Old rockers and the retirement dilemma: ‘Getting older is an unforeseen event in the music industry’

Everyone knows that adolescence is the stage during which a deeper connection with music is established. For teenagers (and young people) music influences their way of dressing, their vocabulary, and how they deal with any feeling that seems indecipherable. Of course, this is something that has been confirmed by dozens of university studies and that has been fueling the cultural industries for more than 60 years. Furthermore, these types of links are reciprocal, and young artists also establish a special relationship with their peers (or with those born shortly after them). For example, recently, the critic Carlos Marcos wrote in this same newspaper that “being 25 years old and meeting Carolina Durante on the road must be very stimulating.”

When, in the early to mid-20th century, philosophers such as Ortega y Gasset and Julián Marías wrote about “generations” — a volatile word that is abused in the trend-seeking press — they came to the conclusion that a generation is a group of people of similar ages capable of acting together and changing the world. There is no doubt that, according to that definition, the most successful generation of rock music was the first. The Beatles, Dylan, the Stones (and so many others, from David Crosby to Ray Davies) changed the world in many ways. They were so successful that today it is difficult to think of a group of artists with a similar level of influence. Although in 2024 Taylor Swift was the undisputed leader in revenue with her Eras Tour, last year, among the highest-earning live artists there were three bands (the Stones, Springsteen, and Metallica) led by men over 60 years old. It may not sound very impressive, but if we look only at rock, seven out of the 10 best-selling bands are formed by men of retirement age.

The natural aging process of rock stars (in cases where they have reached old age, because apparently working in the music industry means a reduction of about 25 years in life expectancy) has accustomed us to seeing septuagenarians and octogenarians performing the songs they wrote during their youth. And, even though it is very common, there is still discussion about the possible contradictions and questions that these shows present. Who are they trying to connect with? With today’s youth or with spectators of their age? Is it coherent for an old man to sing about youthful rage? How does Roger Daltrey, 81, feel when he sings “I hope I die before I get old”? And what about Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson, at 77, when he performs Too Old to Rock and Roll but Too Young to Die, a song he composed when he started to feel older in 1976 — that is, when he was 29.

If almost all employees dream of retirement, why do rockers prefer the stage to the comfort of a rocking chair? And, above all: is what they do still relevant? Because if there is one thing that cultural critics agree on, it is that, with few exceptions, the rock that is successful today is not that which speaks of the present, but which recreates its own past.

Nursing home rock

In 2001, American journalist John Strausbaugh published Rock ‘til You Drop, a spiteful essay in which he reviewed the decline of a genre that had replaced rebellion with nostalgia. In his book, Strausbaugh speaks of “colostomy rock” (let’s call it nursing home rock) and includes in that category everything released by the Rolling Stones, the Who, or Neil Young during the 1990s. “A whole generation has betrayed its own youthful ideals and legacies, becoming complacent and morally and intellectually lazy in its mature age, from the sad superficial glorification of Rolling Stone magazine to the self-promotion within the industry represented by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,” said Strausbaugh. Over 20 years after the publication of that essay, the phenomenon he criticized is more alive than ever.

Although much has been written about nostalgia as a dominant value in the cultural landscape of recent decades and as an obstacle to the development of new ideas, there have rarely been diatribes as forceful as Strausbaugh’s. In 2008, the Spanish critic Eloy Fernández Porta joked about the possible incorporation of Bob Dylan into the collections of an Egyptian museum (as a mummy, that is); but 17 years have passed and Dylan continues his Never Ending Tour while, with the help of Timothée Chalamet, he generates new fans. In December 2024, Paul McCartney gave two concerts in Madrid and the reviews were unanimous: they were wonderful.

You miss going on tour a lot. There is a phrase that is often repeated by musicians: ‘Why do I do this? Because it’s what I do, it’s who I am”

Fernando Alfaro, Surfin' Bichos

Iñaki López, from the band Kokoshca, is one of those young rockers (by these standards) who unabashedly admits that he still pays a lot of attention to legends: “We opened our album La juventud (Youth) with a speech by Pepe Mujica, who is 89 years old. The industry sold the idea of the good-looking corpse, but youth is something else: a way to keep surprising yourself, to keep on seeing, to wipe your eyes after every glance, to keep on learning and to keep on being deliberately innocent in some things,” says the Pamplona native.

“These are people who have continued to develop their profession and, even though they are getting older, they are still themselves, despite the changes that time brings,” adds Fernando Alfaro, leader of Surfin’ Bichos (a band where there are already a couple of retirees “with an enviable appearance”). “I don’t know if you can ask them for innovation. Innovation doesn’t mean reinventing yourself all the time. Scott Walker or Bowie were always mutating because that was their essence. Other artists have remained within the same field or the same tone and have continued to say important things, or things that mattered to us. The important thing is that each creator has what in literature is called a voice. In music, the same thing happens, and that voice only goes out when the person dies.”

