Andy Richardson: Thank you for the music, it's the best thing

Bruce Springsteen tore up Coventry's Ricoh Arena.

He created memories that will last a lifetime for 38,000 fans. He gave a 21-year-old girl at the front the birthday present of her life as he picked her from the crowd to get up on stage and dance.

He gave two kids aged seven or eight the night of their tender lives as he got them up to sing.

He made grown men weep, ladies of all ages swoon and swept fans away on a tidal wave of musical excellence. He blasted us with a Phil Spector-esque Wall of Sound.

We weren't fans at a rock gig, we were apostles at the Church of Bruce. We weren't blokes singing in a football stadium, we were the voices of a massed choir. Grown men looked into one another's eyes and sang to each other and meant every word. Women danced with abandon as though their lives depended on it. An arena full of people were united in one single emotion: happiness.

The evening was a shared experience, an opportunity to forget the nonsense that crowds our minds and the chance to be our better selves. We suspended our disbelief because Bruce did so too. We engaged with every line of every song because Bruce meant what he sang.

We were transported to a different world where, as Muhammed Ali told us, impossible is not a fact, it's an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration, it's a dare.

When each of us entered the stadium, we brought with us the baggage of our daily lives. How could we not?

There were doctors weighed down by over-work, mums fed up with their truculent kids, dudes who had scraped together enough money to buy a ticket than they couldn't really afford and who were wondering how they'd pay their rent.

In my case, I'd endured a particularly unhappy time in my personal life.

After feeling more highs and lows than on a roller coaster and plunging to depths somewhere near the Marianas Trench, I'd received absolution from a man wearing a waistcoat and a pair of jeans.

The madness of a best-forgotten epoch had been washed away in a blaze of Fender Stratocasters and songs about blue-collar workers.

In the cauldron the Ricoh Arena, the madness that had burned like magnesium for a time was washed away on a tidal wave of joy.

Those negatives were replaced by escapism and wonder, by the opportunity to connect with a better self.

Thirty eight thousand of us had stood in a concrete and steel football stadium and thought it was as beautiful and awe-inspiring as the Vatican. It wasn't a concert, it was a communion.

It wasn't a football stadium, it was a cathedral. We weren't strangers, we were bound together in a joyous shared experience.

We were brothers from other mothers, sisters from the same block, family who were brought together for one memorable, peaceful and celebratory night. It wasn't a stage show, or faux drama: 38,000 of us enjoyed a night that will only ever happen once – and enjoy it we did.

Music transports us to a different world. Gigs are a passport to a place where, as Judy Garland sang, we can forget our troubles and just get happy; chase all our cares away.

The things that we'd normally be too inhibited to do but that free our souls – dance, sing, pump our fists in the air and embrace the things we love most – become the only thing that matter.

Life becomes more vivid than at any other time. The turbulence of the real world is forgotten. A new perspective is realised. And the horrible things that happen are suddenly and thankfully replaced by happy days.

Whether it's a rock band at a sweaty pub or an on-the-road pop band at the local shopping centre, whether it's a grime act at a dirty club or one of the world's greatest rock stars at a stadium, live music lets us exit the monotony of routine to inhabit a world of possibility.

We leave the daily grind behind to shine like stars, be higher than the sky and live out our dreams.

At gigs, we are equal and all as one.

Because, as Bruce sang at Coventry: "Tramps Like Us. Baby We Were Born To Run."