This morning, over breakfast, in the course of discussing the week’s news, I happened to say the word “Coachella” in front of my two scornful 11-year-olds, whose heads snapped up from their screens in unison. “How have you heard of Coachella?” said one in amazement. “How have you heard of Coachella?” I replied. They exchanged a look with which I’ve become increasingly familiar – namely, the “here we go” look reserved by the very young for the very middle-aged. “What is Coachella, then?” I said, to which they replied: “It’s where influencers go.”
This is, of course, an accurate summary of what the California music and arts festival has become in the 27 years since its inception, but that’s not why I bring it up. The festival, which is running this week, has featured by Jack White, FKA Twigs and Sabrina Carpenter, but most of the publicity has gone on the audience; specifically, on the attendance of Justin Trudeau, the former prime minister of Canada, who, along with his girlfriend, Katy Perry, was photographed dancing to Justin Bieber and squatting chairless on a kerb, red plastic cups perched on their knees.
It’s that photo of Trudeau in college-age uniform – scruffy jeans, white T-shirt and a baseball cap worn backwards in what looks to me like a definite reach for a modern-day JFK Jr vibe (good luck with that, Trudeau!) – that invites us to consider the relationship of middle-aged people to music festivals and conclude that, at some point, perhaps the dignified thing is to call it a day.
Do you worry about staying hydrated? Do you co-host an investment podcast while giving serious thought to which Amex card generates the most points? (Avios over Platinum for ever!) Did you pay more than $2,000 for your ticket, then turn up in a climate-controlled RV before putting on your “festival wardrobe” to go out looking for twentysomethings to brush past slightly too closely? Then maybe, just maybe, you might think about leaving the scene to the enjoyment of young people.
I’m talking more about middle-aged men than women here, since it’s a specific kind of man who turns up at Coachella to express his anxieties about middle age. In the case of Trudeau, who is 54, attending a music festival obviously comes a distant second to “dating Katy Perry” as an expression of midlife crisis. Nonetheless, he is part of the general influx of tech, finance and business bros who have plugged the annual music festival into their calendars, driving up ticket prices and injecting a certain narrow-eyed, lizardy energy into the scene. These people are, of course, perfectly entitled to enjoy popular music. But glancing at the photo of Trudeau and Perry or, in years past at Coachella, Danny DeVito, often pictured backstage, it’s hard not to feel one’s spirits sink.
To be fair to Trudeau, it may be that some of this recoil has to do with the reputation of his 41-year-old girlfriend, widely considered to be out of touch and facing her own problems this week having to deny an accusation of sexual assault by the actor Ruby Rose. I wouldn’t want to run into Katy Perry at my local Co-op, let alone an event I’d paid hundreds of dollars to attend.
I’m also aware of the argument furthered by veteran festival-goers who return to Glastonbury every year and have been taking their kids since they were four years old. I tip my hat to these people, and would be one of them if I didn’t hate tents and milling about. Clearly, people like this should carry on doing the things that they love until they drop dead. Plus, it’s likely that I shouldn’t be expressing an opinion about any of this given that, while making the packed lunches this morning, I was happily listening to the soundtrack to The Phantom of the Opera.
Anyway, it’s not those people I’m talking about; it’s the ones who only started going to Coachella when they hit 50 and who fail to understand that, if you have to consult the Reddit thread, “Am I too old for Coachella?”, then the answer is probably yes. Consider the following: you’ll get stuck in the Uber line trying to get out and need the loo for four hours. You’ll be too hot. You’ll have to sit on a kerb. And a lot of it will go over your head.
When I asked my 11-year-olds what it was about Coachella content this week that caught their eye, they said – and I had to write this down verbatim after getting them to repeat it several times – “Carter Kench dressed up as an actual pinky, then got a shout out from Katseye on stage!!” Then they both laughed like this was the funniest thing that had ever been said. No? Me neither. In which case, we should probably stay out of it.
