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BOOMERPALOOZA
You still want to rock and you’re willing to shell out big bucks to travel anywhere to do it. But is this really rock ’n’ roll?

Text: SARAH SCOTT

I THOUGHT MY ROCK AND ROLL DAYS WERE OVER UNTIL MIDway through an old boyfriend’s 50th birthday party, when I ran into a slightly seedy-looking friend from university.

Finwah, as we always called him, is David Finlay, a genial 48-year-old rock and roller who still wears his hair long and stringy as if caught in an early 1970s time warp.

Back then, at Queen’s University, Finwah was the man in charge of rock and roll concerts, bringing in bands like Genesis on its Lamb Lies Down on Broadway tour, and running buses with excellent sound systems to transport people like me to mind-blowing Grateful Dead concerts across the border.

Yet unlike most of my friends who now occupy distinguished positions in the world of law, film and commerce, Finwah never abandoned the life of rock and roll.

On the contrary, he’s still living it. Finwah is in the business of transporting fans by land and air to see acts like U2, Madonna, Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd. His employer, Event Transportation System (ETS), is the world’s foremost entertainment tour company. The Mississauga-based company sends about 100,000 fans a year to rock concerts around the world. People who once scrounged together money to take the bus are now hitting middle age and have the disposable cash to spend on this kind of deluxe revival trip. It’s a new era of rock and roll tourism, which is not that surprising. After all, people fly to see the Masters or Wimbledon, or an art show or a theatrical performance in London or New York. Why not a rock concert?

Two months later, I fly to Dublin to see U2, the Irish rock band, play a gigantic concert at Slane Castle. ETS has flown about 90 people here from North America and another 1,500 or so from various locations in Europe. Now U2 isn’t like any other rock and roll band. They are rock prophets who have sealed a spiritual connection with their fanatically loyal fans, the kind who know every word to every song. Finwah is just such a fan. He’s been to 40 U2 concerts – 18 on this Elevation tour alone. It’s part of his job as ETS entertainment director, but he’d probably go to lots of them anyway. "I think they come from a good spiritual and moral position," he says. "And I like their style of music. It’s a cross between punk and gospel." In some ways, Finwah is typical of the thickening middle-aged rocker. He has a good job, pays his taxes, complains about cutbacks to public education, and loves to garden at the lakefront house in Kingston that he shares with his wife Kim. He’s taken his two kids, now in their early 20s, to lots of rock concerts. "My kids saw U2 when they were nine and 11," says Finwah. "A big portion of our busing business is family. A lot of it is Dad who wants to pass on his experience to the children."

A couple of days before the concert, I’m on a tour bus with some of the fans who have flown across the Atlantic for the show. The fans, mostly in their 30s and 40s, have each spent $2,000 to $3,000 for four days of U2 revelry. Our group includes a computer programmer from Boston, a couple of honeymooners from Reno and two blond-haired mothers from the southern U.S. on a best-friends trip. David Mairs and his wife Carol, both in their late 40s, are celebrating a big deal that David’s Calgary-based company has just clinched. The pair, who have three children after 23 years of marriage, have already been to five U2 shows so far on this tour. "I guess we’re married groupies," says Carol cheerfully. The two best friends, Debra Trohan and Holly Ash, have a different mission – to console Holly after the death of her father, who would have turned 74 on the day of the Slane Castle concert. Holly has even brought her father’s ashes to bury in the land of her ancestors.

We’ve just finished a pub crawl – a couple of hours of drinking Guinness beer with the odd pause for a song and a yarn from our tour guides. I head out for Chinese food with Finwah and Don McVie, the Queen’s grad who presides over ETS. It turns out that U2 has helped to keep ETS alive in the seesaw business of rock and roll. The company almost collapsed in 1983 after transporting 20,000 fans to a Woodstock festival in the U.S. desert. McVie, a former Boy Scout, helpfully provided his clients with their own campsite, including showers and locked storage, but lost half a million dollars in the process. ETS was still recovering from the financial debacle when McVie first saw Bono sing on a televised concert in 1987. The song was "Sunday Bloody Sunday," which is about a 1972 massacre in Northern Ireland. "I gotta say the earth moved," says McVie. Not long after, McVie won the right to transport fans to U2 concerts around the world.

It’s Friday, the day before the concert, and our bus is headed for Howth, a picturesque village just outside of Dublin. Our bus driver announces that we’re making an unexpected stop because Bono is attending the funeral of his father. We climb up a narrow road to a grey stone church just in time to watch U2’s guitarist The Edge, minus his trademark tuque, walk into the church. "I was so devastated to hear about it," says Phoenix, a thirtyish singer from New York who bought her concert package on the spur of the moment with her mother’s credit card. She reaches out for her friend Beth Hauptman, who flew in from Denver.

"I’ve followed them for 20 years, and I can’t imagine life without their music. I really can’t," says Phoenix. "U2 is a way of life," agrees Beth. "It gets into your soul. Oh my God. The hearse has arrived!" The two women hold each other as they watch Bono, holding his two-year-old son, step out of a car along with his exquisitely dressed wife Alison, a new baby in her arms, and their two daughters. Some of the fans are moving in for close-up pictures of the grieving star and the hearse loaded with fresh flowers. Bono doesn’t seem to notice, but it’s a weird moment. Even standing across the street, I feel like a gawker, an unwelcome intruder in a private moment. But I guess it’s part of living the life. This isn’t just a concert; it’s a trip. As we pull out, our driver gets back on the loudspeaker: "You were at Bono’s father’s funeral," Price says. "Not many people can say that."

A few hours after the funeral we pull up to the old Windmill Lane Recording Studios, where U2 recorded their first three albums. The walls outside the studios are plastered with multicoloured tributes from U2’s most fanatical admirers. It would be hard, however, to find more loyal fans than the two 28-year-old Serbian men who have been living in a bright yellow car as they follow the band throughout Europe. After we sign the wall, we get our pictures taken with the Serbs and wish them luck on their quest for free tickets to the concert.

One day later, a half moon is rising over the huge stage set up near Slane Castle. I’ve been given a special badge – "U2 Elevation tour working personnel" – that lets me stand six metres in front of the ramp where the band will sing. I see the Serbs only a metre away. I guess they got lucky. The concert begins, and Bono delivers a poignant performance dedicated to his late father. "Thank God for taking my father away from his pain," cries Bono, steam rising from his jet black hair. Then he rips into "Sunday Bloody Sunday." I turn around and look up the slope. The crowd of 88,000 people, many of them drunken Irish kids, are singing every word of the song about a massacre that took place nearly three decades before.

The next day, Dave and Carol and Holly and Debra are still talking about the concert. They were standing about 50 metres from the stage, and they all got pushed and shoved and elbowed by the drunken kids headed for the stage. "I got touched by more people in more places than I’ve ever been before," says Carol. "I would never let my teenager go to anything like that," says Holly. It doesn’t take long for them to recover. Twenty-four hours later, we’re celebrating at 2 a.m. on a Monday at a packed dance bar in downtown Dublin. Debra and Holly are hamming it up as go-go dancers, having cajoled the DJ into playing a couple of U2 tracks. It’s rock ’n’ roll all right. And I still like it.