Andrew O'Hagan's novel 'Mayflies' (2020) is his well-observed take on the theme of a group of young friends meeting up again in later life, in this case music and film-obsessed Scottish teenagers in the mid-1980s who bond over a weekend in Manchester and whose later lives aren't quite the adventures they hoped for.
I can only assume there is something of O'Hagan's own youth in this, and it is centred around some real events - the main one being the Factory records 'Festival of the Tenth Summer' held on 19 July 1986 at the Greater Manchester Exhibition (GMEX) Centre to mark the anniversary of the two famous Sex Pistols gigs at the city's Lesser Free Trade Hall in June and July 1976.
The bands playing at the 1986 event included several founded by people who had been at one or both of the Pistols gigs, including The Smiths, The Fall and New Order (one of the characters in 'Mayflies' mistakenly mentions Magazine playing, they had split up by this point, but Pete Shelley of the Buzzcocks was on the bill). O'Hagan describes the Fall's Mark E Smith as 'the Fine Fare Baudelaire... sloping about the stage. He didn't sing the words, he inebriated them'. He also enthuses over peak era Smiths, 'romantic and wronged and fierce and sublime, with haircuts like agendas'.
On the night before, the Shop Assistants played at the International in Anson Road, Manchester and O'Hagan gives a good account of the indie-pop vibe: 'She swayed with composed embarrassment, the sort of embarrassment all members of small independent bands had then, a form of shyness, or stage absence, that seemed to go well with their accidentally perfect tunes'
There is also a visit to the pre-acid house Hacienda with dancing to 'Candyskin' by the Fire Engines.
Thirty years later, dancing at a wedding, narrator James is less enthusiastic: 'It used to be so natural, dancing. Because the music defined you and the heart was in step. Then it leaves you. Or does it? Saturday night changes and your body forgets the old compliance. You're not part of it any more and your feet hesitate and your arms stay close to your sides. It's there somewhere, the easy rhythm from other rooms and other occasions, and you're half convinced it will soon come back. It's not the moves - the moves are there - but your connection to the music has become nostalgic, so the body is responding not to a discovery but to an old, dear echo'.
I'm not sure that it is inevitable that music becomes less exciting as you get older - you can discover whole new genres that you previously overlooked - but perhaps it is true that much music becomes part of your past and can never be heard for the first time again.
