You won't have met me, and you'll soon forget me

I seem to have been attending concerts by wrinkly rockers regularly recently. [“Tell me,” the Rhetorical Pedant asks “if you did that deliberately; because it’s not big and it’s not clever.”] Last night at the Royal Hall, Harrogate it was the turn of Lindisfarne, or at least of Ray Jackson masquerading as the whole of Lindisfarne. He did have with him five other musicians who had previously been members of the band at various stages over the last forty years, but only he was there during their first four albums and Top of the Pops phase. The seventh person on the stage was the Great Paul Thompson, previously the drummer of Roxy Music.

They played the hits that you’d expect with the late Alan Hull’s part very ably filled by Dave Hull-Denholm (relation). At the risk of annoying Elkie Brooks’ most passionate fan (hello there Maria), Lindisfarne once again complied with my newly formulated rule that acts of a certain age intensely dislike their most famous hit and end up throwing it away as a singalong. Possibly as the exception that proves the rule this happened not just – as one would imagine – to “Fog on the Tyne”, but also to “We Can Swing Together”. In fact the latter also included truly naff harmonica renditions of a variety of Christmas songs plus “Ilkley Moor Bat’at” as a patronising nod to the crowd and “Blaydon Races” as a patronising nod to Jackson himself. Thankfully “Lady Eleanor”, “Meet Me on the Corner”, “Run for Home” (*) and “Clear White Light” were treated with more of the respect that they deserved. The highlight for me was actually Hull-Denholm’s rendition of “Winter Song”.

And every step I take, takes me further from heaven

In their heyday the band played and recorded an eclectic mix of music and so it was at this concert; encores included tracks more commonly associated with Canned Heat and Woody Guthrie. The crowd however were largely drawn from the folk-rock fraternity, although possibly with a smattering of Harrogate pensioners who had just wandered in to get out of the cold. Anyway, like all folkies the audience fondly imagined that they could sing in tune and clap in time when in fact they could do neither. Thankfully, it being folk rock meant that there was a rhythm section to drown them out. As previously mentioned this included the fantastic Mr Thompson who I always admired in the seventies for the solid base that he provided for Andy Mackay’s wavering sax, Phil Manzanera’s soaring guitar and for whatever it was that Eno did.

* Surely the only instance in popular music of lyrics containing the word 'buffoon'