Songfacts®:

• In the 1970s, Tom Robinson made a name for himself as an out gay man playing bass and fronting his own rock band. He also became involved in so-called radical politics.
  
  In an interview published in the August 21, 1976 issue of New Musical Express he talked about a song he played live called "Cruising," saying it was the first song he wrote after coming to London, and that it was "a song detailing the loneliness that so many people feel on coming to live in the big city."
  
  "Cruising" was never released, but in October 2009 he told Songfacts it had been recorded as "Coldharbour Lane." The song did not appear on disk until 1982, when it found its way onto the Cabaret 79 album, and in spite of Robinson's assertions, it is a song with a specifically homosexual angle.
  
  The Coldharbour Lane in question is in Brixton, South London. According to the June 24, 1994 issue of Capital Gay, a rally in the area the previous Saturday resulted in at least 20 homosexuals being physically attacked. Robinson later married a woman, but remained a champion of LGBT rights.
  
  All that being said, "Coldharbour Lane" is a reasonable, laid back, jazzy type of song, saxophone rather than guitar based, which doesn't miss the mark. >>>

  Suggestion credit:
  Alexander Baron - London, England