I may be an embarrassing ‘Gig Dad’ but it gets me closer to my kids

Going to concerts with your teenage children can be emotionally bonding, says Richard Benson

The first time I took my teenage daughter to a pop concert, I experienced a moment of humiliation that made me think I might never do it again.

Janey was 13 at the time. I’d taken her and her friend Agnes to see Mahalia, a young black British R&B singer who, between songs, tells entertaining, outspoken anecdotes that are often about things she hates. Janey and I both liked her music but on entering the auditorium – mediumsized, north London – I felt a bit self-conscious. It wasn’t so much my age and gender (I was 50, the audience was almost entirely schoolgirls) as my height: I felt weirdly the wrong size, like a giant human version of a promotional packet of biscuits, always blocking someone’s view.

I’d just found a perfect dad-spot (far enough back to not be in people’s way, close enough for the girls to see) when Mahalia began an impassioned attack on the music industry. Cheering along, I was at one with the crowd, up to the point where our idol explained that ‘IF I HAD A POUND FOR EVERY TIME A WHITE MIDDLE-AGED MAN TRIED TO TELL ME I’D NEVER MAKE IT AS I AM, I’D BE A F***ING BILLIONAIRE!”

For the record, I completely sympathised with Mahalia on this. Good for her for saying it. On a personal level, however, it felt like God’s way of telling me that in future, I should wait outside in the car.

I didn’t, though, for a personal reason I’ll explain in a minute. Four years and a lot of gigs later I’ve learned to let the girls pile in while I linger at the back with the old kids on the block. Thanks to the large numbers of dads accompanying their daughters to Taylor Swift and Beyoncé shows, this demographic now even has its own name and identity: the Swiftie Dad, or Bey Dad. At Beyoncé’s Tottenham Hotspur stadium shows this week there have been a preponderance of bemused fathers lurking at the back while their daughters in Renaissance

T-shirts went wild. There’s an identifiable Dad-Stance: drink held at midriff level, head nodding sagely, thoughtful expression that looks as if you’re appreciating the music when you’re actually wondering if she’ll be OK in that scary-looking moshpit.

I suppose the Swiftie-Bey Dad could seem cringey to outsiders, but you have to understand that it’s really not about trying to pretend you’re still 17. I’d like to think it’s about loving music, and realising you can share some of that with your children, rather than dismissing or mocking what they love. After all, what could be better than trying to understand why someone whom you love likes the things they do? If that sounds like a rather highfalutin way to describe listening to Stormzy records together in the car, I don’t care.

I love the listening and the talking, I like the ticket buying, and I enjoy trying to find bits of merch that she’ll like for her birthdays. But the ritual behaviour of gig-attendance is the best bit. It usually begins with me in the front of the car, pretending I can’t hear the fishwifey conversations between her and her mates about who got with who at what party or the “s---” someone has been saying on TikTok.

Once we’re in, they venture into the crowd, and I drag out a soft drink near the bar (if we go by train I might even do a pint of weak lager). Occasionally, you fall into conversation with the other dads. Pathetically, I find this much easier if I like the band, and I think they’re fans as well.

When we saw the Arctic Monkeys at Reading last year (VERY scary moshpit), I whiled away the wait for the band talking to an Aussie dad about theTranquility Base Hotel & Casino album. Watching Ed Sheeran, who I don’t like but took her to in an act of extreme paternal self-sacrifice, I found it much harder. In fact, I felt much the same contempt for the hardcore Ed Dads as I used to feel for Blur fans when I liked Oasis in the 1990s. As I said: pathetic.

Then there’s the matter of finding each other at the end which, for some reason, gives me a sort of Christmas morning rush, everybody holding onto each in the crush to get out before singing the hits together on the way home. Yes, I may have looked like a sad character from an Arctic Monkeys song as we sang Fluorescent Adolescent on a late train home (we sit together on the way back, and don’t have to pretend we can’t hear each others conversations) but music gives you permission to be ridiculous, doesn’t it? That’s the point sometimes.

Having just turned 13, our younger daughter Ella has started taking a stronger and more partisan interest too, and arguments over the stereo on car journeys are becoming colourful. Luckily, they can still find common ground in taking the mickey out of my choices (“If you put Bob Dylan on, Dad, we are throwing ourselves out of this car NOW”). But I do love talking to them about it, and I feel l come to understand things about them that I wouldn’t get to if we sat down to have A Serious Conversation About Feelings. Maybe this is the real reason why sometimes, when I drive to pick them up from parties or school things, I find myself looking forward to the music, even thinking what we’ll play on the way back.

I always wanted to be able to talk to them about things they liked, because of my own dad. He wasn’t a cold man, he was working-class Yorkshire, but I think, like many of his generation, he would have felt daft talking about things like how music made people feel. One day after he died, my mum mentioned to me that Dad sometimes liked to listen to classical music, particularly some Ralph Vaughan Williams. I had no idea, but I did know that I also liked Vaughan Williams, and that his Norfolk Rhapsody always made me think of my dad.

It still does, but these days that piece of music also makes me think of how much you can regret the things you don’t share. My daughters have taught me that the sharing is worth the ridicule. It might even be worth enduring Ed Sheeran for.