Ageing rock gods may be more grandpop than pop

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

There may be times that the Who experience the irony, or even embarrassment, when they take their creaking bones onto the big stage and perform their classic My Generation – a group of pensioners still somehow hoping to die before they get old.

Then again, they can probably console themselves with all of the money their anthem has made for them over the years and belt it out without a second thought.

Roger Daltrey first hoped for an early burn-out back in 1965 when he was just 21, when living fast and dying young might have seemed like a good career move for an edgy rocker.

But there’s nothing like a passport that points out you’re now 72 to focus the mind on living longer more than checking out ahead of time.

In a similar vein, Paul McCartney need deliberate no more as to whether anyone will need him when he’s sixty-four – because that will be a decade ago this June.

At least he now knows to his cost that it’s not Heather Mills – and that was a costly lesson even for one of the richest men in rock.

Bob Dylan may look a little on the wizened-side to be singing Forever Young – although it remains one of the great anthems and a song that will always be remembered for those who attended Eamon Deacy’s funeral where it was fittingly played as the Communion antiphon.

And yet these rock dinosaurs have miles left in the engine for a while yet – plans are afoot for a three-day rock spectacular in the California desert in October that will feature the Rolling Stones, McCartney, Dylan, The Who, Neil Young and Roger Waters from Pink Floyd.

Phil Collins is another man who doesn’t want to hide his age – he announced this week that he is reissuing all eight of his studio albums with front covers that are identical to the originals but with one difference — they feature him at 65, more wizened and with even less hair.

The images for a collection entitled Take a look at me now were shot over ten days by Patrick Balls, the music and portraits photographer, and Martin Griffin, his assistant, in New York last year.

They painstakingly ensured that everything, from lighting to beads of sweat, was identical.

Nostalgia is truly a rich vein worth mining – Bruce sings of Glory Days, Dusty Springfield of Going Back; Mary Hopkin opines that Those Were the Days, Kirsty McColl’s or Luke Kelly’s version of the Kinks (Thank You for the) Days; Paul Simon is Still Crazy After All These Years.

But back to the Beatles – because a team of British researchers from Anglia Ruskin University and the University of Hull have taken the Fab Four to task over their negative portrayal of ageing.

Their study, published in the Journal of Advanced Nursing, reckons that songs with such negative connotations of getting older could lead to low self-esteem and problems with cardiac health.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.