 peer group. Twelve days ago, 76-year-old Sir Elton John thrilled Glastonbury Festival with a retirement party that showed he remains at the top of his game. A year earlier, a then 80-year-old Sir Paul McCartney was similarly spellbinding in the same field. This weekend, The Who, a band led by 79-year-old Roger Daltrey, begin a run of UK dates. Meanwhile 73-year-old Bruce Spingsteen is midway through his seven-country, 90-date world tour, on which every show lasts for almost four hours ; and that 71-year-old whippersnapper Sting is looking fitter than ever during a marathon of 54 shows that ends a week before Christmas. And last weekend, Blondie, fronted by 78-year-old Debbie Harry, featured on a bill in Crystal Palace that was headlined by 76-year-old Iggy Pop. The punk icon stripped shirtless and threw himself around the stage spitting, growling, leaping and kicking like he's done for half a century. As this paper's review put it, he 'does not so much defy as brutally confront the march of time'. Combined, that list of performers is older than the Sistine Chapel. The question, then, is how on earth this remarkable coterie of hellraisers (and Sting) – most of whom have lived the kind of lives the pages of any modern health magazine suggest will kill you within a month – manage to 'be as full-on as possible' at an age when most people are settled into a gentle retirement of golf and peony pr){kind=link}
From the Stones to Iggy Pop, the hellraisers of yesteryear have swapped the drugs and booze for personal trainers and organic chefs
“Rock’n’roll, or any kind of pop music honestly, isn’t supposed to be done when you’re in your seventies,” Mick Jagger said last year. “”It wasn’t designed for that. Doing anything high-energy at this age is really pushing it.”
Impressive self-awareness from a man who turns 80 in a few weeks, you might think. An admission of defeat. Not exactly. “But that makes it even more challenging,” he continued. “So it’s, like, ‘OK, we’ve got to f—ing do this right,’ but it’s got to be as full-on as possible.”
It’s an attitude that seems contagious among Jagger’s septuagenarian (or older) peer group. Twelve days ago, 76-year-old Sir Elton John thrilled Glastonbury Festival with a retirement party that showed he remains at the top of his game. A year earlier, a then 80-year-old Sir Paul McCartney was similarly spellbinding in the same field.
This weekend, The Who, a band led by 79-year-old Roger Daltrey, begin a run of UK dates. Meanwhile 73-year-old Bruce Spingsteen is midway through his seven-country, 90-date world tour, on which every show lasts for almost four hours; and that 71-year-old whippersnapper Sting is looking fitter than ever during a marathon of 54 shows that ends a week before Christmas.