"Hard on Me"

This is a little description I wrote for the RT list's page that discusses our top RT songs.

There are songs that come in like a gentle breeze and then pick up gale force, and then there is "Hard On Me," an eyeless hurricane. Like "Shoot Out the Lights," it enters with a pounding riff that lets you know you're in for heavy weather. You can bang your head to this one, for sure, but you're better off letting Richard do the banging. It's an angry lyric, this dark scrawl of a son's frustration with his father, full of images of impotence, futility, oppression. But it's a Richard Thompson song, so there's going to be that moment of almost throwaway compassion: "Hard on me/Like they were hard on you." A fistful of monosyllables hoists the weight of the shackles passed down from father to son.

But I'm giving you too many metaphors here. Stand in front of the speakers and pretend you're at the foot of a concert stage, where so many of the Thompson faithful have stood before. Close your eyes and let the beautiful rage wash over you. And if you really want to pretend to be the most anoraklike of Thompson fans, do as we did on show after show on the Mock Tudor tour: check those watches and time that solo.