The middle-aged music lover’s guide to gigs

‘Cloakrooms are for mugs. Avoid them at all costs’ - Janne Iivonen

It’ll be a familiar feeling to every music fan over the age of 40. There you are, enjoying a rock or pop concert by one of your favourite artists, when you look around and realise you’re surrounded by young people. People with hairlines and energy levels you can only dream of. People wearing clothes that you’d look ridiculous in, if – that is – they’d fit you in the first place. People exuding the ineffable zest of youth in the way they dance and communicate.

So what should you do? Should you slope off and give up going to gigs, reluctantly accepting that the generational baton has been passed? Should you hell. You must embrace the fact that you are a middle-aged music-lover.

Although the typical age of a UK concert-goer is between 18 and 35, more than a third of people over the age of 50 go to more music festivals today than when they were younger, according to research by Saga. Live music is thriving among people who remember when Top of the Pops mattered and for whom streaming was something their nose did into a hanky. But there are rules. These guidelines exist partly to help you maximise comfort levels, and partly to stop you looking ridiculous. Here, then, is our essential guide to gig-going for middle-aged music-lovers in 2025.

Jump to:

• Best venues
• What to take
• Where to sit or stand
• How to dress
• What to eat and drink
• Gig etiquette

Best venues

When it comes to big arenas and stadiums anywhere, none are perfect and all come with trade-offs. The sound and spectacle of mega-gigs in places like Manchester’s Co-op Live or Wembley Stadium can be phenomenal. The issues – queues, delays – tend to come with your arrival and departure. Leaving is the worst. To avoid being kettled for hours by security outside the nearest transport hub after a show, always always leave two minutes before the encore ends. It makes all the difference.

Always leave two minutes before the end to avoid the queues to leave - Janne Iivonen

The dopamine hit of walking straight onto a train post-concert is way more powerful than staying to watch a confetti cannon explode while your sweaty heroes take a bow, and I fully appreciate how old that makes me sound. Oasis fans in particular take note. Wembley Way after this summer’s reunion shows will be the seventh circle of drunken hell.

As a 50-year-old man and an experienced gig-goer, there are three venues that I find unbeatable when it comes to ease and comfort.

1. Hammersmith Apollo, London W6

It’s almost perfect. The seats in its balcony circle are comfy with ample leg room. There isn’t really a bad seat in the house. The stalls below are often seated too but if they’re not, the sloping floor affords good views. The bar areas at the Apollo are spacious and plush. The Art Deco venue was fantastically renovated in 2013 so before the band comes on you can marvel at the ornate plasterwork and 1930s décor. Plus, the well-served Hammersmith tube station is two minutes away. A gem.

2. The Royal Albert Hall, London SW7

The other phenomenal venue is the Royal Albert Hall, also in London. Comfortable, cosy and steeped in history, it’s a peach of a concert hall. The seats in its stalls even swivel, so you can face the stage wherever you’re sitting.

3. G Live, Guildford GU1 2AA

The venue itself is clean and efficient, but what I really like about this medium-sized concert hall is its ease of access. It’s minutes from the A3 – London one end, Portsmouth the other – and you can park outside. I once saw Roger Taylor from Queen perform here and was tucked up in bed 90 minutes later with A Kind of Magic ringing in my ears.

What to take

Travel light

The first rule of attending a concert, whatever your age: leave your bag at home. These days most big concert venues won’t allow you to take in any form of bag, be it a backpack, large handbag, tote bag, shopping bag or laptop bag.

Lots of venues now only allow an A4-sized bag at concerts - Janne Iivonen

At the O2 in Greenwich, for example, people are only allowed one bag if it’s no larger than A4 size or a standard handbag. Keep your possessions to a minimum. Keys, wallet, phone and ticket (if it’s not on your phone) should be your basic gig-going toolkit. These, and possibly the one accessory that middle-aged music fans are turning to in increasing numbers: earplugs.

Take earplugs

Gone are the days when earplugs were yellow foam things from Boots or freebie relics from some distant long-haul flight you found at the back of your bathroom cupboard. Today the “concert earplug” market is almost as competitive as the battle for Christmas number one.

Brands such as Loop, Fender, Vibes, Alpine and Earos are just some of the names out there. This year, Loop even teamed up with the Coachella festival in California for a fashionable “collab” range featuring desert-inspired designs. The company will also be Glastonbury’s “official earplug provider” this year.

