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My Generation
Aug. 2nd, 2010 02:35 pmI may have been to a couple of gigs in my early teens, but the first one which sticks in my memory was on September 18 1971, at the Oval Cricket Ground. It was a glorious day and my favourite band — The Who — were headlining.
To be honest, the bands during the day were not that spectacular in terms of the Birks taste of the time (or, TBH, the Birks taste today, although I have a certain respect for Ian Hunter, still starting fights at the age of 71): Lindisfarne, Quintessence, Mott The Hoople, America and Atomic Rooster.
But the main support was The Faces -- when my main knowledge was still of The Small Faces and Rod Stewart was yet to reach major fame — and the headlining band was The Who. That alone was enough for the £1 entrance fee (the Surrey web site claims that it was £1.25 -- but I thought that was for the folowing year, which featured Focus, Argent, Genesis, ELP and Wishbone Ash).
The photographs of the time show what a long-lost era it now is. The police didn't want to know, so Geoffrey Howard, a 50ish old-school-tie type nearly always to be seen in a blazer, tie and elegant silk handkerchief over "respectable" trousers and smart black lace-ups, had to book Hells Angels to handle the security. Hard to believe that this was allowed only two years after Monterey, but my recollection of the event was that there wasn't any trouble. A lot of hippies and long-hairs, quite a few stoned people and at least one guy definitely on acid (I would contend that you can't freak out to Quintessence unless you are on some particularly powerful form of Lysergic acid diethylamide).
When you see films of London in the 1960s, and when you listen to the commentary of the Caribbean immigrants, the one constant is how the place seems to have been constructed in black and white. It's in that context that I recall how events like this propelled me further into the new era. I guess that it had started, politically, in 1968, and I remember Woodstock (1969) in hindsight rather than at the time. The same goes for the Isle of Wight Festival of 1970 (IOW was far more important than the rather weedy Glastonbury, launched in the same year). I remember buying the "Tracks" albums for 99p, which featured one artist on one side and another artist on the other. The ones that I bought (I wish that I had bought them all and kept them all in mint condition) featured The Who on Side One and Hendrix on Side 2. But I didn't listen to the Hendrix sides, even though I recall "vaguely liking" All Along The Watchtower and Hey Joe. Didn't like Purple Haze.
Of course, in a sense, this was a sign of my musical taste to be. Hendrix was an inspiration for what was to become Rock and Heavy Metal, and I became gradually more disillusioned with the Rock side, the Hippie side and the Prog-Rock side. There wasn't much "pop" from 1971 to 1976, and during this time it's hard to recall precisely what I DID listen to. ELP, and eventually Bruce Springsteen, plus Pink Floyd. Steve Harley, Sparks, some ELO. But the major names of the era -- Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac, Genesis, Yes, all left me cold. I began to wonder whether pop music had passed me by, and whether I should start listening to more classical stuff. And, indeed, that was what I did.
It wasn't helped by the Radio of the era. Radio One had rapidly deteriorated into the DJ as superstar. Radio Two remained in its "Two-Way Family Favourites" style. Capital was launched in 1974, and was the best of a bad bunch. I should have listened to more student radio, but, to be honest, the students playing stuff hardly had taste in the mode of John Peel. Indeed, neither did John Peel, who was still wrapped up in a whole bunch of hippie-prog-rock tosh.
++
And so, I was thinking of all this as I looked at Aon's recent item on "expectations for retirement" throughout the EU.
I'm not that keen on this kind of survey, to be honest. Asking people what they are worried about when retirement eventually comes is less effective than asking people who have already retired what worries them every morning, now that retirement has actually come.
But there were still a few snippets of interest. One of them (and this is by-the-by) was asking whether people were worried about a loss of status/self-esteem. This got a relatively low response compared with stuff like "having enough to live on", "health" "inflation" and "the mortgage". But, while 10% of people in the UK, Ireland, Spain and Germany were worried about a loss of status, this concerned only 2% of people in France. Only the Netherlands came close (3%).
+++
A more significant factor in terms of demographics was that only about half of people in Ireland, Germany and the UK want to stay in their own country when they retire. I'll admit that the Irish one rather surprised me. Clearly the high PR campaign for the place over here is not working so well with the people already over there, who are nearly as unhappy with where they live as we are.
Contrariwise, the people happiest with where they live are in Spain, France and Denmark, with between 80% and 90% of nationals wanting to stay in their own country. There's no mention of demographic shifts within countries, though.
And Spain and France are also, unsurprisingly, popular destinations for retirees-to-be from other countries, with Spain by far the most popular.
This, as Aon observes, spells bad news for Spain, which is already creaking under the most generous state pension arrangements in the EU. If it gets an unduly elderly population, combined with an unduly generous pension system for the Spanish who retire, the only options would appear to be a begging bowl to the rest of the EU to pay for all the elderly people sitting in crumbling beach-side apartments, or a campaign to bring in more young people to make up for the demographic imbalance.
On the other hand, there's a plus side for Spain. If people retire to Spain and if they have enough to live on, that works as a stimulus for the Spanish economy, because effectively it transfers cash from the retiree's previous country (UK, Ireland, Germany) to the retiree's current country (Spain).
Muind you, it will be fun to see 90-year-old Germans and English having a spat about putting towels down on the pool-side recliners the night before...
+++
One final thought on the European economy. In 2002 there were about €30bn in €500 notes in circulation. Now there's €285bn. That's €235bn in "free money" for the EU. Most of which is, as we know, used for illegal financial transactions. The EU can't afford to withdraw the €500 note, because it really needs to remain the drug-dealers' currency of choice.
