11 November : Nicely Out of Tune

What a joy to revisit this little beauty, if not one of the great albums of 1970, then certainly one with some of the great songs.

Nicely Out of Tune was Lindisfarne’s debut album, released on Charisma when they were touring with two labelmates, Van der Graaf Generator and Genesis, and holding their own. Most of the songs were written by Alan Hull, with Rod Clements adding two and Rab Noakes adding one (the Noakes tune, Turn a Deaf Ear was a staple of pub sessions in Edinburgh for years). There is also a Woody Guthrie cover.

Hull was at one time a trainee psychiatric nurse at St. Nicholas’ Hospital in Newcastle, in the days when alcoholics were prescribed 25 milligrammes of LSD per day. Hull decided to try some, but didn’t realise it had a delayed effect and kept popping pills until something happened. 1000 milligrammes later, Hull tripped for a month and still had flashbacks in 1978 (‘pretty frightening, really’). He came out of the end with songs that were in Lindisfarne’s repertoire for years, notably Lady Eleanor, Winter Song, Clear White Light (pt.2), We Can Swing Together and Fog on the Tyne, all written in the space of a week. Playing the album this afternoon, I cheerfully sang along with most of the songs (Fog on the Tyne was released later).

There was a time when, in the days I counted these things, Lindisfarne were probably the band I’d seen live most often. I have happy memories of being blinded by the halogen spots they’d turn on the crowd at the chorus of Clear White Light, their long-time closing song. They were also the loudest band I ever heard, believe it or not. It was a fluke, I suppose: they used a full touring PA in a low-ceilinged university refectory. That was in 1983, when I’d not long started work and I had to go into a training day unable to hear much beyond the ringing in my ears. It’s possible I was hungover too. The upshot is that I was always going to be well disposed to this album, even though I haven’t listened to it for quite some time. Some of the songs are cruder in their arrangements than they became, notably We Can Swing Together, and I sometimes hear echoes of contemporaries: the Faces certainly, perhaps too Dr Strangely Strange.

I listened on Spotify, and it’s available as multiple YouTube playlists.