Being like ABBA back in the ’70s is my Waterloo... Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! an early night instead
In Oscar Wilde’s classic novel The Picture Of Dorian Gray, the eponymous character has to sell his soul to ensure his portrait in the attic takes the brunt of the ageing process.
Dorian, free from wrinkles and cellulite, carries on living his wickedly amoral life having a whale of a time, forever young and beautiful.
If only it was as easy as making a deal with the devil to stay youthful. Some lucky people don’t have to worry about that little moral, but admittedly improbable, dilemma. If you’re a member of the Swedish supergroup ABBA for instance. Then, through the power of modern technology and several trillion pounds, you can create amazing avatars of yourself looking and sounding like you did when you were in your prime.
Yes, I’m just back from ABBA Voyage, a mind-bogglingly surreal concert where Bjorn, Agnetha, Frida and Benny perform some of their greatest hits just as they did when they first shot to mega stardom in 1974.
It’s a strange and disconcerting experience as the avatars are so real. When they first storm on to the stage, it’s hard to get your head round the fact you’re actually watching this iconic band. Well, kind of.
I never saw them back in the day (although my big sister’s claim to fame is that she caught a glimpse of them getting into a lift in a Glasgow hotel) and thought I never would, so it’s really quite moving to see them in their glittering, sequinned glory.
I read a piece by someone online complaining that they found it depressing that the avatars had been created to resemble their younger selves. Why couldn’t they look like the OAPs they are now, she asked, and would it really be so repulsive to
watch singers in their 70s perform pop songs?
But that would mean we’d miss the magic of those heady days of Waterloo and massive crowds and the phenomenon that was ABBA, an unknown quartet who charmed the world. I’m not sure I want to see the reality.
I’m sure they don’t either. They all look fantastic and much slimmer than they ever did. You can tell they had a lot of input into their digitally enhanced doppelgangers. How wonderful to be able to create your ideal self.
It made me wonder what age I would choose if I could have a hologram created of my best self. It would have to be one of the few days over the decades that I was having a good hair today. There’s not been that many. But then I looked round at the group of old friends I’d gone to the ABBA show with and realised that in our eyes we are all still the bright young things we were when we met in our first year of university. It feels like a lifetime ago, and I suppose it almost is.
But do I want to go back to being that age? I don’t think so. The flats my pals and I used to share could be described as squalid at best. There were regular standoffs over the washing up and if it wasn’t your turn, damned if you were going to raise a hand to wash a plate. A saucepan lid was perfectly acceptable for the endless beans on toasts we consumed.
And being so skint all the time was just depressing, as were the shifts in busy pubs to make ends meet. The thought of drinking more than a pint now makes me want to vomit. How on earth did I manage to consume so many?
No, give me the quiet contentment of middle age, where a late night means collapsing into bed at 10 o’clock and you get your kicks from hanging your washing out on the line well into autumn. That’s living life to the full.
My old muckers and I laugh about our riotous past now, but I wouldn’t go back to those days even if the devil did come calling.