This summer has seen an amazing phenomenon come into the public consciousness again with a vengeance - live music.
First there were queues for days at locations across Britain as Taylor Swift came to town with her Eras tour, set to bring in a billion pounds to the UK alone. Taylor’s unique brand of singer, songwriter and storytelling has almost universal appeal it seems. By the time this tour finishes in November, she will have played 146 dates across five continents. The Eras tour looks likely to be the highest grossing tour of all time and was expected to the big pop-culture news of this year.
Now we have the return of the Gallagher brothers, who have promised to reunite for performances next year. Musical magazine NME had the headline ‘Oasis fans react to “biblical” reunion tour news’! You wouldn’t think the resolving of brotherly disagreement would be such a huge draw – after all, the Bible has more than its fair share - but Liam and Noel have caused almost more headlines with the news of their reunion than they generated with their soap-opera-esque perpetual disagreements in their heyday. They haven’t performed together since 2009 but on 27 August the world was told 'The guns have fallen silent. The stars have aligned. The great wait is over. Come see. It will not be televised.' This will be live-only, they promise, and from the fan furore clearly millions want to be part of ‘Live 25’.
How did it come to this? Welby in retrospect
Just over 12 years ago, on 9 November 2012, I walked down the wooden stairs from the Archbishop's flat, towards …