WHO will be the first rock star to qualify for a bus pass? Not as silly a question as one would think. Listing the mature years of various rock stars brings home the meaning of ageing like little else.
Different things appear from time to time to signify the ageing process. For example, you can't blow out the candles on the birthday cake or you start to call everyone "dear".
But to hear that rock stars, such as David Bowie or Mick Jagger, whose careers are predicated on ideas of youth and virility, are now 50 and 54 respectively, seems to bring the point home with alarming certainty. This usually brings on vicious bouts of depression in the middleaged.
They might be less depressed if they consider the chemical intakes of some of these stars and the possibility that if you dropped some of them in water they would dissolve like an aspirin.
Land of Nostalgia
However, the news that pop musicians are now approaching their 60s will prompt many to spend time in the land of nostalgia. People will no doubt remember meeting their wife and husband while listening to I can't get no satisfaction. They might also remember the miniskirts, kaftans and psychedelic escapism of the period and reflect that it is all beginning to seem like a long time ago.
For younger people, including myself, such panic attacks are mostly unknown. But when you casually read that U2, the band which has defined a generation for good or ill, are nearly 40 and have reached their 20th anniversary as a band, you could be forgiven for breaking out in a distraught sweat. Their 20th anniversary has been marked by gushing pieces from music critics identifying their favourite Bsides and quasi religious lyrics.
With a big world tour just started and, according to newspaper reports $30 million each for the taking, most people will have forgotten where this whole phenomenon sprang from.
Do they remember that U2 were plucked from what came to be known as "Dublin the city of a thousand bands". This city was an amoral jungle full of strokers and hustlers, certainly not an easy ride for any bunch of youngsters trying to get their faces on Top of the Pops.
Spoiling Tactics
The best way to acquire fame was often by using dirty tricks or as various scheming managers (are they ever anything else in pop folklore) would say slightly more politely - spoiling tactics.
One "trick" was used if a rival band got a "gig" in the venue your band wanted. You made a quick call to the promoter and impersonating your rivals, said: "Sorry, we can't make it tonight, our drummer has burst a blood vessel." Bingo. A few minutes later you can walk in and offer your own bands services for the night.
I did not engage in such activity, but had to survive amid this competitive clamour.
Bands found numerous ways to get ahead apart from playing better music. Loan faulty equipment to another band or pour beer into their amplifiers.
It is a different scene now - with the Department of Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht writing up policy documents designed to produce U2s on a grand scale.
U2's relationship with the Irish public has changed, and changed again, over the 20 years. First, U2 appeared on television - Gay Byrne invited them on to the Late, Late Show Unlike the previous bands and artists which young Irish people liked Rory Gallagher, Horselips etc - this meant U2 became known to the parents of their fans. In these initial years U2 were the object of low level parental disapproval, but it did not last.
Backlash
Bono talking politics did not irritate the parents of middle class Ireland, but instead made them think he was a nice sensible young man who was friendly with Dr Garret FitzGerald. It was not long before the U2 backlash of the late 1980s.
This backlash which no longer seems modish, was a period when young Irish people fell out of love with U2. This, as is normal, was not reflected in record sales which were always stable, but in the usual "sell out" jibe that was laid at the band. Yes, in this period they did make some preposterous music, most of it on an over blown record called Rattle and Hum.
But this was not their ultimate crime. Their crime was that they were too well known, selling too many records.
The other factor was that young people were now turning to the modern dance music of the rave club, where the most unfashionable things are politics and guitars - both intrinsic to U2.
The backlashers had their favourite list of U2 faux pas. These included making an "on the road" film, visiting Elvis's home at Graceland and going to Bosnia. U2 had become desperately "uncool".
Come Full Circle
But now the whole thing has come full circle as the band start to find a few more grey hairs. Older people dislike the new songs, like Discotheque, which to their less adaptable ears sounds like a frightened bird being swirled around inside a cement mixer. Younger people, who embrace the idea of dance culture with eagerness, have become curious again, evidenced by the amount of clubs which now play the new U2 album.
As for their promised appearance at the Phoenix Park this summer, the more generous Dub liners will have no problem with the concert being held at the site. Readers who heard a Dublin City councillor recently might not believed this. He said that the concert would mean courting by fans "here, there and everywhere".
Not only would this pose a moral danger he implied, but the same couples might fall into the quarry which is situated in the park. None of this was a problem during the visit of Pope John Paul, the meeting was told.
Many would say that even the understandable dangers inherent in courting couples and their possible disappearance into quarries, should not stop the event going ahead.