie Covington’s eponymous solo debut album. The musicians hired for this album included highly regarded American session players Neil Larsen, Willie Weeks and Andy Newmark, who had also been working in the studio with George Harrison. According to Boyd the three Americans were hugely impressed by Thompson’s playing and expressed a wish to work with him. Boyd also knew that Thompson had some new material and talked Thompson’s manager Jo Lustig into taking advantage of the situation: “The material is there and these guys love Richard, they’re gonna kill to play with him. It would be great.”[1]
The resulting First Light was the fourth album by Richard and Linda Thompson and marked their resumption of their recording career. It is dominated by spiritual songs, some of them direct translations of sufi and koranic texts.[2]
In later years Thompson expressed dissatisfaction with his recorded output in the late 1970s: “The regrets I would have would be career stuff, I was too flaccid in the 1970s, I just wasn’t thinking tightly enough to make a difference. Especially the later 70s, where I made really indifferent records, I just didn’t have my mind on the job.”[1]
Lyrics: First Light (Richard and Linda Thompson) 1978
https://genius.com/Richard-and-linda-thompson-first-light-lyrics
Give me what I ask for
Give me what I long for
First light, first light
I came to you for refuge
Don’t leave me to the thieves
Don’t leave me to my own
Cure my disease
First light, first light
First light, first light
Take me through the mountains
Lead me from confusion
Take me by the hand
Through real and through illusion
First light, first light
First light, first light
Give me what I ask for
Give me what I long for
Give me what I ask for
Give me what I long for
First light, first light
First light, first light
First light, oh give me what I ask for
First light, give me what I long for
First light, oh give me what I ask for
First light, oh give me what I long for
