Legends in Civilian Clothes...

An essay about a bus behind the stage, illusions that cracked – and why the future was left waiting

For a few seconds my brain lagged behind reality. I looked around, assuming I had misunderstood. Drivers? Crew? Local staff who had taken a wrong turn?

But no.
This was them.

Without makeup.
Without wigs.
Without leather, studs, or mystique.

Just people. Aging bodies. Ordinary jackets. Tired eyes. That particular posture you get after decades of hotel corridors, airports, and the same conversations repeated endlessly.

And in that moment – back there behind the stage, far from the roar of the crowd – something shifted inside me.

Not anger.
Not disappointment.

Just a quiet realization.

When the illusion cracked

Rock ’n’ roll has always been about illusion. Anyone who has worked backstage knows that. Enlarged gestures. Amplified emotions. A persona that steps onstage and becomes bigger than the human carrying it.

But there, at that bus, it struck me:
the illusion had become the main act.

It was no longer the music carrying the story.
It was the costume. The hairstyle. The memory of something that once had been dangerous, new, urgent.

Later that evening they stood on stage. The makeup was on. The wigs were perfectly placed. The lights were right. The crowd erupted. The machine worked flawlessly.

But for me, the curtain had already fallen.

I no longer saw the band.
I saw the mechanism.

The festival as a place

Festivals love to describe themselves as places of discovery. Of the future. Of the next big thing. They favour words like progressive, innovative, relevant.

But when you work with them year after year, patterns emerge.

The posters barely change.
The same names return.
The same time slots.
The same hierarchy.

There is always room for a few new acts – at the bottom. Early in the day. On the stage closest to the toilets. They are told they are getting a chance. Thirty minutes. No soundcheck. Thank you very much.

And at the top of the poster: safety.

The names that always sell.
The names audiences “want”.
The names sponsors recognise.

The festival that once was a site of discovery has slowly become a travelling nostalgia museum with beer tents.

How the future gets postponed

It’s not that young bands are missing.
It’s not even that audiences lack curiosity.

The problem is space.

Festival budgets are brutally simple. A majority of the money goes to a handful of names. What remains is spread thinly across many, all expected to be grateful just to be there.

The consequences are almost always the same:

The middle tier never forms.

Today there are countless bands who should be headliners. Bands with audiences, integrity, ideas. But they are stuck in permanent limbo. Always “next time”. Always “almost big enough”. Always standing in the shadow of someone who already had their moment.

It’s not their failure.
It’s a structural one.

The audience that never got to choose

The most common argument is:
“People want the big names.”

And yes – partly, they do.

But taste is shaped by exposure.

If the same bands always occupy the top slot, the best light, the biggest production, audiences learn that this is what a headliner looks like. Everything else becomes warm-up. Support. Filler.

Taste develops through repetition.
Scenes develop through courage.

But courage is scarce when booking is driven by risk avoidance rather than vision.

Backstage, again

There is something special about working backstage. You see what the audience never sees. The backs. The fatigue. The negotiations. The carefully timed schedules designed to keep an illusion alive.

I saw more buses arrive and leave. More legends stepping down. The same pattern repeating.

There was nothing wrong with them as people. Quite the opposite. They did their job. They delivered exactly what was expected.

But somewhere along the way, distance grew. Not from music – but from the model.

It felt as if the future was standing in the wings, waiting. And no one was opening the door.

Scenes don’t die – they suffocate

Music scenes rarely die in drama.
They die in comfort.

When:

• young bands never get late slots

• mid-level bands never carry a night

• audiences never learn new names

…you eventually end up with a scene without successors.

And when the eternal headliners finally do stop – for real – there is no one ready to take their place.

Not because they didn’t exist.
But because they were never allowed to grow.

A quiet satire

Perhaps we should be more honest. Perhaps we should stop pretending.

Maybe festivals should openly honour those who built everything – a space where the legacy can live, clearly and respectfully, without pretending to be the future.

And let the rest of the festival be about what isn’t finished yet. What is rough. What might fail.

Because without that risk, everything eventually fades.

Closing

This is not about age.
It is about space.

About understanding the difference between honouring a legacy and blocking a future.

For me, that understanding began with a bus behind a stage, sometime in the early 2000s. Nothing dramatic. Just a group of old men stepping out – and taking the illusion with them.

Since then, I’ve found it hard not to see it.

And even harder to pretend it doesn’t matter.