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"1952 Vincent Black Lightning" is a song by guitarist Richard Thompson from his 1991 album Rumor and Sigh. It tells the story of a thief named James and the girl Red Molly whom he charms with a ride on his 1952 Vincent Black Lightning motorcycle, which he bequeaths to her on his deathbed. In 2011 Time magazine listed the song in its "All TIME 100 Songs", a list of "the most extraordinary English-language popular recordings since the beginning of TIME magazine in 1923," praising it as "a glorious example of what one guy can accomplish with just a guitar, a voice, an imagination and a set of astonishingly nimble fingers." Despite not being issued as a single, the ballad became a fan favourite and is one of Thompson's most highly acclaimed solo compositions. A live version of the song appears on Thompson's album Two Letter Words: Live 1994. The band Red Molly, who has covered the song, takes its name from the lead female character in the song.Wikipedia
So I looked it up on Wiki, and then listened to it on Amazon prime music. [AP includes the lyrics if you want to read them as the tune plays, and they got it wrong when the song mentions Triumphs and Nortons and Beesers (BSAs) they transcribed it as Greeves's. ffs.] It's a ballad, accompanied by acoustic guitar, about a young man who owns a motorcycle as mentioned in the title, and meets a young woman, Red Molly, who is impressed by him and his bike.
The guy is thug who has by his own admission 'robbed many a man' to buy his motorcycle and was shot in the chest by a rival with a shotgun, or the cops, IDR, and as he lies dying in the hospital hands the keys to the bike to the girl.
After listening to it once—I hate it. The guitar playing is fast and frenetic, the melody rambles and the lyrics don't rhyme and have little meter. So a song about a thug who robbed people to finance his purchase of a motorcylcle that wets the panties of his flame and then dies violently as a consequence of his own violence.
I am left to wonder what it is about that song that reminds my best friend and next door neighbor of twenty-some years, of me.
Oh, and the main character of the song is named James. Which is what my friend calls me. My friend is a character and a bit ADHD and has always called me James after we first met when I introduced myself as Jim.
No one but cops and clerks, reading my name from a document of some sort, ever call me James. The family I grew up with christened me James Edward and always called me Jimmy. And I have always called myself Jim. And when I corrected my new neighbor when we first met, he listened and then, without ever discussing why, has called me James. And so, since he is a very gregarious person, who has lived his whole life in this small suburb of Sacramento, and seems to know everyone, and remembers everyone's name and particulars, everyone who has met me through him also calls me James, including the neighbor across the street who has lived across the street for the twenty-plus years I lived here, and known my friend since they went to grammar school in the sixties.
I have long since quit trying to correct any of those people and insist they call me Jim.
Paul, my neighbor, has for years commented on something I've done or said, with 'only James,' meaning 'only James would come up with this idea or this piece of work or knows these arcane things.' It's his way of complimenting me, I guess.
We have become close over the years, since we both for different reasons left the work force in our early fifties and have remained mostly home-bodies for most of the last two decades. He grows awesome weed, and has since he was a teenager, and always has a crop and has always been generous, getting high with me, and keeping me in pot, whether I was buying an ounce a month or just begging the odd joint. I'm sixty-eight, and he's a year younger than me. And I may never get him to explain why he is reminded of me when he hears this tune. Maybe it's just simply my name. I haven't owned a motorcycle since the nineteen-eighties, and the two I did own were Yamahas, not Vincents, though I wouldn't mind one, if I were ever to get another motorcycle it'd probably be a Triumph Bonneville.
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