Overall, Loop have not only got the most glamorous associations but are also probably the best in the business: discreet, adaptable and effective (for further details on options see box below).

There’s a serious side to this. We’ve no doubt all got friends living with the hell of tinnitus due to exposure to loud noise (a third of UK adults are either deaf, have hearing loss or tinnitus, according to charity the RNID). For context, a typical spoken conversation takes place at around 60 decibels. Music played at above 85 decibels for a prolonged period can cause hearing damage while music played at 100 decibels can cause permanent hearing damage after as little as 15 minutes. And people are more susceptible to tinnitus as they get older.

I can think of two concerts where I wished I had earplugs. Fat White Family at Brixton Academy around a decade ago was one of the loudest things I’ve ever heard. And a Def Leppard and Mötley Crüe double-header in Sheffield in 2023 compensated for substandard sound quality by cranking up the volume. I felt the poor Leppard’s predicament. My ears rung for days.

Where to sit or stand

To sit or to stand? This is the first question to ponder when buying tickets (assuming you have a choice). I would recommend making the decision based on genre. Little point in standing for an acoustic folk gig, say, when you can sit. Conversely, you’ll get terrible FOMO if you sit for music that makes you want to dance or, yes, pogo. If all the seats are up on a traditional theatre balcony, then ‘front and centre’ is obviously best, making sure that you check for restricted views before you book. The best seats in stadiums and arenas are always about half way along the sides and about ten rows above the heads of the folk standing on the floor.

Where to stand is more knotty. The great thing about many of the UK’s medium-sized ‘sticky floor’ concert venues is that they – like Hammersmith – used to be music halls, theatres or cinemas, meaning they have sloped floors. This pretty much guarantees clear sightlines no matter where you stand. If it’s a stadium concert with a “golden circle” (the standing area closest to the stage), consider paying more to get in. You’re older, you can afford it and you’re unlikely to regret it.

Unlike in America, we’re pretty relaxed in this country about people jostling into position at concerts. I recall an indoor Rolling Stones concert in Florida in 2021 when a friend and I tried to shoulder our way to the front having arrived late. The abuse from the chino-clad Boomers was off the scale. That we got close enough to see the stitching on Mick Jagger’s purple silk shirt felt like the sweetest of victories.

The great thing about many of the UK’s medium-sized venues is that they used to be music halls meaning they have sloped floors - Janne Iivonen

In general, though, avoid the very front unless you actively want to be in the moshpit or in an uncomfortable crush. Likewise avoid the very back, where the sound can be soupy and you’ll have hundreds of people walking past you. For me, the sweet spot is just behind the ‘D’ of the moshpit where you’re in the thick of it but not uncomfortably so.

Be mindful of where the speakers are. Again, if you’re too close to the front you might hear more from the band’s on-stage monitors than from the large PA system hanging overhead. These are louder and the sound is properly mixed. The best sound tends to be close to the sound desk because – surprise, surprise – this is where the person in control is sitting. I once made the mistake of getting too close to the stage at an Arcade Fire concert in Earl’s Court and had to move back so I could hear properly. Weird.

How to dress

Cloakrooms are for mugs. Avoid them at all costs because they can involve rip-off prices and long queues. Wear layers that you can tie around your waist if needs be, rather than a thick jumper or a thick coat. My go-to gig outfit is leather jacket and T-shirt (so original). Wear comfortable trainers that you don’t mind getting grubby. Some arch support helps. Avoid skinny jeans if you were born in the years before Robbie left Take That, and never wear a backwards baseball cap.

But if it’s an outdoor concert and you have thinning hair or are totally bald (like me), then for goodness’ sake wear a (forwards-facing) cap or bucket hat for protection from the sun. I can’t quite believe I’m admitting this, but at a 2014 Kanye West gig in Finsbury Park a couple of kids approached a hat-less me and did the DJ “wikka-wikka” record scratch movement on my bronzed bonce. It was hilarious. For them. Wearing a hat might spare you this ignominy.

I also once ended up dancing in a Shoreditch nightclub wearing (deep breath) an M&S V-neck sweater with the sleeves yanked up. People stared. Never have I felt more like Mark Corrigan from Peep Show. You might think there’s a certain rock ‘n’ roll rebellion in saying “I’m a bit older now so it doesn’t matter what I look like”. But no one else thinks that. Be Jez, not Mark. Or at least try.

