My first concert was John Denver in the RDS. I must have been 14 or 15. A first live performance is a seminal moment, a milestone of sorts, even if accompanied by an adult.
John Denver wasn’t exactly cutting edge. He didn’t incite revolution nor was he pin-up material with his horn-rimmed glasses and goofy looks. He was the safest of safe options if you were taking a deep breath and sending your offspring out into the world.
My older sister had somehow fallen heir to two tickets. And so I did as younger siblings tend to do and pestered and pestered to be her plus one until she succumbed.
Did I know John Denver songs? I knew Take Me Home, Country Roads and Annie’s Song and Leaving On A Jet Plane. That was about it.
Broad church – Alyson Gavin Lysaght on the Anglican Church of St John the Evangelist in Sandymount
Confounding Father - Frank McNally on the centenary of a radical Irish-American priest.
The Irish (and Redmondite) origins of the Augusta National Clubhouse
Dooley Dooby Doo - Frank McNally with more on the origins of a famous “Joycean” ballad
That’s what everyone knew.
The concert was brilliant, as far as I was concerned. And we helped John out, singing along as best we could. I’m pretty sure I sang along to songs I had never heard before just because they were so sing-along-able to, what with their catchy choruses and easily remembered lyrics.
I met my French teacher in the toilets of Jury’s Hotel afterwards. She’d also been and I gushed about how wonderful it all was, making some comment about definitely getting to school the following day. But she just laughed. And on the way home, I was so annoyed with myself for not coming up with something a little more sophisticated and grown-up.
Years later, reading about Denver’s death in a plane crash, that evening came back to me as if it were the previous week.
My second memorable concert was Bruce Springsteen in Slane in 1985.
I lived in Navan, seven miles up the road which officially made us the rock ‘n’ roll centre of the universe. After all, The Boss was heading our way.
Bruce’s Born in the USA album was a large hit by then. My younger sister and I popped that cassette into our player when we were doing the dishes and played Dancing in the Dark again and again, bouncing about the kitchen as we stacked plates and put away the cutlery.
That June bank holiday weekend was the first blast of summer. It had been overcast for weeks beforehand but coming up to the concert itself the weather made an about-turn. Not only did the sun shine, it beamed and we all emerged blinking into the light, in cut-off trousers and cotton T-shirts, excavated from the back of wardrobes.
I was working locally at the time and had organised for friends to come down from Dublin. My brother had also dispatched invitations to what seemed his entire college cohort and my mother set to baking cakes and buns and the speciality of the house, an enormous crunchy pavlova with the softest and lightest of centres.
Even Whiskey, our resident Yorkshire Terrier who reigned unopposed over domestic arrangements, sensed the mounting excitement and wandered from room to room checking in on what was happening.
When the day dawned, my father volunteered to drive myself and my sister and assorted buddies to the castle gates or as far along that road as allowed.
We set up camp on the side of the hill and had a perfect view of the stage below where its two enormous screens showcased the steady movement of the Boyne during the lonely riffs of The River.
The show was a triumph with Springsteen at his storytelling best.
Even so, the seven-mile trudge back to Navan weighed heavily as we headed towards the gates. The road was clogged with buses and cars and yet, through it all, we somehow identified my father knocking on the passenger window, gesturing for us all to get in.
How had he managed to track us down in the hordes? This was pre-mobile phone times and no arrangement had been in place. But we piled in matter-of-factly as if such a service was to be entirely expected.
Our next-door neighbours were leaning on the pillar between both driveways when we got back, bantering with the occupants of car after car, whose passengers spilt out and headed towards the front door.
They joined the melee in the house soon after, filled as it was with people and food and stories of the day. And in the midst of it all, Whiskey poked and pawed and sniffed and smelled. “Must he really be here?” a camper on the sittingroom floor asked later that evening but given that the softest, snuggest armchair in the room doubled as his bed, he did indeed.
Decades later, none of the live performances in the intervening years evoke anything like the memories of those early experiences. They don’t even come close.
