Songfacts®:

• Life seems so rosy in the cradle
  But I'll be a friend, I'll tell you what's in store
  There's nothing at the end of the rainbow
  There's nothing to grow up for anymore
  
  Richard Thompson wrote this cot-side lullaby after the birth of his and Linda's first child, Muna. The minor-chord lament is a reflection on the innocence and optimism of childhood and the harsh realities of the adult world.
  
  "'End Of The Rainbow' was written after the birth of our first child and I remember thinking that was a wonderful, wonderful song," Linda Thompson recalled to Uncut magazine. "People always say to me, 'Gosh weren't you offended?' What, offended by a great song? I don't think so! If it's a great song it's a great song."
• Richard & Linda Thompson recorded "The End Of The Rainbow" for I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight. It was the second album released by Richard Thompson after he quit Fairport Convention, and his first album to include his then-wife, Linda Thompson.
• Thompson's first solo album, Henry the Human Fly, had backing vocals by Glaswegian Linda Peters. Regarding I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight, Linda Thompson told Uncut, "In terms of how we would divvy up the vocals on that record, Richard would just say, 'Do you want to sing this?' I'd say, 'No, you sing it.' It was quite democratic. Richard wasn't confident about singing in those days, so he just left it to me to pick what I wanted to sing."
• Richard Thompson originally titled the album Hokey Pokek, but the record label thought that was too lighthearted for the dark and atmospheric music.
• Richard & Linda Thompson recorded I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight on a shoestring budget of £2,500 over a few weeks during spring 1973 at Sound Techniques studio in Chelsea, London. Richard Thompson co-produced the album with house engineer John Wood.
• Largely ignored when it was first released, I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight is now considered a classic in the folk-rock genre. Rolling Stone placed it at #485 in its 2020 list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time and it also featured in Mojo's 100 Greatest Albums Ever Made.
• Notable covers include:
  
  1986 Elvis Costello for The Anti-Heroin Project: It's A Live-In World
  1993 Tom Robinson for The World Is a Wonderful Place - The Songs of Richard Thompson
  2015 The Wainwright Sisters for their album Songs In The Dark