I remember this day like it was yesterday.
It was my last few weeks at art college, I bought tickets for me and three mates who said they would definately go, only for two of them to bottle out AFTER I got the tickets ('it's too far...no money...I've got to work in the morning'. Pathetic.)
I spent the morning touting my spares outside the gate. All I wanted was face value. I couldn't believe how long it took to get rid of them, especially when I think back to how this day is now the stuff of rock legend.
Few top memories in order they happened: Billy Bragg having a handbag moment because of relentless lobbing of piss-bottles; Amazement at how, what you think is an immovable, packed human mass, CAN move VERY quickly outwards in a neat radial pattern from pissed Glaswegian puking on his boots - from the stage it must have looked like some freaky human crop-circle formation - I think the Ramones were playing, so I'm not sure they would have noticed. I try not to think about his pal who then picked bits out of the vom, putting them in his mouth; Trainload singing '40' all the way to London, a mob still singing '40' as we walked across town to Waterloo, and still singing '40' as we waited forever for the next train heading in the general direction of Hampshire.
Epilogue. Twenty years on and I'm still best of pals with the mate who came with me. We were reminiscing about Longest Day the other week on a camping holiday in the New Forest with our own families, kids, etc.
We may get old, but rock and rolll never dies....

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