Richard and Linda Thompson's Shoot Out the Lights

In the fall of 1980 Richard and Linda Thompson (of Fairport Convention fame) had recently been dumped from their record label and were on the verge of divorce. Somehow they overcame these miserable circumstances and managed to make an album considered by many to be a masterpiece. Shoot Out The Lights puts the album-from the personal history driving the songs, to the recording difficulties they encountered and the subsequent fall-out-in context. This is a brilliant, emotional book about a brilliant, emotional album.

Hayden Childs is a researcher and policy expert for the Texas Legislature. He's also an aspiring novelist, an occasional essayist, and a hardcore Richard Thompson fanatic. He contributed to the book Lost in the Grooves and is co-editor of the online music magazine The High Hat.