Lindisfarne
The Exchange 1856, North Shields
February 14th 2026
More than half a century after their formation, Lindisfarne are back performing old favourites in their native Tyneside habitat, and sounding better than ever.
It was all a happy accident. I was in Newcastle to see Suede for the umpteenth time, and looking to see what else was on in and around the city the following night, when a listing caught my eye: Lindisfarne. In a venue near the port in North Shields. Could that really be the band that put the Paris of the North on the musical map all those years ago? Or was it a tribute act? Turned out it was the real thing, even if they were down to one original member, Rod Clements. I had to go: Lindisfarne had soundtracked my school days, when I was listening to T. Rex, Slade and The Sweet and some older boys (it was a boys’ school, but Lindisfarne were always a blokey band) had those first three albums. It had been impossible not to love the Poe-inspired Lady Eleanor and the romance of Meet Me On The Corner, and of course, their signature song, Fog On The Tyne. (I assumed it had been their biggest hit, but it turns out it only made the charts once Gazza teamed up with them in 1990).
So there I was, on a cold night by the coast, searching the deserted streets of North Shields for The Exchange, a historic Grade II listed building with an impressive venue inside (once you negotiated the restaurant that hid it from plain view). And there onstage, in front of a full house, playing the unmistakable fingerpicked intro to Lady Eleanor, was Lindisfarne. I’d missed the start because they took to the stage at the unnaturally early gig time of 6.30pm: well, Rod is 78 now and prefers to play sitting down, and perhaps he wanted an early night, though he seemed in remarkably chipper form for an aul’ feller.
As soon as he began to pick out that memorable intro on his mandolin… the years fell away, and the nostalgia began to burn. It was beautiful. Behind him, the band sounded – and I mean this entirely as a compliment – just like Lindisfarne. And they are Lindisfarne, at least in their current incarnation. The only Lindisfarne, unlike those Seventies bands that have rival versions performing on the live circuit, led by original band members who don’t speak to one another because of some festering feud dating back so far they can barely remember what started it, but can’t let it go.
Today’s Lindisfarne is led by Clements, an amusing raconteur as well as a master of several instruments, who wrote Meet Me On The Corner literally around the corner, behind Tynemouth Metro station, while waiting beneath a street lamp for his girlfriend (“who went on to become my ex-wife,” he added, in an early example of his dry wit. It was the band’s first hit, in early 1972, helped to no small extent by their performance on Top of the Pops, with drummer Ray Laidlaw attacking his large bass drum with a rubber fish.
More than half a century later, Clements sits at the front and alternates between folky fingerpicked mandolin and bluesy slide guitar. Most of the lead vocals are taken by Dave Hull-Denholm, son-in-law of Alan Hull, the original lead singer, who lived and died here in North Shields. Hull-Denholm is new to me, but he’s been with Lindisfarne for more than 30 years, playing the piano and singing, in a voice that summons the spirit of the Newcastle legend, whose ashes are scattered nearby at the mouth of the Tyne. Not least when singing what, to my mind (and that of Elvis Costello), is not just their best, but one of the greatest songs of all time, Hull’s heartfelt plea for compassion, Winter Song.
The rest of the band are Steve Daggett, who plays the Hammond organ and sings, and first played with Lindisfarne 40 years ago; drummer Paul Smith who does far more than that familiar tap-tap before the chorus of Fog On The Tyne; and the extravagantly bearded bass guitarist Steve Cunningham, whose plangent playing at times recalls the the late great Danny Thompson during his fertile partnership with John Martyn; especially on the dub-like weirdness of Dingly Dell, the title track of their third and final album before they first broke up in 1973.
They have the energy of men half their age, though, as does the sell-out hometown crowd, eager to respond to instructions to sing along. Many, from the look of their white hair, could and perhaps would have been there – or here – in the band’s heyday in the early Seventies, when Lindisfarne were big enough to go on tour headlining above an up-and-coming new band called Genesis.
It was Clements who formed the group, initially called Brethren, back in 1968. Later that year they were joined by Alan Hull, who became their lead singer and songwriter, and changed their name to Lindisfarne (after Holy Island 60 miles up the coast), making their mark with their folk-rock fusion and harmonies, like a British/Geordie version of Crosby, Stills and Nash, and releasing three landmark albums before splitting in two five years later, with Hull launching a solo career.
It’s perhaps forgotten that Lindisfarne’s songs sometimes had a social conscience: something that came back to mind when they played Any Way The Wind Blows. “One of our more recent ones… from the Eighties,” Clements jested, introducing a powerful song about the social and economic impact of the miners’ strike when many Geordies lost their jobs and sought work offshore (on the oil rigs) or in other countries (as depicted in Auf Wiedersehen Pet) – “or, if they were really unlucky, down South.”
To call this a memorable evening would undersell it: these are musicians who are masters of their craft, and have been doing it for decades, and the emotion of performing on one of the very streets where they first wrote and played these songs, in front of a loyal audience some of whom have followed their journey since their teenage years, is a powerful drug indeed.
The evening, divided into two sets, ended with rousing singalongs: the first half with We Can Swing Together, Daggett conducting the crowd into an arm-waving mass chorus of a song written originally about a police raid on a party (none of that tonight!) and the second, following that famous song about a river (“And it’s NOT the Wear!” Hull-Denholm joked), the inevitable, and appropriate, Run For Home.
Even though for many of the audience it was more of a sedate shuffle towards the Metro station and a cup of cocoa before bed.
~
Pic © Trev Eales – Lindisfarne: Facebook, Twitter & Website
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