I don't particularly like going to gigs. For many people, music is a shared experience, something to sing along with, dance to, lose yourself in. They talk about how great the atmosphere is and they revel in being part of a crowd, everyone loving the music. Bollocks to all that. Give me a record player and an empty room in my own house over a gig any day.
However, my admiration for certain musical artists has led me to attend a great many gigs since my first one in 1987, most of which I have thoroughly loved. But that's because the opportunity to see in person a performer that I love listening to in my lounge usually outweighs the trauma of having to do so alongside other human beings. So much so, that as time goes on and bands split up and people die, I am able to reflect on who I've been able to see in concert and I feel hugely privileged. Years after they've all gone, I'll revel in the memories of seeing Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Neil Young, Pink Floyd, Madness, Jethro Tull, Bruce Springsteen, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, Blondie, REM, The Stone Roses, Oasis, Morrissey, Ian Dury and Prince, to name the most iconic.
But obviously, from time to time, things don't turn out as expected. Here are five times:
1. Bob's curls
My long-time adoration of Bob Dylan has led me to see him at his worst and at his relatively better than worst. The first time I saw him was at Wembley Arena in 1987. I had a seat next to the first exit on stage right. During the support act, his backing band of Tom Petty and Heartbreakers, I looked over the ledge to that exit to see, within arm's reach, Dylan himself. Clearly he wanted to catch a view from the stands. And with hood up, iconic sunglasses on and everyone focussed on the stage, he was managing to retain enough anonymity to get away with this for a while. Given the fact that the curls of his hair, which fell out over his forehead from below the hood, were close enough for me to ruffle, for a while, only I knew he was there. I pointlessly wasted that precious time by asking the couple next to me if they had a pen, so I could get him to sign my programme (which in retrospect, I surmised, he was never going to do). By the time the dozy sods found a pen, someone on the way to the loo had passed Bob and recognised him, prompting a swift retreat backstage. The chase proved futile and undignified. I've seen him 5 times since, but never again able to pose a molestation risk.
Four years later, I saw him for the second time, persuading my future wife (in only our second month of going out together) to come along. That month, he played, according to what I have since read in a book, his worse series of gigs ever. I made my wife pay for her own ticket. She hates Bob Dylan.
2. Mick'sd Emotions
The only times I've ever given a crap about the fortunes of the England football team were at Italia '90 and Euro '96. In 1990, I was at university, out drinking too much whilst watching every England and Ireland game, supporting both, caring too much. But when it transpired that England's semi-final showdown with West Germany would be played on the same night that I had a ticket for The Rolling Stones in concert, a dilemma emerged. Do I forego the drunken atmosphere of watching England in a pub as they potentially secure a place in their first World Cup Final since their sole appearance in '66? Or do I go to the Stones gig? I decided that I had to be at Wembley Stadium that night. Of course, England were playing West Germany in Italy - it was The Rolling Stones who were playing Wembley. With the Stones far too old in 1990 to seem likely to ever play live again (!), I couldn't waste this opportunity.
In the days before mobile phones, I relied on a transistor radio to keep me updated on the score-line. The game went to penalties during 'Paint it Black', somewhat prophetically. At this point, I tuned out of the Stones' performance, as did a small crowd around me, eager for updates. Soon after I broke the bad news about Pearce's and Waddle's penalty misses, someone must have told Mick Jagger. "We've all got mixed emotions tonight" he said by way of an introduction to their song 'Mixed Emotions'.
England weren't the only ones to crap (only ever so slightly though) on my experience of the gig. I bought some Rolling Stones Bermuda shorts that night as a momento. £25 they cost, a small fortune in 1990. Some time later, my brother nicked them to wear below his jeans on a night out, to make himself look less skinny. He shit himself on the dancefloor of a club that evening and disposed of the heavily soiled shorts in the toilet.
£25. Twenty. Five. My fucking shorts. Still, despite that and the England result, it was a great gig.
3. Prince - a few years too late
I saw Prince at Wembley Arena in 1990. There were two things wrong with this concert experience. Firstly, I went with a mate from university called Ziggy. A close mate, until his erratic, attention-seeking and aggressive behaviour evolved from being infrequent, moderate and annoying to frequent, extreme and unacceptable. At this point in his journey towards becoming a complete arsehole, he brought along his 16 year old girlfriend. He was 21 and I was 20. The baby-sitting didn't enhance the experience.
Secondly, my wish to see Prince live was based on liking his output from several years prior to this gig - 'Purple Rain', 'Around the World in a Day' and to a extent 'Parade'. By 1990, he had undergone his own journey, one from rock/psychedelic/arty pop to dance music. Let me make this clear. I like music you can dance to, but I really fucking hate 'dance music'. Prince kept punctuating his songs with calls to the crowd to dance and wave our hands in the air and "say yeah". I drew the line after the compromise of standing up from my seat, I wasn't going to do what Prince told me, Prince wasn't the boss of me. I spent the night mostly irritated with the dance music, the fun fascism and my mate's girlfriend looking like she needed to go home early on a school night.
4. Too old for a new scene
Another occasion on which 16 year olds made me feel generationally removed, despite being only a few years older, was at the 1989 Stone Roses Alexandra Palace gig. We turned up with ageist complacency and a presumption that the crowd would be our own peers, university students excited by this new music that was cleverly marrying melodic 60s pop with 80s Indie sensibilities. It turned out that The Stone Roses were also appealing to school kids, as much for the fashion as the music. We were witnessing a 'scene' for the first time. Youths in flares and baggy t-shirts. We'd spent the last ten years taking the piss out of the whole concept of flared trousers, laughing at kids at school whose trousers were a centimetre or more wider than drainpipes, shouting 'ding dong' at them as the wind caused the superfluous material around their ankles to flap with unfashionable absurdity. And now, here we were, the potential objects of ridicule for being adults with bootcut jeans, gate-crashing into this alien world.
We were undeterred though. The Stone Roses' debut album was the coolest thing to happen to music since The Smiths. Once they came on stage, it wouldn't matter what we were wearing or how old we were. As it turned it, Ian Brown's voice outside of the studio was weaker than a mouse's fart and Ally Pally's sound system was so rubbish, it sounded like someone was just playing the CD over a Tannoy. A depressingly bad gig.
5. Leave you to fall asleep
I'd been a fan of Natalie Merchant during her 10,000 Maniacs and solo careers, and convinced my brother-in-law and sister-in-law to come and see her in concert in 2010. I'd seen her live before and the venue (Hammersmith) was a good one, so what could go wrong?
What can go wrong, musical history teaches us, is when a performer completely disassociates themselves from their audience and disappears up their own backside in a self-indulgent artistic 'project'. Unfortunately for her audience, Natalie Merchant's 'project' had been to put to music a double album's worth of 19th and 20th century poetry about childhood. Slightly boring. And she'd spent 5 years on this album, entitled "Leave Your Sleep", so was determined to fully focus on it, prefacing every song with a commentary about the poet and a power point slide to illustrate. It was like watching the world's most boring English teacher.
Having zealously ignored all calls from the crowd to "play some of your old stuff" until she had reached the end of the double album and 20 slide power point, she apologetically claimed that they had not rehearsed anything other than this new tediously soul-sapping new material, but would "give a few old numbers a go". At last! And of course it would be rehearsed and of course it would be amazing! But it WAS unrehearsed. So much so, that she forgot the lyrics or gave up trying mid-song. Sometimes something very beautiful can be both boring and bollocks.
