Darragh McManus
Welcome to the jungle? Sadly not, as rock ‘n’ roll is dead
SOMETIME on Saturday evening, Guns N’ Roses will bound onstage at Slane Castle, and there’s something appropriate about that. GN’ R are a good fit for Slane, because both feel like a throwback to a different time in music: simpler, clearer and much cooler.
When Lord Mountcharles kicked off this iconic event in 1981, the world of music and festivals was very different. By different, I mean better.
Music festivals used to be about the core elements, that Holy Trinity of mindless fun: sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. (Or at least a PG Irish version, ie shifting, drinking and rock ‘n’ roll).
It was that straightforward, and that great. Whether trekking to Lisdoonvarna, hitting for Dalymount or making the Trip to Tipp, those three things were all that concerned any right-thinking person.
Shifting, booze and music: what else could a kid want from a weekend? And this is how it’s always been, since the days of Elvis and across the world.
Time-travel to, say, Woodstock in 1969 and it was more-or-less identical to Slane or Féile. The shifting may have been upgraded to mass love-ins, alcohol swapped for home-brewed hallucinogenics, but festival-goers were essentially getting the same experience.
It was unpretentious. Uncomplicated. Bloody brilliant.
But now, alas, all has changed. At some stage, during the risible excesses of the boom, the Irish got ‘notions’ about entertainment along with everything else, and now a music festival can’t just be a music festival.
It must be a mélange of everything and anything – from comedy and visual art to (shudder) puppetry and (shudder) cuisine – with maybe a little music thrown in somewhere around the edges.
We needn’t name and shame the guilty parties. Suffice to say that, among the cornucopia of non-sonic delights offered by Irish festivals for the last decade and more, you’ll find: fortune-tellers, ancient castle grounds, cocktail bars, afternoon tea, luxury spas, “primordial oak woods”, massage, burlesque, “ancient shamanic journeys”, interactive theatre spaces, live performances of the ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show’, drumming classes, 24-hour film marathons, something or other called “food personalities”, ambient lounges, eco-friendly initiatives and the unnervingly cult-sounding “Temple of Truth”.
The camping is “boutique”. There is much “raising awareness” for worthy causes. The social media metrics are off the scale. Devotees say things like, “This is living, not just existing”, while somehow keeping a straight face.
Good God. Really? This is what the legendary likes of Lisdoon and Féile have diminished to?
It’s all so tasteful, right-on, “diverse”, self-regarding … and, well, boring. In other words, not very rock ‘n’ roll.
I admit that some – not all – of this would be interesting to boring old farts like me. But kids? Away from mam and dad, going mad, having the crack, being young and dumb and none the worse for that.
Shouldn’t they be head-banging to Rage Against the Machine while tightly clutching a bottle of cider – not knitting their own tepee from fair trade alpaca wool while smiling beatifically at a critique of the 1983 Abortion Referendum done through interpretive mime?
Ah yes: politics. In 2017, there must be politics, everywhere, and economics, and other dreary social issues. Why? We don’t demand that Dáil proceedings be interrupted by the Ceann Comhairle whipping out a Stratocaster and declaiming, “I hear Dáil Éireann likes to rock!” before launching into the full eight minutes of Metallica’s instrumental ‘Orion’. More’s the pity.
It’s telling that some festivals now sell tickets before the acts are even known. I guess people buy into the “event”, the “occasion”, without too much regard for the music. Indeed, something like Slane – with its unadorned focus on music, on just kicking out the jams – probably wouldn’t get off the ground if starting now. It doesn’t even use the word “festival” in its title, for God’s sake.
The Slane “Concert”: I mean, how limiting is that, guys? How do we hashtag that?
Am I just an unreconstituted dinosaur? Yeah, probably. But my point still stands. And festivals have lost the one thing that makes popular music really magical: coolness.
Coolness matters, especially when you’re young. Guitars and rock stars and funk and cigarettes and disco and skinny guys and gals swaggering around in tight leather strides: these are cool.
Poetry slams and woodland walks and flash-frying flash-mobs? They’re not cool. They’re the opposite, some kind of black hole for coolness, voracious and terrifying.
At least Slane has held fast. Slane still does it old-skool. One day, three or four bands. Solid, almost old-fashioned headliners: seasoned entertainers like U2, Chili Peppers, Madonna, the Stones, Kings of Leon, Foo Fighters.
No yurts, no agitprop improv, no organically reared ostrich burgers, no messing. You drink, shift someone you maybe shouldn’t have, rock out, go home and remember it fondly for decades afterwards.
The simplicity and clarity of this can’t be improved. It can, though, be diminished, diluted, spoiled.
Welcome to the jungle, baby? Sadly, not any more.