I think I had my first orgasm at a Beatles concert — then again, how would I have known? When you’re preteen, prepubescent and pretty much pre-everything, “I Want to Hold Your Hand” seems the height of erotic ambition. And that was especially true in 1964, before the sexual revolution and the Internet made that kind of ignorance unimaginable.

我想我第一次的高潮是在“披头士”(Beatles)的演唱会上——是啊，那时我怎么知道呢？十一二岁，还不到青春期，什么都不懂的年纪，《我想握住你的手》(I Want to Hold Your Hand)似乎就是爱欲的终极目标。况且当时是1964年，性解放运动和互联网都还没有出现，这样的无知还是有可能的。

By the time the Beatles showed up in Glasgow, on the final leg of their second Scottish visit that year, my friends and I were already fanatically devoted. Transistor radios were hidden in our school desks, earpiece cords accessed through inkwells, and afterschool hours were spent listening to 45s in the home of the one friend who owned a record player.

那一年“披头士”在格拉斯哥演出，这是他们第二次苏格兰巡演的最后一站，我和朋友都是他们的狂热歌迷。我们把晶体管收音机藏在课桌底下，用墨水瓶挡着耳机线偷听他们的歌，放学后就去一个家里有唱机的朋友家里，没完没了地听他们的45转唱片。

To see our idols in person required sneakiness and elaborate planning. Parental permission, had we asked for it, would not have been forthcoming, and tickets were available only by mail — city authorities being keen to avoid the camping-out chaos that had preceded earlier events.

为了亲睹偶像风采，我们得做不少鬼鬼祟祟的周密计划。假如征求父母许可，一定会遭到断然拒绝，演唱会门票也只能靠邮购——市政府竭力想避免他们早先演唱会时发生的那种歌迷彻夜露宿抢票的混乱场面。

Before the Internet and Ticketmaster stepped in, big-name tickets were typically purchased one way: by lining up on the street at night alongside throngs of hardy fans and waiting for a box office or a record store to open at 9 a.m. Since most of my early concertgoing took place in Scotland, those streets were almost always damp and the temperatures abysmal.

那时候还没有互联网和Ticketmaster订票网站，要买大牌明星的演唱会票子，一般只有一种办法：整晚在街上和大群死忠歌迷一起排队，等着售票处或卖票的唱片店上午9点开门。我小时候大都是在苏格兰看演唱会，街上总是那么阴冷潮湿。

Yet some of my fondest memories — and closest friendships — were forged in those lines, as thermoses and joints were shared and singalongs proliferated. Once, sleeping in an alley behind the Edinburgh Playhouse before buying tickets to a Bruce Springsteen show, I awoke to find myself being spooned by a derelict, attracted not by the Boss but by my sandwiches and sleeping bag.

但是许多最美好的记忆和最亲密的友谊就是在那一次次的排队时铸成的，大家一起吃烤肉，用保温瓶喝热水， 一起大声唱歌。有一次，我去买布鲁斯·斯普林斯汀(Bruce Springsteen)演出的票，在爱丁堡剧场后面的巷子里睡着了，醒来发现自己被一个露宿街头的流浪汉抱着，他不是受“老板”（斯普林斯汀的绰号——译注）吸引而来，而是看中了我的三明治和睡袋。

Nothing so uncivil marred my hours-long wait outside the Odeon to see the Beatles. Around the Odeon, a beautiful old cinema that was demolished in 2013, the line snaked and swelled. Willowy young women in beehive hairdos and bright raincoats, feigning boredom and pretend-smoking Players, flirted with the coppers on horseback who kept a wary eye on us and shooed away nosy drunks. Only afterward did we learn of the riots and vandalism that erupted after we were safely inside, as those without tickets created their own entertainment by overturning vehicles and smashing store windows.

但是我在奥丁剧场之外排队几小时，等着看“披头士”的时候，却没发生这么不文明的扫兴事。奥丁是一个漂亮的老电影院，2013年被拆掉了。当晚，剧场外排起了长蛇一样的大队，人潮汹涌。一浪一浪留着蜂窝头，穿着亮色雨衣的女孩们装出百无聊赖的样子，假装抽烟，和骑警们调情；他们一边警惕地望着我们，一边还得忙着赶走臭烘烘的醉汉。事后，我们才知道当我们安全进入剧场之后，外面有暴乱和破坏事件发生——没买到票的人掀翻车辆，砸破商店橱窗，以此自娱自乐。

Of the concert itself, I recall almost nothing besides the screaming, a hive hysteria as hard to explain as it is embarrassing to relate. (The Internet tells me the Beatles sang 10 songs that night, and had no fewer than six supporting acts, but I vaguely recall only the incomparable Mary Wells.) From our spots in the balcony, we couldn’t hear a single word. What we saw, when we stood on our seats, was a tsunami of crazed women bearing down on four skinny lads who seemed heartbreakingly vulnerable in their smart little suits and floppy bangs. Unprotected by the slabs of equipment that would later barricade us from groups like Deep Purple and Cream, they looked like prey.

