Aidan Smith: I'd stand next to a hedge-fund manager if I could be at Glasto

Think of something which sums up our lives then compared with now, which illustrates the joyous abandon that would result in a £200 fine if we were to repeat it today, and surely Glastonbury would be as good as any.

The last Glastonbury festival in 2019. When, in a post-Covid world, will we see the next one?

Now, think of something which begins small and edgy and modest regarding long-term prospects. Which becomes corporate and is invaded by the middle-classes, but no matter because not even glamping hedge-fund managers in Hunter wellies and boxfresh T-shirts bearing ironic death-metal slogans can ruin it. Which the marketing men boast has made us world leaders again. Which would definitely have to be represented in a time-capsule telling other worlds who we were, possibly using a clump of mud. Which previously you couldn’t ever have imagined not being in its usual place at the same time of year only right now you can’t see how it can possibly resume.

That’s Glastonbury again, of course, the music festival having just been cancelled for this year. Covid has done it down twice now and surely there must be some doubt about when it will return and even if it does what it will look like and whether the magic will have gone.

Sir Paul McCartney was due to headline last year, the event’s 50th anniversary, and was ready for 2021 as well. But we’re a long way from “When I’m Sixty-Four” and he’s a long way from the 24-year-old who wrote that song. If Glastonbury were to happen in 2022 and the festival took place over its traditional weekend then he’d have celebrated his 80th birthday just a few days before. Will we still need him by then, will we still feed him?

Will it be thumbs up from Macca for Glasto a few days after his 80th birthday?

Oh yes, I think we will. The great thing about wishing yourself enjoying live music once more is that you use the shuffle button in your memory to skip the experiences you might prefer to forget.

Queues, over-pricing, losing stuff, hunger, sunstroke, trench foot, assault and robbery, your tent being used as a loo, bad trips where you think your girlfriend has broken up with you, your girlfriend actually breaking up with you and what’s more during the song you thought would bind you together for ever - none of this will seem so tragic over the coming months as we near the festival season and it dawns that once again there won’t be one.

You will simply want to be back enjoying the music, no matter that your view of the stage is obscured by a sea of giant flags or a wanton exhibitionist in a bikini top jiggling about on her boyfriend’s shoulders for the benefit of the TV cameras. You wouldn’t mind this at all if somehow, some way, festivals and even gigs on the toilet circuit could beat the pandemic.

It’s not just Covid which is hitting the music industry. There’s Brexit and the strange disappearance of the once-mooted musicians’ passport for EU touring - freedom of movement was nixed by the UK despite us having the heritage, the bands and most to gain from it.

Well, what do you expect from the Tories? They don’t “get” popular music and mostly the feeling is mutual. You’ve got to wonder how the xx, once the coolest band in Britain, received the news that David Cameron liked to snuggle on the sofa with his wife to their minimalist electronica. It can’t be entirely coincidental that they haven’t released an album in four years. For a long time it seemed the only remotely chart-bothering performer they could persuade to attend their election rallies was Lynsey de Paul. Surely even she must have thought once or twice of telling them: “No, honestly.”

It’s frightening to think what the post-Covid, post-Brexit musical landscape might look like if there’s to be no respite soon. When the wreckage of so many ruined acts clears, who would be left standing? Maybe De Paul, Gary Barlow, Coldplay, Mumford & Sons and all those posh popsters who don’t need to tour overmuch because they have trust funds and kale-farming brothers they can tap as well as sisters in fashion PR, ya.

Oh and not forgetting Nathan Evans. He’s the Airdrie postman who sings sea shanties and, having ridden the waves of Tik Tok fame, has given up the day job to sign a record deal. Can he take a ditty about an elusive whale to the top of the charts? If a Nottingham couple and their young son can score three Christmas No 1s with different songs inspired by the humble sausage roll, you wouldn’t bet against it.

None of this is exactly Eleanor Rigby or Blackbird or For No One or Yesterday. I’m not sure if Macca should really be doing Glasto at the age of 80 - with the greatest of respect, sir, your voice is not the beautiful thing it once was - but I want to be there, having always promised myself a trip.

I’ve been warming up for this for a while, scoring a near-perfect attendance record at T in the Park before Scotland’s it sadly ended. With live music under threat even the grim bits - the rain, the Scottish bands who forever sang about rain, the clapped-out buses, the Buckfast-fuelled toerags who stormed the fences - no longer seem quite so bad when rewound in the mind.

It was some years at T before I plucked up the courage to venture into the Slam Tent, the gigantic, wobbly blue cathedral of rave. Standing up the back, arms firmly crossed, an out-of-her-tree young hedonist approached to inquire: “Ur you a cop or summat?” At the time that was embarrassing; now I view it as a special moment to be cherished.

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