Bring back sex, drugs and rock n’ roll 

It’s generally not hard to find a thoroughly depressing, joyless, plaintive, whiny, doom-laden, monotoned, earnest, life-sucking, soul-less, uninspiring, hapless and gloom-inducing article in the leftier British press. In fact, I sometimes wonder if the editors have sacked all their journalists, installed ChatGPT, and simply sit there, sipping Waitrose crémant, as they punch in evermore negative and melancholy prompts like ‘write an article about why something (gardening, cake, quantum engineering) is racist’ or ‘do a travel piece on the joys of zero emission yurting in Macclesfield’.

Nonetheless, the other day, an article caught my eye which elicited more than the usual sense of enervating ennui, and endtimes pessimism. It was titled ‘It’s just not worth it: Is this the end of sex, drugs and rock and roll?’.

It recorded, with a faint puritanical glee, the termination of that long, storied and glorious tradition: the outrageous rock tour, complete with its cocaine, groupies, heroin, pretty girls, prettier boys, overdoses, Ecstasy, drunken roadies, hurled TVs, trashed hotels, early deaths, Satanism, orgies in Cincinnati, and, on one occasion at least, a drowned Rolls-Royce.