More strolling bones than rolling stones

We were going to live forever,born to be wild, born just yesterday. Above all, we were never going to turn into our parents, writes Michael Clifford

I’M standing in the middle of Croke Park, worried about Stevie Van Zandt’s cholesterol. He’s up there on the stage beside his old mucker, Bruce Springsteen. The only other time I saw Springsteen and the E Street Band in a stadium was 31 years ago at Wembley. It was the first time I was away from home, full of teenage angst and devoid of a clue as to the respective locations of my arse and elbow.

Rock ’n roll was going to save me. Not necessarily Bruce and the band, but they were in the frame. Stevie was on stage that sunny July evening, a skinny little guy doing his thing at Bruce’s right hand.

Last week when I spotted him I couldn’t help noticing that he had piled on the pounds. The guy is 65 years of age. My relationship with rock ’n roll has transmogrified since I first set eyes on him. Teenage angst has been replaced by middle-aged dread. But what about Stevie?

When did he last get his cholesterol tested? He is obliged to play his guitar up there with Bruce for three and a half hours every night as if the pair of them had just finished their Leaving Certs and were jamming for fun. Doesn’t he know that rock ’n roll’s promise of immortality has been exposed as a lie?

If Stevie is going to carry on with that, comporting himself like the Mafioso don he played in The Sopranos, he’d want to get with the programme. Cut out the pizzas, Stevie. Stay within the weekly 10 units of alcohol healthy limit. Get the full NCT from your local medical centre. Don’t mess around as if you still believe that rock ’n roll is going to let you live forever.

The longevity of a Bruce Springsteen concert allows time for little pockets of reflection on where it all went wrong. Back in the day when I saw Bruce at Wembley, rock ’n roll was full of promise. We were never going to get old. Things would be different for our generation, freed from the shackles that had turned our parents into bores.

We were never going to settle down. There would be none of that working-to-live mullarkey. No sir, work would be an added extra, like maybe cleaning windows with Van, or even choppin’ wood for a few quid here and there to survive before getting back onto the open road, where the wind blows through your hair, and you never go bald. We were going to live forever, having been born to run, born to be wild, born just yesterday. Above all, we were never going to turn into our parents.

Then we turned into our parents. The chain of years did for the dream. We grew up, some of us slower than others, and finally realised that it don’t matter what nobody says, but in the end rock ’n roll’s promise of immortality was a great deception.

This came home to me last week in Croker when I should have been fully engaged in the band belting out ‘Hungry Heart’, which kicks off with the line: “I got a wife and kids in Baltimore, Jack. I went out for a ride and I never came back.” At Wembley all those years ago that line spoke to me of the open road, the search for a truth beyond the mundane, the loner looking for love in all the wrong places, the essence of rock ’n roll.

At the Croker gig, I had a different perspective. Who the hell did this character think he was? Taking off in that irresponsible manner, actually deserting his family as if he had a right to do a runner. Who was going to pay the mortgage while he was off finding himself? Who would support the kids? What about the cost of their after-school activities? Who would pay for the wife’s therapy? The fella needs a serious boot up the rear end if he thinks he’s going to get away with that.

Far worse than my own internal wrestling was the decrepit state of rock ’n roll as glimpsed from the hallowed turf last week. Did you know that it is now illegal to smoke cigarettes at an open air concert? One man who was ahead of me in the queue on the way in was told to stub it out. Inside, a few smokers were furtively puffing away, as if they were inhaling pot rather than tobacco. Oh mercy. If there is a smoking exemption for prisons, then there should be one for rock ’n roll, which has its own constituency of outlaws.

That was nothing though compared to the scourge of the natterers. As it looked a bit too dangerous to venture to the front, the wife and I hung back about halfway down. That meant I got a crick in my neck straining to see over the heads of the throngs between me and Bruce, but at least an ambulance wouldn’t be required.

Anyway, all around us, while the band was playing, people were talking incessantly, as if they were in a pub, or gathered for a toastmasters convention. They wouldn’t shut up, going on and on, each trying to out-shout the other about how great a gig this was to see. To see? No chance they might try to listen?

I was in a state by the time a text pinged through from my friend who was up in the stand. “What a show,” he texted. “Unbelievable,” I pinged back. While I was at it I had a quick peek at Twitter just to see what was going on in the world since the gig had started.

There was worse to come. Nothing defines the antithesis of rock ’n roll like the selfie. They were all at it, there at a concert to hear music, even the music that had for most of them long ago died, and all they wanted to do was take photos of themselves.

These photos aren’t even for posterity, but to be sent out to all their friends to show them how they are busy being fun people, having a good time, projecting a smiley face to tell everyone they were present at the gig, seeing if not hearing it.

Then the nail in the coffin. My wife, not somebody usually given to flighty nonsense, beckoned me to her side and I complied before I copped what she was at. She held her phone up in front of us as if it was a device to protect from the fleeting years.

This was my chance. I could rebel. I could say ‘no, put me in the doghouse if you must, but I will not submit to this outrage at a rock ’n roll concert’. I could have fled to the highway jammed with broken heroes.

But I was tired and defeated. I smiled a dead smile and appealed to my 19-year-old self for absolution.