24-27. Bruce Springsteen - Thunder Road, Neil Young - Harvest Moon, Paul McCartney (The Beatles) - Blackbird, Blondie - Rapture

I don't think that thoughts of my own mortality really started to take seed until I was well into my 40s, so it would be taking too much poetic license to try and link that to a new attitude I started to develop towards music as I approached middle-age.  I was only 39 in 2009, when this next part of my autobiographical music-loving journey begins.  Nonetheless, there is some coincidence.

It occurred to me that I had not seen in concert some of the bands or artists that I had loved from (in most cases) my teenage years and it started to feel like I should do so before they die.  I suffer from mental blocks that can last years or even decades, where I tell myself something negative about music and then close my mind to it without review for far too long.  A few examples:

• Deciding that Springsteen was rubbish once he released the relatively disappointing Tunnel of Love in 1987 and followed it with the mediocre crap of  Human Touch and Lucky Town in 1992.  I ignored all subsequent releases for 20 years and wasn't interested in seeing him play live.  I was wrong to do that.
• Assuming that Blondie's sporadic comebacks and Debbie Harry's croaky voice meant that a ticket to see them in concert wasn't something I'd ever seek out.  I was wrong.
• Believing that, Band on the Run aside, everything Paul McCartney did after the Beatles was also pony and that it would actually annoy me to see him in concert rattling off a predictable set list and laying on thick the tired old chirpy scouse antiquated banter between songs.  I was so so wrong.
• And as for Neil Young - well, I just don't know why it took me so long to see him, as I did think he was still knocking out great albums in the 90s and Noughties.

It was Neil Young I went to see first out of these four.  It was more a case of, well, I should really.  Couldn't believe I hadn't already, since getting into him on the back of his MTV Unplugged show in the mid-90s and a tip from Bern to get hold of Decade, which then led to the start of an album buying spree that has since stretched to 27 albums, more than anyone in my collection except Dylan.  I saw him at Hyde Park in 2009, he was terrific and Paul McCartney joined him on stage for the encore, performing A Day in the Life.  So I could at least say I'd seen a Beatle live.

I saw Springsteen the following year, also at Hyde Park.  I'd slowly been discovering that he didn't totally dry up after Born in the USA and some of his albums since then - most notably The Rising - were often very good.  He started off with a stripped down version of Thunder Road, sung as a ballad with just piano for accompaniment.  (Incidentally, Nick Hornby starts his book 31 Songs with this song and like him, I rank it as one of my favourite few songs of all time).  The first verse could be the most beautifully simple example of poetry in rock music:

The screen door slams
Mary's dress sways
Like a vision she dances across the porch
As the radio plays
Roy Orbison singing for the lonely
Hey that's me and I want you only
Don't turn me home again
I just can't face myself alone again
Don't run back inside
Darling you know just what I'm here for
So you're scared and you're thinking
That maybe we ain't that young anymore
Show a little faith, there's magic in the night
You ain't a beauty, but hey you're alright
Oh and that's alright with me

Bruce's voice was as good it was in the 70s and the concert was also terrific.  And Paul McCartney joined him on stage for the encore and they launched into I Saw Her Standing There and kept going even when they pulled the plug due to the curfew.  And I could at least say, I'd seen a Beatle live twice.

In September 2014, I started a new job at Haverstock School, opposite Bridge House where we lived when I was aged 3-6 and also opposite the Roundhouse - my favourite venue.  The same month, my mate Ricky told me he had a spare ticket to see Blondie there and it was mine if I wanted it.  Might as well, I thought.  After all, as part of my breaking down the walls to my mental blocks, I had rediscovered a love of Blondie and gone beyond being satisfied with just the Best Of CD I'd had since the 80s and actually bought all their albums, wondering why the hell I didn't do that at the time.  Anyway, I went along with Ricky and BLONDIE WERE TERRIFIC and Debbie Harry's voice croakiness was too subtle to detract from an amazing gig and a wonderfully sassy, sardonic and cool fucking stage presence.  So brilliant was it that I went back with my daughter, Jas, 3 years later.

Paul McCartney didn't join Blondie on stage for either encore.  That would have been too coincidental.  Because middle age brought with it a taste for the melodic rather than for the cool, edgy or experimental (not that my tastes were ever cool or edgy), I found myself slowly becoming open first to early Beatles albums at last, and then to Wings and solo McCartney stuff.  I cast aside the likes of Strawberry Fields and I am the Walrus as among my favourite Beatles tracks and replaced them with For No One and Blackbird.  Melody rules.  And so, in 2015, I was ready at last to pay whatever was necessary to see McCartney in concert.  

I went with John and Jas, which magnified the joy I took from the whole experience and thus I would now cite this as my favourite gig of all time.  What could be better?  I was seeing the world's greatest song-writer, one of the Beatles, live in concert for the first time, with one of my two best mates, who had been lauding the Beatles to me since 1976 and with my daughter, who had been getting into a lot of the same music that I had loved since her age, including of course The Beatles, and who was as overwhelmed with the enormity of the occasion as much as I was.  Perhaps even more so, given that her generation will be the last to be able to say they've seen one of the Beatles live in concert.  And much like hearing the Boss singing Thunder Road, the moment McCartney launched into any Beatles song I thought to myself that it doesn't get much better than this.