Can We Cease Pretending Rock Stars Are Ageless?

Basic rock followers could also be grappling with the mortality of their heroes just a little extra strongly in current weeks after Mick Jagger celebrated his eightieth birthday and Robbie Robertson handed away (at that very same age) after “an extended sickness.” Probably the most iconic artists of the ’60s and ’70s are getting outdated, and within the subsequent few years, we’re going to need to get used to mourning increasingly of them as they enter their twilight years.

That’s why a current Unbiased column by Ed Energy titled “Why Bruce Springsteen and Mick Jagger By no means Appear to Develop Previous” is so confounding. Who may presumably have a look at both of these two musicians and never see indicators of age — bodily or in any other case?

“Age has change into an irrelevance, significantly for top-tier rockers. Mick Jagger not too long ago celebrated turning 80 with a starry bash at Embargo Republica nightclub in Chelsea. There, Leonardo DiCaprio and Lenny Kravitz had been amongst these singing completely happy birthday,” Energy writes. “Simply this week, Paul McCartney, nonetheless using excessive from a triumphant 2022 headliner at Glastonbury, unveiled particulars of a brand new tour of Australia at age 81. Within the Instagram put up saying the dates, he was fresh-faced and enthusiastic. Macca’s comeback follows experiences 73-year-old Bruce Springsteen is to increase his newest tour by to 2024. And it comes amid the discharge of a brand new dwell album by 79-year-old folks queen Joni Mitchell — recorded at her shock 2022 comeback present at Newport Folks Pageant. Mitchell, who had an aneurysm in 2015, stays frail and confined to a wheelchair. But at Newport, her voice nonetheless had that outdated hurricane punch.”

To begin with, is having a 48-year-old (DiCaprio) and a 59-year-old (Kravitz) at your party actually an indication of cultural relevance and youthful zeal? Jagger and Springsteen each actually look good for his or her age, and the truth that they’re nonetheless touring is spectacular, however nobody would argue they’re performing on the identical degree they had been once they had been of their prime. Jagger has misplaced two shut associates and collaborators lately — longtime bandmate Charlie Watts died in 2021, and Tina Turner handed away again in Might. Springsteen has gotten his affairs so as and cashed out by promoting his catalog for a whopping $550 million, making certain his household can be taken care of lengthy after his loss of life, and his 2020 album Letter to You noticed The Boss paying tribute to late associates Clarence Clemons, Danny Federici and George Theiss whereas pondering his personal mortality. Mitchell has been in such poor well being for therefore lengthy that the Newport efficiency Energy mentions was her first dwell set in twenty years. She sounded spectacular, little doubt, however she’s not precisely spry.

In actual fact, that’s precisely why it feels so foolish to maintain ignoring the truth that legends like Mitchell are nearing the tip of their lives (or, on the very least, their careers). Followers needs to be doing every part they’ll to see and rejoice these growing older artists whereas they nonetheless can; pretending they’ll dwell endlessly isn’t doing anybody any favors.

Energy really makes a very good level in his piece, noting that Jagger and his bandmates have been known as outdated for 3 a long time now. “’Rock ’n’ roll isn’t imagined to be an outdated man’s recreation,’ declared the LA Occasions in an article headlined ‘The Geriatric Stones’, when Mick, Keith and firm rolled into California with their Voodoo Lounge tour in October 1994,” he writes. “Reviewing the identical tour, Rolling Stone expressed astonishment on the Stones’ capacity to ‘defy time.’ Jagger was a decrepit 51 — 12 months youthful than The Nationwide singer Matt Berninger at this time. In 2023, no person makes geriatric gags about musicians of their fifties. Because of the pioneering efforts of the Stones and their technology, we now not assume it uncommon for musicians to hold on into mid-life and past.”

So if it’s now not uncommon for musicians to tour late in life — and in some instances, given the present state of the dwell music business, it’s even financially needed — why faux that by doing so, these artists have unlocked some kind of fountain of youth? We’re about to enter a painful interval the place the individuals answerable for the best music of the twentieth century all begin dropping like flies. To say that they’re not rising outdated is delusional.