Tim Hardin Sunderland Empire Sat 19th April 1975
Special guests City Waites 
I can’t pretend that I knew much about Tim Hardin before I went to see him at Sunderland Empire. I knew he was a legendary figure and hey he was playing in my home town, so a friend and I went along to the concert. Support came from the City Waites, who specialise in traditional “English music of the 16th and 17th centuries from the street, tavern, theatre and countryside – the music of the common man”, and are still playing to this day. I am so glad that I got to see Tim Hardin. The concert was superb. It was just Tim sitting with an acoustic guitar singing those classic songs. I think he may have been accompanied by a double bass player (Danny Thompson is in my mind, but that could be my memory playing tricks again). I was pleasantly surprised to recognise quite a few of his songs that night: How Can We Hang On To A Dream, which I had seen the Nice perform at the same venue some years earlier; If I Were A Carpenter, I knew the Four Tops hit, and had also seen Stan Webb play an excellent version with Chicken Shack several times; Reason to Believe, which I knew from the Rod Stewart version; and Lady Came From Baltimore, the Scott Walker version was most familiar to me. A great concert by a true genius. How Can We Hang On To A Dream remains one of my favourite songs to this day. Tim Hardin suffered from a drug habit in his later years, and sadly died of a heroin overdose on December 29th 1980, just a few days after his 39th birthday. A tragic loss. 
Postscript. I found a ticket from the Empire which shows a date of Sun 20 April, while the flyer lists the show as being on Sat 19th April. I can’t be certain that this is my ticket for this particular gig, as (annoyingly) the Empire didn’t list the artist on the ticket at that time. The price looks right, as the flyer lists the price in the stalls as 50p and 60p, and my ticket is 60p for the front stalls. I suspect that this is the correct ticket and the show was moved by one day. I recall being quite close to the front, which would also fit (my ticket shows row E).
12 Apr
Vintagerock's Weblog. 
Posted by Mconlin on September 19, 2014 at 9:54 pm
I was there at timhardin at empire sunderland ,he had on an Aston villa track suit top,some people left early cos the empire advertised him as a c and w act but it was alovely nite
Posted by vintagerock on September 20, 2014 at 6:00 am
Hi I don’t recall the Villa top. Bet that didn’t go down well. A great artist (and not c and w) 🙂 Peter