Alan Hull

My obligatory check through the forthcoming week's TV and radio on Saturday morning was rewarded with the most unexpected find on BBC4's Friday evening music slot.

9pm, Lindisfarne's Geordie Genius, the Alan Hull Story. Good Lord. How did they find out about that. If anybody can be regarded as 'the forgotten man' of 70's singer-songwriter types, it's him. Johnnie Walker only ever plays Run for Home, some will only remember Fog on the Tyne as a novelty hit cashing in on the Gazza Boom. That's not what it was like at all.

The early 70's were plagued by pop journalists hailing acts as the 'New Beatles' in the same way that, somehow, the likes of Derek Pringle or Chris Lewis were a bit later expected to be the New Botham. Neither T. Rex or Lindisfarne were the New Beatles and neither were the New Seekers the 'new' Seekers, they were T. Rex, Lindisfarne and the New Seekers.

I'm a bit taken aback by BBC4 finding it within themselves to do as much to acknowledge Alan Hull for the benefit of those precious few left of us who still care. We will see what happens and be grateful. The programme is by Sam Fender, born 1994, who, it says, 'remembers' Alan. But I doubt that. Alan died in 1995, aged 50. Sam was in the right place but at the wrong time. I lived at the right time but was mostly in the wrong place, only seeing Lindisfarne in Lancaster circa 1978 after the classic line-up re-formed.

We might also need to beware some of Alan's self-righteousness. It wasn't him that droned on about 'a working class hero is something to be' but he seemed to think so, however, it's a shame that Lindisfarne's run of hit singles faltered when they didn't put out Wake Up Little Sister, which would have been chart-friendly, and released Alan's eco-warrior hymn, All Fall Down, instead which only reached no. 34. But we can hardly say he didn't tell us,

 

Politicians, planners, go look what you done
Your madness is making a machine of everyone
But one day the machine might turn on.

 

We'll tear you down, mess you 'round
And bury you deep under the ground
And we'll dance on your graves till the flowers return
And the trees tell us secrets that took ages to learn.

 

That was 1973. And in 2021 we still have Quentin Letts describing Greta Thunberg as a 'moody little madam'.

Alan was some sort of 'poet', though, even given all the dubious relationship between 'poetry' and pop song words. Bob Dylan got the Nobel Prize for it but he said it was Smokey Robinson.

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I've had a quick look through the diary to see what any Review of the Year might amount to. I've only read one new poetry book and one new novel and so in those old categories John Burnside and Sebastian Faulks have uneventful walkovers.

But here are some fascinating statistics.

I have written 4 poems so far in 2021 which is entirely consistent with my career average over four decades so I don't know why I'm bellyaching about having lost faith with it.

I've read 50 books and so it will be more than one a week for the year and that includes some long ones but not Proust this year. I wouldn't want to be a Booker Prize judge but all of that was immensely enjoyable.

64 horses, maybe a few more than that, that won have contributed to the marginal turf account plus I'm doggedly defending. More than that will have lost but it's staying out of the red that matters.

And I've been to 13 concerts, nearly all since September, with a couple more to come and they've all been unfailingly worthwhile.

I might go further and count up how many walks I've done, how many miles that makes and who with but one has to accept that writing a 'blog' for one's own benefit does need to be of interest to anybody who tunes in so maybe I won't publish that particular data.