Artists:Linda Thompson

Linda Pettifer was born in London in 1948 to an ex-variety girl who called herself Vera Love, daughter of a vaudevillian. Linda was 6 when the family moved to a nice neighborhood in the notoriously rough city of Glasgow - her mother's hometown - where her father opened a TV repair shop. Linda appeared briefly in local folk clubs circa 1966, under the spell of "The Times They Are A-Changing," then left in '67 to pursue a degree at London University. Modern languages proved a tough discipline for a girl to maintain if she seriously wanted to be a folk singer. She quit school after 4 months and hit the coffee-houses full time, careful to conceal her day job as a jingle singer from the purists.

She soon found her element, falling in with Sandy Denny, Richard Thompson, Nick Drake, John Martyn, John Renbourn, and producer Joe Boyd. A sound was born and passions ran high; there were various pairings, musical and otherwise, accidents and deaths. The chronology is murky now, even to her.

With her marriage to Richard Thompson and the release of I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight, Linda's name became linked inextricably to her husband's. She was keenly aware of the reverence for his previous muse, Sandy Denny - a reverence she shared - and that gossip held that anyone could shine given the great Richard Thompson's songs to sing. But the truth was - and is - that she possesses a remarkable instrument. Certainly her husband knew the spell she could cast and wrote a trove of darkly dramatic songs for her: "Withered and Died," "Dimming of the Day," Walking on a Wire," "For Shame of Doing Wrong," "A Heart Needs a Home." She sang them all into the folk-rock lexicon with grace and authority.

Brilliant as the songs and performances were though, record sales were weak. In that particularly cruel cultural ratio, the couple found themselves as impoverished as they were critically acclaimed. Linda's performance anxieties - present almost from the first but previously manageable - began to deepen; her increasing ambivalence about their struggle only worsened her condition. In awe of Richard and fearful of being eclipsed by Sandy, she began to have trouble starting songs onstage, pacing and coughing, sizing up the mic like an adversary.

Then Richard's abrupt conversion to Sufism in the mid-70's delivered them to a squat in Maida Vale. Over several years of communal living, during some of which time Richard was doctrinally forbidden to play, they released Pour Down Like Silver, First Light and Sunnyvista, with their usual crew. Their conversion was genuine, the revelations lasting, but daily life was very hard on Linda; she secretly held on to their London apartment. Altogether they made six records, two of them acknowledged masterpieces (notably, on either side of their conversion); she bore three children and left him twice. In the end Richard fell in love with his present wife, Nancy Covey, and left Linda in May 1982, shortly after the birth of their third child and on the verge of their first and only American tour, in support of Shoot Out the Lights.

Ironically, Linda never sang better than she did on that roundhouse swing through the States. She found herself, fueled with rage, wrecking hotel rooms, kicking the unfaithful guitarist in the shins mid-solo, and singing like an angel. "It was as if," Joe Boyd remembers, "Richard had written her all these songs to sing when he left her." Time and Rolling Stone dubbed her the female singer of the year.

She married Steve Kenis in the same year Richard married Nancy; both couples remain together. In 1985 she released One Clear Moment, her first solo recording, with seven of her own compositions. The title track can be heard as a precursor to the grown-woman's rock that Bonnie Raitt was to distill years later; another ballad, "Telling Me Lies" written with Betsy Cook, was nominated for a Grammy in the Best Country Song category. Sales were disappointing however, and by 1989 a formal diagnosis of hysterical dysphonia had been made. The vocal condition was unresponsive to treatment, medical or psychological; musically, she seemed finished. She raised her children, traveled the world with her husband, became a partner in an antique jewelry stall in Bond Street, did studio and theater work, enjoyed some success as a songwriter. Now, with a new album and a new outlook, the possibilities are wide-open. There will be an American tour in October , with Teddy opening each show ("I told him not to be too good"). She's overwhelmed by the outpouring of affection she's experiencing, grateful to be surrounded with "young and good-looking" people, her coppery pipes open and clear..