What to eat and drink

When you hit a certain age, the notion of not eating prior to a gig and maybe getting some chips after a post-concert pint is plain daft (there’s no time for a post-show pint anyway as there’s a babysitter to get back to). So, a bowl of pasta at 6pm has much to recommend it. Sorry to sound like Captain Sensible, but remember that you’re 50 not 15, however young you feel.

Drinks-wise, pints of beer carry with them the middle-aged curse: needing to pee. The urgent call of nature is doubly annoying when you’ve just found the perfect position in the crowd and then have to weave through an increasingly tightening throng of people to get to the lavatory. To quote Fleetwood Mac, you’re never going back again. So my advice is to know your beer limits or stick to the rum and Cokes.

A common mistake is to decrease your water intake in the hours leading up to a concert, thinking that by limiting the liquid inside your system you’ll be able to have a pint or two later without needing to pee. The opposite is often the case: quickly filling an empty bladder can make you need to go more. So sip small amounts of water throughout the day to stay hydrated.

Know where the nearest loo is - Janne Iivonen

What is to be avoided at all costs is to find yourself in a massive festival mega-crowd where it’s simply impossible to get to a loo. Back in the day I used to go to the Donington Monsters of Rock festival. There, people amused themselves between sets by hurling cardboard pint cups full of wee in cascading Catherine wheels through the air. Gross. You can buy things called “emergency mini toilets” from Amazon. They’re sealable pouches that contain an absorbent polymer, meaning you can go in situ if you absolutely have to. I think they were invented for people stuck in traffic jams. They work. But they’re about as rock ‘n’ roll as a Zimmer frame.

Gig etiquette

Don’t

Sing along to every word

It’s annoying for everyone else. But don’t tut at young people if they’re doing the same. Just be the bigger (older) person and gently move away.

Look down on youthful exuberance

Imagine if the tables were turned and an old git was giving you the evils for enjoying yourself when you were at a concert as a teen. You’d hate them. There’s one exception to this rule: talking.

Talk

Talking at gigs is like asking for ketchup at a Michelin-starred restaurant: it’s disrespectful and completely negates the point of being there. I think a judicious “Shhh!” is fine in these circumstances. And remember that concert crowds are like sheep; once you’ve shhh’d, others are likely to follow and the culprits might slink away.

Say that music was better when you were young

It shouts “OLD” and it’s almost certainly not true. Everyone thinks that the music of their mid-to-late teens was the greatest of all time. It wasn’t. It just made the greatest impression.

Comment on people’s appearance

It’s plain creepy to comment on what people are wearing or – God forbid – to remark on their hair, their tattoos or their body piercings. However well-meaning, you’ll sound like Alan Partridge.

Try to make friends with anyone

People are there with their own friends, thank you very much. They don’t care that you first saw this band back in the “early days”.

Roll your eyes, raise your eyebrows or grimace

Never deliberately let your age show. Liam Gallagher once referred to Keith Richards as a “sweaty old mushroom”. Imagine what these people would say about normal old you.

Do

Just enjoy the music

It’s what you’re there for after all.

Be courteous to the venue staff

It’s not an easy job, and a cheery “thank you” from any members of the audience is heartening.

Get the rounds in if you can

If you’re with younger people then get to the bar more than them. I remember going to concerts with friends and their older brothers and being blown away – and eternally grateful – for the older siblings’ generosity.

Insta your night – but only once

Look, you’ve made it out so you might as well tell your social media followers about it. And filters on Instagram can make every average gig snap look like the work of legendary music photographers Mick Rock or Jim Marshall. But only post once. Nothing’s more uncool than multiple pictures.

Merchandise

Tempting though it is, don’t buy the counterfeit band T-shirts being sold on a rug outside the venue by a charismatic geezer in a tweed cap. They might only cost a tenner but they’ll shrink after one wash. I bought a Cult T-shirt from a rug last year and today it would be rejected by a toddler for being too snug. Go official. Again, you can probably afford it and the merch tends to be good quality these days.

Further, merch income is very important to musicians, who no longer make decent money from sales of their recorded music. On the snugness thing, err towards the generous fit. Again, you’re 50 not 15. And try to buy your swag before the gig. If you wait until after, you might just miss the all-important early train…

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