For the first time since they re-formed in 2005, I watched 60 minutes of a “Queen + Paul Rodgers” concert last week. Half of a great band that broke up 19 years ago, joined by one member of a lame band that broke up 28 years ago, all of whom are in their 60s, attempting to belt out songs that were written 35 years ago. It inevitably dredged up the old argument, once again, that makes everyone role their eyes: should old men be allowed to play rock’n’roll?
Music nerds can debate this topic endlessly, and the rest of the population can’t believe how seriously music nerds take themselves: why are you so judgmental? What’s wrong with The Rolling Stones, or anyone else, playing the music they love into their 50s, 60s, and 70s? It’s ok for blues artists, so why not rock’n’roll musicians?
Despite the incredulous eye-rolling, it’s a valid argument, and one I’m never able to resolve. At best, I walk away from this argument feeling rotten – rotten that perhaps my heroes never took any of it seriously; rotten than I can’t accept them for what they are; rotten that it’s even an issue.
I am one of those who always felt rock’n’roll is – was – a young person’s language. It was started by young people playing for young people, and inspired horror in their parents. Very simple and straightforward. Even the musicians who weren’t revolutionaries – who may have been, even, conservative – were leading a revolution anyway, by virtue of their playing a new kind of music that drove kids into a frenzy, convincing their hapless parents that society itself was coming apart at the seams.
It was at the heart of what dour, un-hip old losers like Spiro Agnew referred to, disingenuously, as the “generation gap.” Such was the power of this music for all of us who heard it as kids. Only we understood it; our parents could make a gracious attempt to try and understand it, but by the time you had cashed out and had kids, your brainwaves were irrevocably altered and unable to translate this stuff. Not only did parents not get it, they couldn’t get it.
Rock’n’roll was brand new in 1955, and no one had any idea what it would look like 10, 20, 50 years later. Pondering the face of rock’n’roll 50 years down the line was the furthest thing from anyone’s mind. The kids were living in the now, and Townsend hit the nail square on the head with “hope I die before I get old,” which was a safe lyric to sing in 1965. Pete was only 25.
The problem is, life doesn’t exist in a vacuum. No one imagined Rock’n’roll aging, but that’s what inevitably happens to everything in this universe that doesn’t drop dead in its youth. So, here we are, 55 years after Chuck Berry and Bill Haley. And rock’n’roll looks mighty damn old. I love this stuff – it has been my lifeblood since I was five years old - but even I have to say: everything rock’n’roll was capable of was done within 15 years of its birth. As an art form, it ceased evolving around 1970. By that point we had Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis, Bo Diddley, the British Invasion, The Velvet Underground, the American garage movement, Hendrix, and Iggy and the Stooges. Even though some truly great rock’n’roll was played after that, there was nothing new about it. We’re left with this conundrum after 1970-ish, where a new generation comes of age every 20 years, producing some great music here and there music, but everyone’s simply dialing in bands that played before they were even born. (The punk bands from London in 1976/1977 had more in common with Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley than they’d ever care to admit.)
In fact, I can’t shake the feeling that it’s just wrong for bloated, geriatric Englishmen like Queen’s Roger Taylor to put on oversized shirts (in a sad attempt to hide their paunches) and exploit everyone’s sense of nostalgia to the tune of $100/ticket.
It’s unfair for me to think this way, of course. Who the hell am I to say geezers like Roger Taylor and Paul Rodgers shouldn’t be up on a ginormous football stadium stage, running around as tho they’re 35 years younger? Why didn’t I have a problem with John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters playing into their declining years, but I find “Queen + Paul Rodgers” a depressing spectacle?
It’s somewhat of a paradox for me – I do consider it a young person’s language, but now that the decades have worn on, we’re finally seeing what Rock looks like as an old man. Jonathan Richmond always looked forward to the aging process, insisting we’d be Old and Dignified. Would I have been happier if it had died out as an art form, no longer written or played? Of course not. By the time I was in a band in 1986, there was nothing new under the sun. And yet, bands like The Damned, The Beatles, Ramones, Bo Diddley, and Black Flag guided me through life’s darkest moments. I literally wouldn’t have made it without them.
The answer is simple enough, even though it didn’t dawn on me until last week. Really, I have no problem with old men playing rock’n’roll. Link Wray and Dick Dale are two examples of old men playing rock’n’roll, kicking severe ass as hard in their 60s as in their 20s. Nay; when it becomes offensive is when bands form, record great music, break up when the marriage goes sour, go their separate ways, and then reunite 20 years later when some money (maybe not even all that much) is dangled in their faces. It’s such a cynical, shameless move. What bigger let down is there than watching a band that saved your life as a kid – that wrote a song like Bodies, or Sheer Heart Attack – reunite as fat old men and tour the world to cash in on your old feelings of I’m-not-alone-in-this-world;-someone-actually-understands-out-there? It’s like being kicked square in the stomach with a steel-tipped Doc Martin. You realize: these guys were completely full of shit. It wasn’t ever an inside language that I got; it was just more of the same bullshit that I thought these guys helped me escape, in my room in the middle of the night, headphones on to keep my parents off my back, away from school, away from my fucking job, away from, as Bukowski would say, the things that claw and tear. Back then they were saviors, Gods who refused to compromise with a status quo that was so obviously full of shit. Now they’re just average losers, willing to do whatever it takes to make a buck.
Put it this way: here’s a lyric by Bon Scott, the one true AC/DC frontman, written for the band’s second album in 1975:
You can stick your 9 to 5 living
And your collar and your tie
You can stick your moral standards
Because it’s all a dirty lie
You can stick your golden handshake
And you can stick your silly rules
And all the other SHIT
That they teach to kids in school
‘cause I ain’t no fool…
That is potent, powerful stuff. It sums up, in my humble opinion, the very essence of rock’n’roll: It’s Us against Them, and I will never be broken.
Can you imagine the man who wrote these words – literally a life preserver for me as a fourteen-year-old – happily touring the casino circuit as an old, gray man, kow-towing to the promoters and businessmen and suits, all for a paycheck?
It hurts me just thinking about that question. If Bon was like 98% of the human population, yeah, he probably would have toured the casinos. We’ll never know; Bon died in 1980 at the age of 33. Maybe that really is the only thing stopping our heroes from destroying our trust.
