Springsteen 1 Arsenal 0

Tickets go on sale tomorrow morning for a couple of English gigs on Bruce Springsteen’s May 2008 Euro tour.

The London gig, at the Emirates stadium, new home of Arsenal, the Francophone African football franchise, was briefly tempting: I’ve a high regard for Bruce’s best work, notably Darkness and The Rising, and I’ve long wanted to catch him live.

Briefly? I was tempted for all of a minute – before reality kicked in.

Do I really want to spend a summer evening driving (very slowly) to the toilet known as inner North London to spend a couple of hours at a massed karaoke, surrounded by middle-aged beer-bellied drunks (and their boyfriends/partners/husbands), wearing dribble-stained black T-shirts, scruffy jeans and smelly trainers?

And pay well over £100 for two for the privilege?

Probably not: a stroll in the local blueball-carpeted beechwood seems infinitely more attractive.

Stadium rock – by anyone – just ain’t music for grown-ups.



Gerry Smith