Sex and drugs and rock and hair rollers

Aug 29 2008 by Peter Elson, Liverpool Daily Post

A FRIEND recently bemoaned the fact her mother didn't let her grow up gradually, or let her “find herself” in the modern parlance.

She said that adulthood and responsibility were thrust upon her all too soon, without any adolescent waywardness being allowed to creep in.

She couldn't slam doors, sleep till lunchtime or grunt incoherently to all and sundry.

I reminded her that her formative years were the early 1950s, well before the concept of the teenager was invented. In those days, it was quite normal to leave school one day, as a child, and start work the next, as an adult.

Hey presto! The pupil had grown up overnight with no adolescent angst getting in the way – or even worse, with the compulsion to listen to loud rock music morning, noon and night.

For though I think looking back continually to “the good old days” can be quite negative, I do give thanks in my own background for the lack of an ambient noise in my habitat which sounded like someone was building a shed via the stereo.

Today's teens are obliged to like pounding rock music, evidenced by the numbers who herd towards summer music festivals at the drop of a 20 tonne amplifier.

This summer's offerings – Glastonbury, the V Festival and T in the Park – have all enticed today's kids with the promise of a pounding beat and £10 beefburgers.

My 16-year-old has just returned from the Leeds Festival. He spent four nights under canvas and lived on cereal bars and live atmosphere.

Someone kindly used his training shoes as a toilet and left the mark of Zorro on his friend's tent. This nylon pod had more slashes than Harrod's sale by the end of the jamboree.

In the densely packed audiences, plastic bottles of unidentified substances were hurled forward into the crowd and kids were fainting from having to stand for 12 hours to wait for their favourite band.

But it was all worth it, I was told, to see and hear your heroes break the sound barrier in their 15-minute set.

Thank goodness I'm not young and have to pretend to like this malarkey. I was always 15 going on 47 and have never liked roughing it.

On one school camp when we were told to take something that heats up quickly for breakfast, I packed my Carmen rollers.

My only experience of a concert was seeing the former lead singer of the group Genesis, Peter Gabriel, perform at the Liverpool Empire in 1978.

So timid were the teenagers of that era that we all sat down and clapped politely at the end of each song.

And what's more, we could all retire at the end to suburbia and emerge in the morning with perfectly curled hair. How rock and roll is that?