The sun is going down on the Glastonbury golden oldie – we may never see Elton’s like again

On the final morning of this year’s Glastonbury festival, a 74-year-old man with white hair and a wobbly voice gazed out at the crowd and sang a bittersweet song called “Oh Very Young”. It was a song that the artist then known as Cat Stevens (now Yusuf) had written when he was just 24, assuming the gentle wisdom of age to remind his angst-ridden heart that “you’re only dancing on this Earth for a short time” and that most of us will outlive the intense dreams and convictions of youth.

Yet this was a festival whose most intensely emotional moments came courtesy of septuagenarian artists – including Elton John and Debbie Harry. None of them still burn with the fierce (often troubled) fire that powered them up the charts in the 1960s and on into the 1980s, but they still pack a punch. Elton brought a joyful sense of occasion to the day. Yes, he’s lost some top notes and consonants, but his voice has gained a rolling ballast. The bombproof melodies he wrote for Bernie Taupin’s words created solid foundations our collective past – perfectly engineered landmarks of nostalgia that we can really lean on. Harry’s voice no longer crackled with Atomic cool but, like Stevens, they bashed generously through a staggering number of singalong hits that struck powerful chords deep within an audience whose average age is now 45 (compared to 26 back in 1997).

I’m in my forties too. My cool older cousins first played me Blondie on vinyl. My dad sang me Cat Stevens songs as lullabies. He played Elton John in the car. All those songs are in my bones, and though my generation expressed contempt for all such dad rock at our indie discos, we are also the generation that went on to embrace our guilty pleasures in our twenties. More recently, we packed cinemas to watch biopics resurrecting the cache of the once sniffed-at Queen, Elton John and Whitney Houston.

Our own kids have grown up loving it all, eschewing the genre tribalism of the Eighties and Nineties. If you could go back in time and tell my 18-year-old self that I’d one day have children who’d beg me to get them Rick Astley’s autograph, I’d have seriously considered a vow of celibacy. But the 57-year-old former tea boy from Stock Aitken & Waterman’s cheesy ole Hit Factory was widely proclaimed to have “won Glastonbury” this year by teaming up with Blossoms to deliver a glorious set of Smiths covers.

Gen X could surely never have imagined a world in which our beloved Morrissey would be cancelled, and we’d welcome karaoke versions of his intellectually snooty songs delivered by a commercial pop puppet. But the performance racked up five-star reviews across the board: “A guilty pleasure without the guilt,” swooned the Daily Telegraph’s critic.

But then, pop festivals have always upturned the rules of regular society. They’re like the forests in Shakespeare plays where dukes can become servants and girls assume the authority of boys. So at Glastonbury there was a truce in the culture wars. Gen Z found themselves applauding the sounds of boomers, and the boomers performed without entitlement or sneering. They’ve all been through periods of dialling it in, after all. With decades of shows under their belts, that’s inevitable.

When I interviewed Debbie Harry during lockdown, she admitted that she missed the challenge of winning over a hostile crowd. When she first snarled into a microphone at New York’s legendary CBGB club, she struggled to make herself heard over the smoky hubbub. She told me she now feels sad that crowds cheer as soon as she walks on stage, rather than in response to anything she has done. She misses shocking people, and said she toyed with the idea of walking on stage naked to feel the old punk thrill again. But as she prowled the Pyramid Stage this summer in her mirrored visor and boots, Harry was clearly a ball again.

Watching on the TV I was forced to ask myself: is this actually any good? Or are people just happy with these songs because they know them? The answer is that I can’t imagine anyone wanting to play a recording of the Glasto boomer sets again.

But in the live moment, there was a communion.

Listening to Yusuf lament the passing of passions that “will vanish away like your dad’s best jeans”, I found myself wondering if this will keep happening once the boomers are all gone. Will my kids be watching the likes of Beyonce and Eminem in the legends slot in their forties? I hope so.

Every year I go on holiday with a large group of old friends and their families. On Saturday night the guitars come out, and we all carol our way through Blur’s “Country House”, Pulp’s “Common People” and Oasis’ “Wonderwall”. Our kids roll their eyes, but usually end up joining in. We’re only dancing on this Earth for a short time, after all.