_____________
To be honest, the bands during the day were not that spectacular in terms of the Birks taste of the time (or, TBH, the Birks taste today, although I have a certain respect for Ian Hunter, still starting fights at the age of 71): Lindisfarne, Quintessence, Mott The Hoople, America and Atomic Rooster.
But the main support was The Faces -- when my main knowledge was still of The Small Faces and Rod Stewart was yet to reach major fame — and the headlining band was The Who. That alone was enough for the £1 entrance fee (the Surrey web site claims that it was £1.25 -- but I thought that was for the folowing year, which featured Focus, Argent, Genesis, ELP and Wishbone Ash).
The photographs of the time show what a long-lost era it now is. The police didn't want to know, so Geoffrey Howard, a 50ish old-school-tie type nearly always to be seen in a blazer, tie and elegant silk handkerchief over "respectable" trousers and smart black lace-ups, had to book Hells Angels to handle the security. Hard to believe that this was allowed only two years after Monterey, but my recollection of the event was that there wasn't any trouble. A lot of hippies and long-hairs, quite a few stoned people and at least one guy definitely on acid (I would contend that you can't freak out to Quintessence unless you are on some particularly powerful form of Lysergic acid diethylamide).
When you see films of London in the 1960s, and when you listen to the commentary of the Caribbean immigrants, the one constant is how the place seems to have been constructed in black and white. It's in that context that I recall how events like this propelled me further into the new era. I guess that it had started, politically, in 1968, and I remember Woodstock (1969) in hindsight rather than at the time. The same goes for the Isle of Wight Festival of 1970 (IOW was far more important than the rather weedy Glastonbury, launched in the same year). I remember buying the "Tracks" albums for 99p, which featured one artist on one side and another artist on the other. The ones that I bought (I wish that I had bought them all and kept them all in mint condition) featured The Who on Side One and Hendrix on Side 2. But I didn't listen to the Hendrix sides, even though I recall "vaguely liking" All Along The Watchtower and Hey Joe. Didn't like Purple Haze.
Of course, in a sense, this was a sign of my musical taste to be. Hendrix was an inspiration for what was to become Rock and Heavy Metal, and I became gradually more disillusioned with the Rock side, the Hippie side and the Prog-Rock side. There wasn't much "pop" from 1971 to 1976, and during this time it's hard to recall precisely what I DID listen to. ELP, and eventually Bruce Springsteen, plus Pink Floyd. Steve Harley, Sparks, some ELO. But the major names of the era -- Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac, Genesis, Yes, all left me cold. I began to wonder whether pop music had passed me by, and whether I should start listening to more classical stuff. And, indeed, that was what I did.
It wasn't helped by the Radio of the era. Radio One had rapidly deteriorated into the DJ as superstar. Radio Two remained in its "Two-Way Family Favourites" style. Capital was launched in 1974, and was the best of a bad bunch. I should have listened to more student radio, but, to be honest, the students playing stuff hardly had taste in the mode of John Peel. Indeed, neither did John Peel, who was still wrapped up in a whole bunch of hippie-prog-rock tosh.
++
And so, I was thinking of all this as I looked at Aon's recent item on "expectations for retirement" throughout the EU.
I'm not that keen on this kind of survey, to be honest. Asking people what they are worried about when retirement eventually comes is less effective than asking people who have already retired what worries them every morning, now that retirement has actually come.
But there were still a few snippets of interest. One of them (and this is by-the-by) was asking whether people were worried about a loss of status/self-esteem. This got a relatively low response compared with stuff like "having enough to live on", "health" "inflation" and "the mortgage". But, while 10% of people in the UK, Ireland, Spain and Germany were worried about a loss of status, this concerned only 2% of people in France. Only the Netherlands came close (3%).
+++
A more significant factor in terms of demographics was that only about half of people in Ireland, Germany and the UK want to stay in their own country when they retire. I'll admit that the Irish one rather surprised me. Clearly the high PR campaign for the place over here is not working so well with the people already over there, who are nearly as unhappy with where they live as we are.
Contrariwise, the people happiest with where they live are in Spain, France and Denmark, with between 80% and 90% of nationals wanting to stay in their own country. There's no mention of demographic shifts within countries, though.
And Spain and France are also, unsurprisingly, popular destinations for retirees-to-be from other countries, with Spain by far the most popular.
This, as Aon observes, spells bad news for Spain, which is already creaking under the most generous state pension arrangements in the EU. If it gets an unduly elderly population, combined with an unduly generous pension system for the Spanish who retire, the only options would appear to be a begging bowl to the rest of the EU to pay for all the elderly people sitting in crumbling beach-side apartments, or a campaign to bring in more young people to make up for the demographic imbalance.
On the other hand, there's a plus side for Spain. If people retire to Spain and if they have enough to live on, that works as a stimulus for the Spanish economy, because effectively it transfers cash from the retiree's previous country (UK, Ireland, Germany) to the retiree's current country (Spain).
Muind you, it will be fun to see 90-year-old Germans and English having a spat about putting towels down on the pool-side recliners the night before...
+++
One final thought on the European economy. In 2002 there were about €30bn in €500 notes in circulation. Now there's €285bn. That's €235bn in "free money" for the EU. Most of which is, as we know, used for illegal financial transactions. The EU can't afford to withdraw the €500 note, because it really needs to remain the drug-dealers' currency of choice.
_____________
