As the echoey, descending riff of ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ reverberates around Donington Park, I am shoved abruptly through a Proustian window. It’s the early Nineties, I’m 15 and my best friend Bea and I are sitting on a couple of obliging random guys’ shoulders. I’m passed a very strong spliff as Guns n’ Roses – ‘the most dangerous band in the world’ – take the stage. Our parents have no idea where we are. Some 80,000 people put their hands in the air and go wild. This is the most exciting thing we’ve experienced in our provincial lives.
Someone tugs my sleeve. ‘Mummy I can’t see,’ and I’m jolted back to the present by today’s gig buddy – my ten-year-old son.
G n’R are now his favourite band and I’ve got him as close to the front as I can so he can see his idol, lead guitarist Slash, IRL rather than on the big screens. But as he’s five foot-nothing, we retreat back to the edge of the crowd where older fans, who’ve parked themselves for the duration in fold-up camping chairs complain that we’re in their way.
This is so not rock ‘n’ roll that I don’t know where to start. But then, as the responsible adult, I’m drinking 0 per cent beer and the only thing I smoke these days is one of the five cigarettes a day I consider an essential component of my parenting toolkit. Of course, we’re only here because what used to be the notorious Monsters of Rock festival has morphed into Download, which is billed as ‘family-friendly’. There are plenty of mini-moshers around much younger than mine.
It’s all a very long way from the elaborate web of lies that my friend and I had to spin in order to see G n’R back in 1993. We used the classic line, deployed by teenagers everywhere until the mobile phone: I was staying with her and she was staying at mine. As our mothers were tennis partners, our guile was uncovered pretty quickly, but, crucially, there was no way of either locating us or hauling us back.
My mum, furious and extremely anxious, was waiting for me when I got home; I think she thought I’d return pregnant and a heroin addict. I don’t remember how long I was grounded for, but I still feel a bit goose-bumpy recalling the insane, electrifying energy of a stadium of tens of thousands of fans and the power of Axl Rose’s phenomenal five-octave voice. It was the original line-up (bar the drummer, who’d already departed on the journey taken by so many in his profession).
Today’s gig is all a bit lo-fi compared with what I remember. But my son is loving it, singing along and coughing loudly over the swearing (a requirement of the school run, so his little sister doesn’t pick it up). ‘It’s alright darling,’ I say, ‘you don’t need to do that here,’ and his eyes light up as he joins in with the many ‘motherfuckers’ sprinkled throughout the lyrics.
Axl’s extraordinary voice has diminished down the years; on forums it’s been compared to Herbert the Pervert in Family Guy, Mickey Mouse and Gollum. And as for his look, once so menacing, he now has short hair, a stouter figure and a succession of sparkly shirts that makes him resemble a lesbian running a bookstore in Vermont. So my hopes weren’t high. But perhaps he’s been doing vocal exercises or been advised to stick to the lower registers, because he sounds a helluva lot better than I was expecting.
The band are solid and play an incredibly tight set. When I saw them as a teenager, they were sloppy in places. We were stage left and I remember some of Duff McKagan’s looping basslines being pretty, well, duff. Now, he’s a machine. Of course, it helps that they’re now sober. Recently, the Insta algorithm sent me a reel of McKagan – a man whose pancreas once ruptured due to his alcohol consumption – discussing his preferred energy bars.
Not that my kids will be going to gigs alone any time soon. With the Apple watches they’ve been given instead of smartphones, I know exactly where they are
Slash, rarely seen without a cigarette in his mouth back in the day, has put on so much weight, he isn’t exactly an advert for kicking the fags and skag. But he is an extraordinary guitarist. During one of his solos, my son says, ‘This is the best day of my life,’ and slips his hand into mine.
Why do my tweenagers listen to the same bands I did in the Nineties? Well, for a start, they were pretty damn good. But also, I think, because in a record industry that’s had to pivot to a streaming model, there are very few bands coming through. The money doesn’t go four or five ways, which is why you see so many duos and solo artists now, like Yungblud, who is an obvious frontman in the Axl mould, though without the misogyny.
Not that my kids will be going to gigs alone any time soon. With the Apple watches they’ve been given instead of smartphones, I know exactly where they are. The freedom that my generation enjoyed – the last for which ‘parent’ was purely a noun – has gone.
By 10 p.m. the band’s winding down, which is early for a headline set. But then, we’re all knocking on a bit. As the chords of their last number, ‘Paradise City’, ring out, I message my husband asking him to turn on the electric blanket on so I can crawl into a warm bed sometime after 3 a.m. (I only do day tickets for festivals these days: I need a Vi-sprung mattress.)
And what goes on after the show for a band of sober 60-somethings? A nice big mug of Horlick’s, then bed – alone – presumably. Thank you for visiting the jungle – please respect our neighbours and leave quietly.
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