Concerts are now full of multigenerational fans who grew up on the music as a family. Whether Billie Eilish or Stevie Wonder, they explain the appeal

While some teenagers still wouldn’t be caught dead with their parents at a gig, there’s been a marked number of multigenerational gatherings of parents, kids, uncles and aunts at recent tours such as Pulp, Bruce Springsteen and the Oasis reunion. We spoke to four families about why they enjoy watching bands together.

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Devendra Banhart finds mysticism in Acquiesce, Snail Mail gets chills from Stand By Me and Johnny Marr chooses an absolute curveball as 17 musicians analyse the reunited band’s genius

• Simon Armitage on why Oasis still enthrall us

There are a lot of similarities between us and Oasis: two brothers in the band, Creation Records, working-class kids, guitar band, etc. In the mid-90s, we couldn’t get arrested and had to watch their meteoric rise, but I couldn’t dislike the great music. Rock ’n’ Roll Star was on a compilation tape on the ill-fated US tour when we broke up. We’d had a punch-up on stage at the House of Blues in Los Angeles and back in my hotel room we were hanging around with a bunch of druggies. I was thinking “Where did it all go wrong?” when this song came on. I knew I’d remember that moment for the rest of my life. To me, Rock ’n’ Roll Star is like Johnny Rotten singing with Slade. It’s punk rock, but in 1994. I love the self-belief: Noel [Gallagher] wrote it before he was a rock’n’roll star but knew it was gonna happen. The difference between the Mary Chain and Oasis is that when we reformed we’d buried the hatchet a good few years before we got back together. I’m not sure if they have, but it used to amaze people how William [Reid] and I could be screaming with hatred at each other in the studio, then 10 minutes later it would be: “Do you want a cup of tea?”

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Milton Keynes Bowl
Public Image Ltd deliver a thrilling set and the The can still enthrall, but it is the techno-symphonies of headliners Kraftwerk that remain truly peerless

This new one-day event is an attempt to import California’s four-year-old Cruel World festival to the UK, and as the parent US event is a devotedly Anglophile affair featuring almost exclusively original British post-punk and goth bands, the promoters could feasibly have called this offshoot Coals to Newcastle.

The early 80s were, indeed, an incredibly fertile time in British music, and it could be depressing to see so many of its prime movers recalibrated as nostalgia turns. Yet the bill is such a stylistic mixed bag that it’s hard to draw many conclusions besides the simple truth that some have aged a lot better than others.

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