Running Music: Lindisfarne 'Run For Home'

See the list so far here

Next up:

Lindisfarne ‘Run For Home’

When I started regularly going to gigs I decided to keep a list of every band I saw. This was especially useful for music festivals, as I might discover I’d seen one of the big draw main stage acts in one of the smaller tents a couple of years earlier.

A random selection from over a decade of live music includes:

U2 at Wembley Stadium – 1997 (supported by Richard Hawley’s old band the Long Pigs).
The Smashing Pumpkins last UK show before they split in 2000.
AC/DC at Milton Keynes Bowl – 2001
The first person I saw at a music festival was PJ Harvey at Reading in 2001.
Red Hot Chilly Peppers supported by James Brown at Hyde Park – 2004
Muse at the new Wembley and the Rolling Stones at the Isle of Wight Festival – 2007.

Plus, Frank Turner (at last count 13 times but that might not be right), Ash (7 times), Feeder (6 times), Biffy Clyro (5 times) and Iron Maiden (4 times – including headlining Reading and playing Twickenham Stadium).

All this leads to the perhaps surprising news that the first gig I ever went to was?

Seventies Geordie folk rockers
Lindisfarne (Edinburgh Fringe August 1996 in case you were interested in the date). I saw them again in Sheffield in 1998.

Formed as Brethren in 1969, the band developed their sound and line up at a Whitley Bay folk club. Gaining a major record deal in 1970, the name change to Lindisfarne and their debut album under that banner followed soon after.

Thanks to a
novalty version by Paul Gascoigne released in 1990, to some Lindisfarne’s best known song is
‘Fog on the Tyne’, the title track from what became the UK’s biggest selling album in 1971.

After splitting for a few years in the mid 70s, Lindisfarne reconvened in 1977. Among the songs to appear from the album which followed was ‘Run For Home’, a top ten hit in the UK and the band’s first chart success in the US.

The song is inspired by life on the road as a touring musician and the feeling created by a home coming. Its signature lyrics are the important bit for a marathon runner:

“Run for home, run as fast, as I can, running man, running for home”.

What running “as fast, as I can” will look and feel like in the last few miles of a marathon remains to be seen.

Lindisfarne were a cracking live band, they’ve long since split again, this time for good. I like every song on this growing list, some more than others, this one being among my favourites.