CRAIG BROWN'S big night out with Bruce Spring-screen

My big night out with Bruce Spring-screen: CRAIG BROWN’S trip to one of The Boss’s concerts reveals how everything in modern life has to be watched on a phone or TV

At the end of the last century, Private Eye magazine published a cartoon showing a father and son watching a football match.

The boy had made a rectangular shape with his fingers and was peering through it. ‘If you do this, it’s almost as good as watching it on television,’ he says.

Like many good cartoons, this one was prophetic. Twenty-five years later, we all seem to prefer looking at life through screens, rather than directly. Our need for screens is evident on streets and in cafes and trains: rather than look at our surroundings, or even at the person we are with, most of us opt to stare at our phone screens.

I don’t have a mobile, so for most of the time, I am able to resist the lure of the screen. But when visiting people in hospital, I have noticed, to my shame, that if there is a TV screen around, my eyes drift away from the poor patient to any-old daytime programme, however daft.

A week or two ago, a friend took me to one of Bruce Springsteen’s concerts in Hyde Park. These days, rock concerts impose a more complex and intransigent class hierarchy than the court of Queen Victoria, though now it’s based on wealth rather than on social position.

A week or two ago, a friend took me to one of Bruce Springsteen’s concerts in Hyde Park

The most lowly — other, of course, than those who couldn’t afford it at all — are in the general admission status, standing hundreds of yards from the stage.

Then come those still standing, but a bit closer to the stage, followed by those who still have to stand, but on a tiered platform, raised slightly higher.

At the top there are various strata of ‘VIP’, though it would take the rock equivalent of an etiquette expert to explain the exact order of precedence — ‘Gold Circle’, ‘Diamond VIP View’, ‘The All VIP Terrace’, ‘American Express VIP Summer Garden’, ‘VIP Hydeaway’ and so on.

My well-connected friend had secured us tickets in the grandest area of all, one that offered not only ‘a dedicated VIP entrance’ and a ‘VIP laminate and lanyard for each guest’, but also proper seats, ‘restroom facilities’ and a bar. For those, like me, who couldn’t be bothered to walk a few yards, a waiter served trays of delicious food and drinks at our seats. I’m sure for those rich enough, the promoters would save you the bother of watching the concert by employing someone to watch it for you.

Strangely enough, even from this, the equivalent of the Royal Enclosure at Ascot, it would have needed binoculars to make out who was who. From where we were sitting, Bruce was about the size of a toenail, distinguishable from the rest of his band only because he tended to be out in front.

Of course, we were all watching him on the vast screens to either side of the stage. This meant that all but a handful of the audience — those standing closest to the stage — were not really watching the concert but a live film of it

Of course, we were all watching him on the vast screens to either side of the stage. This meant that all but a handful of the audience — those standing closest to the stage — were not really watching the concert but a live film of it.

Every now and then I would glance at the tiny figures onstage, just to check that Bruce and the E Street Band were still there, and the organisers weren’t just screening old footage from the past.

I should add that, as screened concerts go, it was excellent. Springsteen and his band are every bit as good as their reputation suggests: passionate, tight, good-hearted and with no hint of the trotted-out tribute band that besets so many vintage performers. They played each of their classics with amazing energy, as if for the first time.

But it still seems to me that the little boy at the soccer match in that old Private Eye cartoon was ahead of his time. These days, we are all drawn to watching things on a screen, rather than direct, and we are happy to be charged for the privilege.

A great many people — even those quite close to the stage — were filming the screens on their mobile phones. It was as if they were guarding themselves against the impact of real life. Later, they could watch a pocket-sized Bruce Springsteeen in the comfort of their own homes, and reminisce about the time they saw him live. Or almost live.

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