A Concert For Diana, But Who Were They All?

Last weekend was one of those times when you didn’t know what to feel. One minute we were staring the enemy in the face as they tried to repeatedly blow us up with car bombs or burn us inside one of our airports, and the next we are leaping up and down in front of a stage, wailing because it’s the first time we’ve seen Duran Duran perform live. It was a weekend to remember, yet something bothers me. We know how to deal with the society we now live in. Every time I step onto a train and head to London, I am immediately texted by several close acquaintances who tell me to call them as soon as I get there and as soon as I arrive home. London, my home city, now is a playground not for just the rich and famous but for the terrorists among us - we are dicing with death when we board a train or a tube. I have a close friend who drives a tube train - a wonderfully paid job, but in the light of recent years, I wish he was still working at the bank.

However, surprisingly enough, it is the Diana concert I feel somewhat disturbed by. It was, at previously mentioned, a delight for us thirty something’s to see Duran Duran and how much John Taylor has aged, on stage once more, and I am convinced that somewhere up above us, there she was, bopping away to ‘The Reflex’ with the rest of us, but I thought that when we feel the need to tribute someone in such a fashion, we do it by attending to their own wishes and their own tastes. I rather get the feeling that Diana was sitting up there with a puzzled expression trying to figure out who Lily Allen is, or is supposed to be. I do wish, and perhaps this is my age talking here, that we had kept the show to music that she liked and that was of her time. I don’t mind sitting through Sir Elton so long as he doesn’t pout off stage as he was reported to have done this year, but where was George Michael? The Princess’s favourites just weren’t there, and this got me thinking, is it because if we had booked Tony Hadley and Martin Fry of smooth and lip glossed ABC, not one would have come?
I do believe it goes deeper than that. Diana was a mega star in her own right, despite the fact that she hated it. She was a legend, a goddess and for me, that twinkling princess who married her prince and tried to live happily ever after except we wouldn’t let her. No, I think the thing that crawls though my bones is that we will always have to celebrate her life with a six hour show at the Stadium. If we had booked Spandau Ballet, we would have been lucky if we had filled the Arena. And as a result of this sad tale, we can’t seem to celebrate someone as rich in personality and individualism as she, if it means we can’t have simultaneous broadcasts of a mammoth show. I think an intimate gathering of her very favourite musical heroes would have been far more fitting. Nellie who? I don’t think it was all really Diana’s scene….