Back in the day – the Desert Trip festival promises to be a musical nostalgia trip for baby boomersbadgreeb RECORDS

The Desert Trip festival this October promises to be a feast for those hungry for Baby Boomer nostalgia. The Palm Springs based event will star Sir Paul McCartney, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, and what remains of The Who and the Rolling Stones. The lead singers’ average age will be somewhere in the early 70s. The average attendee will likely be no more than 10 years younger – inevitable, given that tickets for the two iterations of the three-day festival range from individual day passes at £137 to luxury three-day passes for £1,107.

Although the headliners have not been the most prolific in the music world in recent years, this remains a remarkable array of talent. Equally remarkable is the fact that this generation of musicians – also featuring departed legends such as Hendrix, Joplin, Jim Morrison, John Lennon, and Keith Moon – can still fill the stage for a three-day festival some 40 years after its initial heyday. The repertoire of music on offer will likely date from that earlier period, too, as none of the acts have managed to make much of a dent on the charts this millennium. This lineup is not exactly Beyoncé and Kanye (unless he’s performing a cameo with McCartney) and their friends from the Top 40.

Despite the absence of much recent chart success, tickets for Desert Trip sold out in hours. This is a telling comment on our relationship with music and what it means to us and our parents and grandparents. The organisers of the festival have assembled many of the singers who provided the soundtrack to the baby boomers’ early lives, whether or not the attendees loved the music at the time. As we grow older, the sounds of our youth take on greater significance. Memories are conflated with music. Old music enables us to remember first loves, the songs that played on the radio as we made initial journeys behind the steering wheel, and allows wistful remembrances of our parents’ views of ‘obscene lyrics’ which our (now often absent) parents tried to forbid us from hearing. 

At its most powerful, live popular music can do even more, transcending time and space. It is hard not to be moved even now by the sheer pulsating braggadocio of Queen at Live Aid or the first moonwalk. These were artists at their zeniths. But even in their own (all-too-brief) lives thereafter, Mercury and Jackson were unable to live up to these initial heights: people now expected these things. The element of surprise was gone. A more modern example might be Beyoncé’s Single Ladies, which changed the rules for female musicians’ subject matter and music videos since. Queen Bey could easily live off the songs from I Am … Sasha Fierce for the rest of her days. Such performances would not be as unexpected or as breath-taking. To keep us excited, she creates anew.

Desert Trip goers aren’t looking for new excitement, however. It’s unlikely that many people will want to hear Waters sing much more than the best songs from Dark Side of the Moon. If Daltrey and Townsend, representing The Who, manage passable renditions of Baba O’Riley and My Generation (not necessarily a given, based on recent concert reviews), their generation will likely be happy that they made the journey. These performances, after all, are now tributes performed by some of the original artists. Perhaps this is not a bad thing. Disappointing as it may be for the still-productive vintage artist, long-time fans expect the old hits. Consider Rod Stewart’s and James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke last year, with Corden’s and the audience’s reactions to Stewart’s new work with A$AP Rocky paling in comparison with classics, regardless of musical quality.

So, this October, Mick Jagger’s renditions of Ruby Tuesday and Like A Rainbow are likely to sound reedier than in the early 1970s; Hey Jude will probably be nothing like as wonderful as when Harrison and Lennon were there, too. Those who travel to Palm Springs are unlikely to care. When I am their age in 2056, I hope Brandon Flowers and some palimpsest of The Killers will be around to remind me of all the things I couldn’t do in my early 20s to All These Things That I’ve Done, and that Taylor Swift will be peddling the song from her 2029 album to which I eventually lose my virginity somewhere (fingers crossed). The performances (of the songs, I mean) are unlikely to be as good as the first time round. It will still be nice to be taken back. 

I expect those who go to Palm Springs this autumn will feel the same – grateful, above all, for the opportunity to create one more musical memory while they and the artists are still able.