Rock & roll out the barrel

Sally Toms looks at the relationship between beer and live music.

Alcoholic drinks make friends easily. Like schnapps and snow sports for example, whisky and hill walking, martinis and James Bond films, sherry and, actually no, not sherry. And you can forget sport, because beer’s true companion is rock and roll.

And like any good relationship, there has to be a little bit of give and take. Beer gets a young, cool image by association (not to mention a shortcut to the hearts and wallets of the 18-24 year old impressionable beer drinker), and the music gets a huge amount of money and opportunity through sponsorship – particularly live music. But it’s not just about boring brand sponsorship, with all this cash and marketing muscle beer can have an extremely positive reaction on the music industry.

Like Tom and Barbara, beer and music are Good for each other.

Take the festival scene for instance, it has experienced an explosion in popularity in recent years, and let’s face it, beer is just about the only thing that can make stumbling around in muddy field enjoyable (although the flipside involves those infamous festival toilets). During the August bank holiday weekend, the Carling festivals at Reading and Leeds attract in excess of 150,000 people. This year, headline acts included The Smashing Pumpkins, Razorlight and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Latitude in Suffolk is a newcomer to the festival scene, and in 2007 many a pint of Tuborg (from sponsor Carlsberg) was poured to the sounds of Damien Rice, The Magic Numbers and Arcade Fire among o.....

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By Sally Toms

Section : Beer Lifestyle

Page number : 26