PROFILE: THE SLANE CONCERT:ANYONE FOR the last of the VIP champagne reception tickets? The laws of crunchonomics dictate that while all the common-or-garden tickets for the Oasis gig at Slane Castle today sold out months ago there are still "VIP Garden Party" tickets available, writes BRIAN BOYD
These premium tickets – “with panoramic views of the site, VIP parking and access to every delicious treat your heart desires” – are €285 a pop (the general admission ticket is €76) and simply aren’t shifting as they should. Neither is the “VIP Upgrade Package” at €550, despite the offer of an on-site three-course gourmet dinner and a full complimentary bar.
When the Celtic Tiger was in full roar, these “VIP” packages were much loved by the corporate entertainment sector. You were removed from the teeming, beered-up masses below, you got to rub shoulders with RTÉ “personalities”. At the height of the boom, it wasn’t uncommon to see what passes for the great and the good in this country arrive to Slane by helicopter, clutching bottles of Moët & Chandon and talking loudly on their mobile phones throughout the headliner’s performance. And that was just the government ministers.
Today's Slane will be more of a "Dutch Gold" affair. In these straitened times, the breakfast roll is the new prawn sandwich and it's all gone a bit "buddy, can you spare me the price of a Frappuccino?" And no better band for it than Oasis. Despised by pious music bloggers and about as fashionable as a pint of Smithwick's, the Irish-Manchester band are the supreme beer-and-sing-along practitioners. There won't be any of the high camp theatrics of previous headliners such as Madonna, or the son et lumiereof a high-tech U2 show; this will be a straight-up, no-nonsense meat- and-two-veg rock'n'roll show. Pub-rock anthems will resound in the site's natural amphitheatre and the feel-good factor will be high. Right band, right place.
But then the Slane concerts have always had an eerie connection with the state of the nation. Henry Mountcharles’s castle is just a few miles upstream of the Battle of the Boyne site and the first ever Slane concert in August 1981 took place in the middle of the hunger strikes in the North.
With black flags in support of the prisoners much in evidence in the town of Slane, Mountcharles remembers the perception of him as an “Anglo-Irish West Brit” type organising a rock music event at a time when the country was being torn apart politically. He received hate mail and threatening phone calls for his actions and was once spat at in the face while at a function.
However the first Slane – with the then all-conquering local heroes Thin Lizzy headlining – was a triumph. Way down the supporting cast on the day was a Dublin four-piece band. The singer nervously introduced their first single with the words “We’d like to thank Philip Lynott for letting us open the show. We are a band from the northside of Dublin. We are called U2 and this is our first single. We hope you like it.”
Before Slane, the only Irish experience of the exotic “music festival” had been the Lisdoonvarna Festivals of the 1970s, but for the hipsters they didn’t really count as they were predominantly traditional music affairs.
If the first Slane was a somewhat home-grown affair, the following year Mountcharles put his picturesque castle on the international rock map by announcing The Rolling Stones as headliners.
Unlike now, at the time The Stones were still a vital recording force – they had just enjoyed huge success with their Tattoo Youalbum and still had a whiff of the bad boys of rock about them. To put their appearance in a field in Co Meath in context, this was at a time when if a band playing in The Baggot Inn in Dublin had the words "from London" in brackets after their name, it was enough to ensure a full house. Big name rock 'n' roll was something that happened in England, Europe and the States. Not in a small town lying between Navan and Drogheda.
For those who were there, The Stones gig was a dizzying entree into the adrenalin-rush of a live rock show. People talked expectantly about the show for months beforehand and then reminisced about it for months afterwards. We started to talk knowingly about “drugs”, “sex” and “backstage” and referred to the band members by their first name – as we were entitled to after sharing the same physical space as them for two hours.
It didn’t last – the following year Mountcharles was denied a licence to stage a show, so Slane moved to Phoenix Park where U2 stepped up as the headliners. But with everything back on track the next year Bob Dylan appeared – something we could now afford to be moderately cool and blasé about.
If you were to arrive at a consensus as to the best ever Slane gig (and there have been 20 of them over 28 years) it could only be Bruce Springsteen's debut Irish performance on June 1st 1985. With the Born in the U.S.A. album making him rock's hottest ticket that year, this was to be Springsteen's largest ever gig so far – with 90,000 in attendance. To date, it remains the only ever Slane show where no supporting cast was needed. Bruce and The E Street band were a full festival line-up in themselves.
Queen and David Bowie followed over the next two years but then it all went quiet for five years. But it didn’t really matter as at the end of the 1980’s, we were introduced to the three-day music festival, courtesy of the Féile shows in Semple Stadium, Thurles.
As commendably run as they were, these featured a mix-and-match line-up with no real superstar headlining act. In the space of four years, Slane had given us Dylan, Springsteen, Queen and Bowie – The Wonder Stuff, Ned’s Atomic Dustbin and The Mock Turtles at the Féile shows were really no substitute. Slane had given us ideas above our parochial island station.
THE SLANES OF THE 1990'Swere a bit like the Irish economy at the time – steady but not spectacular.
Guns ‘N’ Roses, R.E.M. and Neil Young were all fine and dandy but the attraction dimmed a bit when the main draws where The Verve and Robbie Williams. And when the anaemic rock-lite that is Bryan Adams pitched up in 2000, our attention had turned instead to the new-fangled Witnness rock festival (now known as Oxegen).
But Slane rallied with two emotionally-charged U2 shows within the space of a week in August 2001. Bono’s father’s funeral had taken place 24 hours before the first show.
The band were acutely aware that it was the 20th anniversary of their first ever Slane appearance. In acknowledgement of this, Bono introduced Out Of Controlwith the exact same words ("We'd like to thank Philip Lynott for letting us open the show . . .") he had used in 1981.
These two shows were to be Slane’s last big highlight. During this decade, Mountcharles has struggled for marquee names and by the time Electric Picnic had joined the festival fray in 2004 the squeeze for acts was on.
To make matters worse, the desperate throw of the dice that was Madonna in 2004 proved to be more trouble than it was worth.
No longer the only gig in town, and by no means a regular feature on the festival calendar, Slane works best when it can stage a spectacular – and however you stretch that term, a Stereophonics or a Verve simply don’t suffice. The event has learnt the hard way that no amount of window dressing (beefing up the supporting bill) can compensate for anything less than a stellar act.
Despite the competing attractions of Oxegen and Electric Picnic, Slane still has a place. Admittedly its best days were back in the 1980s when the combination of novelty, uniqueness and a real sense of event gave it an almost magical allure to a generation parched of the international rock-music experience. But it can reposition itself, trade on the goodwill it has built up and once again reach for the stars.
For successive generations it remains a rite of passage. Almost two million people have stood awe-struck in Mountcharles’s back garden eyeballing a rock legend for the first ever time and participating in something that they had only viscerally experienced on television before.
It’s true what they say: you always remember your first time.
CV: The Slane Concert
What is it:The 20th Slane Concert, taking place today with Oasis and a bunch of their rock 'n' roll mates playing in front of 80,000 people
Expect:So many young men in tracksuits the venue will resemble an Olympic village
Optional extra:The "I Hate Blur" t-shirt.
Whatever you do, don't:refer to Liam Gallagher as "Donatella" – the unwelcome nickname he's picked up since he launched his own "Pretty Green" clothing range last month.
Nice gesture:On many a childhood holiday in Ireland, the Gallagher brothers developed quite a fondness for our local delicacy known as the Brunch Bar (the ice cream bar that looks like someone has been sick over it). Feel free to lob a few of them on to the stage – but do consult your health and safety manual beforehand.