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Folk-proggers Lindisfarne achieved two Top 10 hits in 1972, reaching No.5 with Meet Me On The Corner and later No.3 with Lady Eleanor. The associated album, Fog On The Tyne, was one of the year’s biggest-selling LPs, spending 56 weeks in the chart.
But a few years later it looked like those experiences were all in the past. With the lukewarm reception to follow-up LP Dingly Dell, and tensions arising on tour, the original line-up fell into factions.
Then, after a one-off 1976 reunion show led to more, Alan Hull, Ray Jackson, Simon Cowe, Rod Clements and Ray Laidlaw decided to make another go of it, resulting in the album Back And Fourth two years later – and spawning the classic track Run For Home, which took them back to No.10 in June 1978.
“It sold a lot of copies over a long period of time,” drummer Laidlaw told Prog in 2009. “So while we had other singles which charted higher, none sold better.”
Like so many other hit singles, this one came about as a happy accident at Rockfield Studios in Wales. “We were waiting for Gus Dudgeon to come down; he was gonna produce the album,” Laidlaw recalled. “Alan was sitting at the piano, and I was going through an old notebook in which he had a load of unused lyrics. I came across this song called Run For Home, and said to him, ‘What’s this?’ He replied, ‘Oh, that’s just shite.’”
Laidlaw pressed Hull to play the song. “As soon as we got to the chorus, it was obvious it was good,” the drummer said. “When the chorus came around for the second time, myself and a couple of the other guys in the studio joined in with harmonies. At exactly that point, Gus walked in and said, ‘That’s the single!’”
It wasn’t an instant hit – in fact, with the prevailing wind being more from the punk and early new-wave direction, the BBC blanked it. The song might never have entered the charts at all; but as it became a fan favourite on the road, it became impossible to ignore.
In complete validation, the band wound up performing (well, miming) their ballad of a homesick musician who’s tired of touring on Top Of The Pops in July 1978, during an episode that also happened to feature Renaissance. It also became a Top 40 hit in the United States.
In 2012, reviewing the reissue of Back And Fourth, Prog noted: “From this kind of distance it’s easy to forget just what a hugely popular force Lindisfarne’s homely blues-tinged folk rock was.
“Dudgeon’s lavish production coats everything in a glossy veneer, but too many of the tunes seem content to merely trundle along. This isn’t a bad album as such, but nor is it the triumphant return it should have been. Perhaps the concert stage, rather than the studio, was Lindisfarne’s natural environment.”
Lindisfarne would return to hit world one more time in 1990, reaching No.2 with their novelty hit version of Fog On The Tyne, featuring football hero Paul ‘Gazza’ Gascoigne. But Run For Home should probably be the chart success they’re better remembered for.
When Prog asked Laidlaw if its success made them feel like pop stars, he replied: “We never thought of ourselves in that way. It was just a song that did well for us, and we took it in our stride. We were never treated like pop stars, anyway!”
Hit singles can be curses as well as blessings; what was Run For Home? “It could easily have been a blessing, if we’d followed this up straight sway with another single, making the most of the momentum. But we didn’t – so it never had any long term impact.”
