Foreword

It was in March 1987 when I went to my first live show. I was newly unshackled from constraints of an all-boys private school, and a few months into the heady freedoms of Lewes Sixth Form College, a place so soaked in liberalism, art, and counterculture that students quoted The Smiths in English essays. It was, for me, a revelation, a garden of unearthly delights and I soaked it all up like a sponge.

I made new friends. I became one of the head students, mainly by launching a smear campaign against my competition involving a Garfield comic strip, glitter and a glue stick. I met my first openly gay friends and marched beside them at Brighton Pride. One sporting her white rockabilly quiff and cherry-red Doc Martens that, as far as I could ever tell, were never removed, stomping defiantly along the promenade. There was a metal-loving mate, who expanded my musical diet with servings of Alice in Chains and Nine Inch Nails. Then there was the county rugby player with movie-star looks who dated the poshest girl in school and whom, after his glittering career as the “Coolest Guy in School”, disappointedly became the branch manager of the local Sainsburys. Finally there was my then girlfriend for the better part of two years, whom my grandmother mistrusted entirely on account of her "crazy tights."

I attended my very first live concert with said old girlfriend, and her dangerous hosiery, to see The Cult at the Brighton Centre. Halfway through the set, the venue's soundboard blew and the band fell suddenly silent, except for Ian Astbury, who stepped forward with nothing but an acoustic guitar and his voice. He picked up a venue PA mic and sang a raw, stripped-down version of "Fire Woman." No lighting tricks, no polyphonic sound, just one man and one song. And five thousand people spellbound. It was, as they say, “a moment”. The kind that rearranges your insides, the kind that never leaves you.

Many more live shows followed: The Primitives and Primal Scream at The Escape Club. Inspiral Carpets, Squeeze and The Wedding Present at Top Rank. A Pogues gig so rowdy the police were called in to quell the mosh pit. I fell headfirst into live music, devouring every show I could afford, and mourning those I couldn’t, like Gary Numan or Japan, who had stopped touring before I was old enough to attend.

Then life happened. The big, sprawling, complicated bits: jobs, mortgages, relationships. Somewhere along the way, the gig-going stopped. What had once felt vital became a nostalgic footnote.

In 2009, my firm had a corporate box at the O2 Arena. Because most corporate types preferred a sporting event, there were always gig tickets floating around, unwanted. I began to claim them. Then I met a friend, who would become one of my best friends. First a client, then a co-conspirator. We bonded over guitars and cocktails, and soon we were mainlining Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Sabbath, and AC/DC together. The joy of live music came flooding back.

He often mocked my more eclectic musical leanings, notably in one memorable derision, my love for David Sylvian. I therefore made it my mission to expand his horizons and what followed was a glorious exchange of musical hostages. I dragged him to everything from ethereal pop to Japanese psych. He took me to metal pubs in Camden, where we once ended up drinking with one-fifth of Mötley Crüe. There were hits (Rival Sons, Kikagaku Moyo, Steven Wilson), and there were catastrophic misses (Perfume Genius, I’m still sorry). But what mattered was the time together, the dinners, the drinks, the music. The excuse to get out of the house and experience something extraordinary.

Early on in this journey there was a Nine Inch Nails gig, Trent Reznor introduced a special guest: Gary Numan. The synth messiah of my childhood. The one I'd never seen live. There he was, in the flesh, playing "Cars" and "Metal." My past collided with my present like a supernova. But something was missing, my oldest friend.

He and I had been friends since the blistering summer of ’76. I’d moved with my family from Liverpool to the Sussex coast, and we met in Mrs Bentham’s classroom. He lived in the next town over and, as it was the '70s, no one thought twice about teenager cycling four miles alone to see his best mate; the paedophiles were clearly less mobile in those days. We grew up with shared records, shared summers, shared everything. But after university, life took us in divergent directions.

Seeing Numan without him felt wrong, so I bought two tickets to his Troxy show in East London and rang him up. We went together. Our teenage hero, live. It wasn’t just a gig; it was a reconnection. A revival of friendship. A second act.

We began catching the bands we missed the first time around. Sharing records. Going to shows. Becoming the kind of friends who know exactly what to play on a road trip.

From 2014 to 2018, I went to one hundred and sixty-seven gigs. Forty-one of them in 2015 alone. I kept a journal of them all: notes, setlists, weird encounters. Even the bad gigs became stories worth telling. The shared experience was the thing.

Then, 2019: cancer. The gigs dropped from dozens to zero. I clawed my way back, got the all-clear in January 2020 and booked a concert for March. We all know what happened next. By 2022 we were out of our forced isolation, but life had also moved on, and the gig frequency dwindled. Then, in 2023, the ghost of the 2018 cancer reached out its thorny hands and in a final act of spite, had set the stage for heart failure. Another blow and more unwelcome medical intervention.

By 2024, something else occurred. My kids became young adults, and, through them, the music found its way back. They wanted in. I took my daughter to her first gig, then her second, then her third, same with my son. They became my new gig companions. The next generation of fans. The next chapter.

This isn’t just a collection of ticket stubs and scribbled notes. It’s a life, in setlists and decibels. These gigs are my timeline, my therapy, my heartbeats. Some nights changed everything. Some nights were just loud and daft. But they were ours. Me, my two best pals, friends I made along the way and then my kids. Each show another thread in the ever-growing tapestry of a life amplified.

That’s what live music does. It gives you moments. It gives you people. It gives you a reason to keep showing up. And for me, it brought everything back to life.  

Here are those stories.