The first hurdle is always tickets. When I was 13, my parents - wonderful people but terrible influences - took me to the outskirts of Glastonbury Festival so that we could all have UV entry stamps embossed onto our arms by a gang of enterprising Scousers. We had such a superb weekend that we went the official route next time, with real tickets and everything. I went every year, never ever taking my wrist band off, manky scraps of fabric climbing further up my arm as I sought to show everyone that I was Glastonbury and Glastonbury was me.
This all came crashing down in 2013 when, after 14 years of constructing my identity around this one weekend a year, I simply couldn’t get a ticket. Nor could I for the next festival, nor the one after that. I’d been kicked out of my own party and, desperate to blame something, I blamed social media. Demand outstripping supply had turned ticket buying into an Olympic sport.
A sport which has only grown over the years. When Oasis announced their big reunion, the ticket hype was unreal. There was the chance to see everyone’s favourite misanthropic brothers in action, sure, but there was also a chance to play everyone’s favourite game: will I get a ticket? Rewarded, of course, not by getting to attend the gig, but by being able to tell everyone you went. We are a braggadocious species in general, but no generation has been modelled by the practice of online showing off more than Gen Z. Their parents were doing it when they were in the womb; it’s in their blood.
And now Radiohead has resurfaced with a limited run of European dates and I find myself in a panic because I can already feel the ticket clamour building. Reddit is awash with anguished fans stressing over their registration confirmation emails. My friends are constructing spreadsheets. I’m thinking about buying a box of burner phones to up my chances of receiving a ticket-buying code. I’ve seen them live five times but five hundred wouldn’t be enough. I have no religion, this band is my church.
Have we forgotten how to exist in a crowd?
And yet… the hurdle once the ticket is firmly secured is actually enjoying myself. I don’t know what happened, but somewhere along the way everyone started singing along. Was it the pandemic? Did spending all those years locked inside break us in a fundamental way? Did we forget how to exist in a crowd?
I actually was one of the lucky ones for Oasis, but after the sixth pint glass bounced off my head, after straining my ears to hear the lads’ voices over an 80,000-strong karaoke session, after the bloke next to me (whose beloved pet had just died, in his defence) told me “this one’s for my dog” for the 800th time in a row, I did start to think: how lucky am I really?
I am never more ancient than at a gig despite being a millennial. But I am surrounded by Gen Zs, phones in the air, costumes on, spilling drinks because they don’t know how to get drunk.
I have no religion, Radiohead is my church, and when the pastor speaks the last thing I want to hear is a motley mob of Gen Z foghorns wailing over him. Nor do I want to watch the band through a thousand screens as the younger members of the congregation seek to fill their social media with blurry TikToks of pin-sized guitarists. Be here, I want to shout. Be in the moment! Quietly!
When Thom Yorke looks at the crowd, I want him to think he’s performing to a room of sunken-eyed Victorian ghosts
And look, I welcome the youth into the Radiohead circle! Well, some of them. My 22-year-old sister will absolutely be coming along with me if I win the ticket game, and there was something genuinely touching about seeing sweet young drunk men fall over themselves at Oasis. They knew every word (didn’t I know it), they brought energy and life to Wembley, but could I hear a word from the band? No. No I could not. I just mopped beer from my brow, thinking about how much my feet hurt, dreading how loud the tube ride home was going to be.
I’m not saying the youth shouldn’t come. I’m not a middle-aged man demanding a young woman in a Pink Floyd top drop what she’s doing and name me three songs from their second album. What I’m saying is that we require separate nights. One for karaoke, one for misery. One for Gen Z, one for the rest of us. I want to stand in a sea of fellow grouches, swaying in silent reverence for our favourite band. When Thom Yorke looks at the crowd, I want him to think he’s performing to a room of sunken-eyed Victorian ghosts. Absolutely no fun allowed!
Tomorrow’s crowd can be full of joy, but today is for silent, glum-faced veneration. (My sister, of course, will be muzzled.)
Leah Gasson is a freelance screenwriter and playwright