至于演出本身，除了尖叫我几乎什么也记不起来了，完全是群体性的歇斯底里，很难解释，想起来也觉得尴尬（网上的资料写着“披头士”当晚唱了10首歌，有至少6个乐队或艺人暖场，但我只能模糊地想起无与伦比的玛丽·威尔斯[Mary Wells]）。从我们在楼上的位置，几乎一个字也听不见。我们站在椅子上，只能看见疯狂的女人们，如同海啸一般，不住冲向四个瘦骨如柴的小伙，他们穿着可爱的小衣服，留着松松垮垮的发帘，脆弱得让人心疼。后来“深紫”(Deep Purple)、“奶油”(Cream)之类乐队演出时，台上会有厚重的装备，用来把歌迷和乐队隔开，此时却没有这样的东西，他们显得好像猎物一样。

They should have been terrified. We were a mob, and had we all chosen to follow the frenzied front-seaters who tried to storm the stage, there’s little that the heavies planted nervously below could have done to stop us. But we were too busy fainting and sobbing to mount an offensive, and too grateful to the stewards who plucked the unconscious to safety. (In the decades that followed, watching bands like Joy Division, the Stranglers and the Sex Pistols electrify venues in London and Manchester — places where hoodlums and toffs happily rubbed shoulders — I would see many superfans pass out, though probably less from romantic yearning than from an excess of head banging.)

他们本可能会害怕的。我们就是一群乌合之众，如果我们学着前座那些想冲上舞台的狂热歌迷们的话，台下那些紧张兮兮的大块头保镖们根本拦不住我们。但我们忙着晕倒、抽泣，顾不上发起攻势，也很感激那些把晕倒的人拖到安全处去的警卫们。在接下来的几十年里，看“快乐分裂”(Joy Division)、“扼杀者”(Stranglers)和“性手枪”(Sex Pistols)在伦敦和曼彻斯特的场地里煽风点火的时候——那里都是流氓阿飞成群结队，勾肩搭背的地方——我也常常看到许多超级歌迷晕倒，不过不是因为满心浪漫渴望，而是因为互相撞脑袋撞得太狠了。

That night in 1964 was the start of a journey that consumed most of my free time in my teens and 20s. Music, even more than the movies I made a career reviewing, taught me the joy of collective experience and especially the power of mass seduction. And though Johnny Rotten’s ferrety features and snarling delivery might have seemed a long way from John Lennon’s placid professionalism, their grip on a room — and on our libidos — was identical.

从1964年的那天晚上起，一段消耗了我十几岁到二十几岁所有空余时间的旅行开始了。我是专业影评人，但还是音乐带给我更多关于群体经历的快感，特别是让我见识了大众情人的力量。尽管“坏牙强尼”(Johnny Rotten)雪貂般的外表和咆哮般的歌声与约翰·列侬(John Lennon)平静温和的职业主义相去甚远，但他们吸引歌迷——乃至我们的力比多——的力量是一样的。

Only much later would I fully appreciate that the intimacy of those long-ago places, from clubs to a former bingo hall, was nurtured less by their size than by the way we used them. No forest of upraised cellphones blocked our view of the stage and one another; no one was tweeting or videotaping or posting selfies to Facebook.

直到很久以后，我才真正懂得欣赏那些以前的演出场地——从那些俱乐部到一个游戏厅改建的场地——它们有一种亲近感，不是因为它们的大小，而是因为我们使用这些场地的方式。没有高高举起的手机挡住我们观看舞台、观看彼此的视线；没有人发推特、拍视频或者在Facebook上发自拍。

Without those technological barriers, concerts had an immediacy that’s all but lost today. That’s especially true of stadium events, where we’re pushed farther and farther from our musical heroes, the screens are supersized and the layers of impersonality daunting. With a cellphone in front of me, would I have locked eyes with some of my most memorable lovers-to-be? Would I have rescued, or even noticed, the ratty little dog that someone brought to a packed Buzzcocks show and promptly forgot? (He loved that first set, though.)

没有这些科技带来的障碍，演唱会上总有一种亲密的气氛，到如今已经荡然无存。特别是在体育场举办的那些盛会，我们离自己的音乐英雄们愈来愈远，转播屏幕过于巨大，一层层的观众席完全取消了个性，令人沮丧。当我面前摆着一个手机的时候，我还能目不转睛地望着台上那些最难忘的恋慕对象们吗？我还能像当年那样，在“嗡嗡鸡”(Buzzcocks)拥挤的演唱会上，救下一只被主人带来然后又忘到脑后的可怜小狗吗？（不过它挺喜欢演唱会的第一节的。）现在的我可能根本就不会注意到它。

What I treasure most about those vivid, unmediated, sometimes scary days — aside from tickets that often cost no more than the price of a pint — is that they uniquely belong to those who were there. At a time when very little live pop music was televised, most of the really interesting stuff inevitably happened off camera. No Instagram or Tumblr posts memorialized your most idiotic behavior for prospective employers or partners to condemn, giving public events a liberating privacy that’s rapidly evaporating.

关于那段历历在目、单刀直入，有时候甚至有点可怕的日子，我最珍惜的除了便宜的票价（通常比一品托酒还便宜），便是那种现场感：它们只属于当时在场的那些人。那时候现场流行音乐会几乎没什么机会上电视，大多数真正有意思的事情都发生在镜头之外。没有Instagram或是Tumblr帖子去记下你那些白痴的行为，好让未来的雇员或者伙伴看了指责你，那个时候，公共活动中有种让人安心的隐私，如今却早就蒸发了。

Back then, almost every concert souvenir, from the posters you harvested to the tickets you shivered all night to buy, sparked memories that no outsider could electronically gate-crash. If you wanted to know what happened, you had to listen to my stories or read my diaries. Try the one with the Beatles on the cover.

在那个时候，几乎所有演唱会的纪念品，从大批拿回来的海报到哆嗦了整夜买回来的票子，都会成为闪亮的回忆，外人是不能靠着电子设备硬闯进来的。如果你想知道演唱会上发生了什么，就得看我写的报道，或者看我写的日记。不妨看看这一段吧，“披头士”就在封面上呢。