Like fine wine
Rock and Roll is about youth. It’s about sexuality, it’s about the burning, tortured soul of the perpetual adolescent screaming their urges to the skies. The stars of modern music are teenagers, stuck in eternal youthfulness, playing to teenagers.
So if that’s the case, at what point should a rocker hang it up? It’s an issue that’s more and more relevant, as the rock and roll generation hits its 60s and 70s. In fact, there’s a compelling argument for the notion that we are in the last great flourishing of the great cultural firework that was the 1960s. Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, all these old bands are doing the reunion thing whilst they still can, and whilst enough of them are still alive. The Stones are carrying on but look more and more like the walking dead, there are only two Beatles left walking on the face of the planet. It’s all leading to a close.
That notwithstanding, maybe it is better to burn out than to fade away. Maybe the memories that people have, of these great figures in the prime of their youth striding across the world’s stages, they should stay untouched.
I’m not so sure.
I think our musicians should carry on. I think they should chase their dreams, and carry on, for as long as the fire burns them. If they don’t have that fire in their bellies, then that’s when they should stop. Not before.
U2 had an interesting take on it a while back, about the pressure of expectations. ‘We are a new band. this is our first album.’ Now, that might well be Bono the master salesman talking his band up like he always does, and you might not agree that they are a worthwhile force in music, but that is the spirit you need in music. Yes, youth should be served. Yes, eventually careers will end and as musicians get older they can make fools of themselves. But that’s what they are doing at the start of it all. Do you really think that Iggy Pop should be told to tone it down a little? For that matter, do you think that Iggy Pop was considered appropriate behaviour when he was twenty-one.
Rock music is about being spectacular, about having the spark of life within you. More power to the old bastards.
