Billy Mitchell, West End Centre, Aldershot 3/3/05

Apologies for the late posting!
Billy Mitchell was of course the lead singer of Lindisfarne after the death of Alan Hull and before the band split up last year. He’s now touring alone – just him and his trusty guitar! His set consisted mainly of cover versions such as Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Secret Garden’– just songs he’d always fancied singing, some folk, some rock and some country. He played a few Lindisfarne songs that he never got to sing, such as ‘Meet Me On The Corner’ as well as songs that he’d written himself, such as ‘Happy Birthday Dad’ and ‘Born At The Right Time’ – but not ‘Fog on the Tyne’!!
He has got pretty good taste, and Bill and I really enjoyed the evening. Malcolm from our local was also there with his daughter.
Billy was standing at the bar with a Guinness after the gig – so I bought a ‘Best of Lindisfarne’ CD and went over to ask him to autograph it. Billy was friendly to talk to, he was a bit disappointed, I think, that not many people had turned up for the gig but then he WAS up against Jules Holland who was playing in Aldershot! Unfortunate. I said how much I liked his song about his Granddad – and then felt all embarrassed, as it’s a bit of a kiddies’ song :-[ Billy is only little but he has very hard eyes – you woudn’t want to heckle him or anything, he’s probably had a bit of a hard life up there in North Shields. So I was wilting a bit under his gaze as well!
Will soon be seeing Rod Clements, also at the West End Centre – so another autograph for my Lindisfarne CD!