Should aging rockers need to pass a test?

cstack3 wrote: John McLaughlin is 80.  I'd pay to see him at any venue, any time.

Its different with instumentalists though. I'd be interested in seeing just about any old jazz legend on tour.

Mormegil wrote: Steve Hackett does not age . . .

He'd probably look the same as he once did if he donned a beard and glasses.

Prog&Math wrote: So should the last line of the Jethro Tull song be then changed to:  No, you're never too old to rock'n'roll, if you're too young to die you've passed the test.

Actually it should be...

I heard Paul Rodgers sing about 6 years ago and his voice was still powerful and dynamic. I heard Ann Wilson singing live recently and she still has what it takes to be consistent in range and dynamics at age 72. I was really impressed..but it's important to acknowledge that she has been taking care of her voice for many years and has built up a wall which is difficult for age to break down.

Live At Leeds by the Who was released in the early 70s and if you crank up that album in 2022 it's pretty obvious that it produced the volume and attack that Punk and Metal had later on. Therefore Daltery had to do a lot of screaming throughout their live performances for years. It's possible he caused damage to his voice unnoticeable overtime. Screaming a line like "THEY'RE ALL WASTED!!" could put a strain on the vocal overtime.


Ian Gillian sounded like a trained Opera singer to me..although I never researched his background to know for sure. I do know that his voice was impeccable on Jesus Christ Superstar. During that time he was skilled in the areas of singing in a musical and additionally you have to consider that his voice took on the main role in the story. So..his voice was full of diversity and possibly why he was a good choice for Andrew Lloyd Webber. I believe that from screaming his way through "Lucille ", Speed King" "Child In Time" and "Highway Star", night after night..from the Deep Purple shows in the U.S., Japan, and the U.K. shattered his voice. Although I can't say for sure..but I do believe it. In the early days he reminded me of a trained singer. The kind of singer that could sing above a cold. ..a singer with strong abilities in dynamics. I believe the screaming in Deep Purple damaged his voice...somehow?

moshkito wrote: Hi, I was thinking of something funny and weird.  The test should be to see how many chords they have forgotten and can't play anymore as arthritis slows down your fingers and hands and singers, how many notes they can't find in their voice anymore! Oh, not to mention how much music you can read when your eyes start going left, right and fuzzy!

That's funny!! It is true though..that if you've played the guitar or piano for decades you'll hear something in your head and realize along the way that it's chords, but not be concerned with they're name ..and strictly focused on their voicing which you hear in your head..because you want to produce that on an instrument. Sometimes you might visualize the image of the chords shape in your mind before playing it. You somehow hear the drone of a note as in Ravi Shankar's music. You want that note to ring out in every chord change which on guitar may require leaving a few strings open throughout the piece.

At this point you're not even thinking about the names of the notes , but you're hearing something and that is the direct connection to composing.

In the event of having arthritis..one of the best remedies for guitar is to practice a kind of exercise that not only stretches your fingering hand out..but gives it strength to play complex pieces if needed. If you do this in all 12 keys on the guitar without stopping it produces the natural strength you had in your early 20s..for example...

The exercises are based off the major scale, but they are not scales because you are leaving the root note of each key out during the switch from one particular key to the next. A good method is to sit by the garden, take a deep breath, and practice them slowly and evenly. You can't be thinking about your alternate picking or how to use an idea. Allow that to come naturally. After an hour or 2 you begin to hear melodies in your head. You may hear structure for a piece because playing the exercise repeatedly in all 12 keys can and will inspire that .

After a few hours after practicing this you may want to challenge yourself by playing along with a recording of whatever you know inside out, but struggle with it because of your arthritis and as a nasty result can no longer pick up a guitar randomly and play an instrumental like "Wichita Falls" like you did when you were younger.


Once you begin testing yourself you are awoken to a realization that your hands are warmed up and you can fly across the fretboard with the ease you had in your 20s. A string instrument requires that discipline..particularly in the case of having arthritis. If you don't practice you won't be able to play what you are writing. You'll have to hire someone else to play it..which doesn't always work well since you wrote the piece and have a different style of phrasing than the guitarist you hired.


For example having a guitarist replace Mike Oldfield during live transmission. The replacement guitarist is a fine player..no doubt..but does he phrase like Mike Oldfield? If he doesn't then the composition of Mike Oldfield will not have the same affect musically or spiritually because Mike Oldfield's guitar style is affective to the way in which his music flows. He produces a special atmosphere in tonality and his attack sonically is like a songbird that is luring.

I'm finding this topic to be rather depressing....We are behaving in the manner that Bob Fripp caustically referred to as "vampiric fans" (I heard him say this in person in 1979, at a US record store). 

^ Very few commenters here has actually written that ageing artists should quit. More of us have been supportive. All I did was "vote with my wallet"

The Anders wrote: ... It is obvious that you can't go on doing the same thing over and over again, so to stay relevant, you have to do something else. I think that for many rock bands, they are so caught in their "classic period" that they can't escape it. As a result, they almost become a parody of themselves. Plus, it turns into a vicious circle if the audience just shows up to hear the classic songs. Another factor might be the youth-fixation in rock music, and in popular music more generally.

Easy Money wrote: What a lot of people don't realize is that working musicians have bills to pay too. Retirement is out of the question for a lot of us, and switching to another profession late in life is not an option either. Just because a musician was fairly well known at some point in their career, don't assume that they are rich for the rest of their life, most are not. Payments for royalties have dropped considerably in the age of digital music theft. A lot of older musicians are just trying to make ends meet in the way they best know how. If you don't like what they sound like in their old age, then don't go to their concerts or buy their music, but as long as enough people are still interested in what they are doing, most likely they will continue doing what they know best.

Jacob Schoolcraft wrote: A good example would be Ronnie Montrose. Several of his solo albums were about something else.