So, in general, there is a consensus: it is still worth listening to rock legends and there is no point in disregarding their maturity because of alleged contradictions that, after all, would apply to anyone under capitalism. In fact, according to Alfaro, it is often precisely the older artists who are the least willing to comply with the demands of the industry: “In the same way that in jazz it was accepted that an older artist could continue to produce great works, the same thing has ended up happening in rock. The industry was selling youth because they started out very young, but then they discovered that it was much easier to cheat a novice musician. In my experience, I see that people who are starting out are easier to manipulate and deceive, and the managers know this. In addition, those who are starting out have an excessive ambition that is very easy to lead or manipulate. It is the industry that sometimes encourages or directs this contempt for the elderly.”

A huge identification with a very demanding job

In recent years, various organizations have been trying to get the entertainment industry to take artists’ physical and mental well-being seriously. Psychologist Rosana Corbacho is part of a group of therapists specializing in treating musicians and other professionals such as technicians and managers. Regarding musicians who extend their careers, she explains: “Anyone who has had an intense working life finds it difficult to retire. And when your life and identity have been based on what you did on stage, even more so. It is very difficult to abandon that work role on which all the positive reinforcement you received depends; for some, leaving work is almost like disappearing. Sometimes, even when a limiting problem arises, such as an illness or old age itself, and something makes them feel more vulnerable, the musician clings to what still makes them feel alive or seen.”

Alfaro confirms that for most musicians, staying on stage is a matter of vocation. “You miss going on tour a lot. There is a phrase that is often repeated by musicians: ‘Why do I do this? Because it’s what I do, it’s who I am.’ There are people who stop having a public presence, but that identity as an artist, musician, and creator stays with you until you have no more strength to carry on with life. I would say that it is just a job, but it’s also nothing like an ordinary job. There comes a time when you don’t feel good doing something different. It ends up being your essence. And that explains the longevity of those who can afford to continue playing.”

Another reason why careers are lasting so long is that, until now, no one has thought about what retirement should be like for musicians, especially for all those artists who have not made a fortune and now face a business model in which income depends largely on live performances: “The industry doesn’t care about people when they no longer produce,” Corbacho says. “Many of them have only lived for their careers, and they barely have a personal life. And labels or promoters do not have any retirement or emotional support plan, either for artists or their workers. If someone retires, they don’t recognize the work they did during their career. And, since we live so much in the present and this is such an unstable industry, we don’t look to the future. Getting older is an unforeseen event in the music industry. There is no planning regarding what life there is after being a musician,” laments the psychologist.

In a business that involves such elderly people (and which, moreover, has been mythologized by the excesses surrounding it), one wonders whether specific measures are being taken to preserve the health of the workers (and the elderly stars), at least during tours. Dr. Arun Castro is the founder of RoadiMedic, a British company that provides medical support to bands. Castro, who has accompanied many groups, explains that a series of concerts is a risky proposition: “At times when nature would have us in dark environments, which signals our brain to release melatonin so that the body’s cells can rest and recover, touring puts the artist in the spotlight, overstimulated and full of adrenaline. The cumulative exposure to this means that, over the course of a tour, fatigue and vulnerability to infection become risk factors,” says the doctor.

Castro also sees an increase in injuries attributable to the accumulation of tour dates: “Compressing more concerts into less time means that we are dealing with more overexertions such as vocal cord injuries or debilitating muscular problems for a guitarist. Cramps related to delayed onset muscle soreness are not uncommon when playing for several nights in a row. If you were to ask a football team’s fitness coach if he would recommend that a player play three games in a row, we all know what the answer would be. The music industry still has a lot to do regarding the application of medicine.”

Castro does make it clear, however, that the work of a touring doctor today is very different from that of “the old rock docs of the 1980s who facilitated addictions.” Today, he says, the biggest challenge is “protecting the client’s health” sometimes even against their own impulses, since musicians often “feel the pressure to perform in any situation out of a sense of responsibility towards their fans, their team, or their colleagues.”

Who would have thought responsibility — that value so apparently far removed from the most rebellious rock — is what drives many stars to extend their careers to the point of exhaustion. In conclusion, we could provide dozens of examples of songs like Old Man by Neil Young or When I’m Sixty-Four by the Beatles, in which those who are now legends imagined as young people what old age would be like. But perhaps it would be better to turn to And Nothing is Forever, the second song on The Cure’s latest album, Songs of a Lost World (2024), in which Robert Smith, 65, sings: “I know, I know, that my world has grown old and nothing is forever.”

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