Rock Veterans, Their Voices Now and Us

Whether we want them to or not, reminders that rock legends of the ‘60s are well beyond their own sixties are like playlists on repeat. Last week, I attended an intimate, one-off show by Dion (DiMucci), who will celebrate his 87th birthday next month. A few days later, Bob Dylan participated in a New York Times op-ed about life after 80, which is already five years in his rear-view mirror. “People treat you like either you’ve solved something or you’ve lost something, and you haven’t” went one of his typically squinty-eyed pearls of wisdom.

This incoming summer, the concept of eighty-something rock stars is even more in our faces. It seems as if we’ve suddenly entered an era of heightened scrutiny and debate over the voices of Rock & Roll Hall of Famers still on the road, coming to a theater or arena (or live TV performance) near you.

Anyone who’s attended a concert by a rock star still performing past the expected retirement age has been grappling with this for a while, by way of postponed or canceled tours or ongoing reports of musicians having vocal cord surgery. But the conversation escalated in a very public way after Paul McCartney played Saturday Night Live in May.

Arguing over McCartney’s music and career choices is as old as classic rock itself, from the Beatle-worthiness of “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” to the Claus-worthiness of “Wonderful Christmastime.” But those debates paled next to the on-line discourse that ran wild after the SNL performance. After hearing the 83-year-old Macca strum and croon “Days We Left Behind” in a voice that at times felt shaky, half the Internet demanded his immediate retirement, and the other half argued that he’s Paul McCartney and can do whatever he’d like after devoting his life to music.

The debate continued with the announcement that Paul Simon—whose once-supple voice now tends toward wispy and conversational—would be touring once more. The seventy-something David Lee Roth is back too. Roth was always more acrobat than acrobatic vocalist, but based on the barrage of online catcalls that greeted clips of his current tour and the state of his own vocal chops, even he can’t be smiling right now.

Those of us who’ve followed artists of that generation—those now in their seventies and up—have come to expect the occasional regrettable album, fallow period or cringe fashion statement (Lou Reed’s mullet, Dylan’s vest-over-bare-chest look in the ’80s). In the ’80s, watching then middle-aged rockers try to look and sound relevant, whether by acting in music videos or synthing up their records, was particularly excruciating.

As dismaying as those missteps could be, they were also necessary reminders that even the most creative people are human. They make mistakes or lose the plot the same way we all do at various points in our lives. Not every new song or album is a masterpiece (which applies to modern pop stars too). And that’s acceptable to acknowledge and admit. If anything, it’s abnormal not to stumble now and again.

Even so, we’ve nonetheless arrived at a place we’ve never been before. Founding pioneers like Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis stayed on the road well into their eighties, but the next gen—McCartney, Simon, Dylan, Neil Young, to name a few—aren’t just not retiring. They’re also continuing to write songs. Not at the frenzied pace of their youth, but the scenario is still historic: For the first time, we’re hearing what’s on the minds of an eighty-something pop musician. (Yes, Chuck Berry completed a new album right before his death at 90 in 2017, but those were his first new songs since 1979.)

What’s emerged, like McCartney’s look-backs on his life in The Boys of Dungeon Lane or Simon’s admirably ambitious and meditative song suite, Seven Psalms—or Dylan’s still-head-spinning “Murder Most Foul,” the dark side of “American Pie”—are records that adhere to what we’ve loved about these people but don’t try to be slavishly youthful. They’re making exactly the sort of adult records I expected them to make at their age. Do these artists sound the way they did when the first wave of vinyl was ruling record stores? No. But being afforded a peek into the heads of these people at their ages feels like a full-circle moment for them and for us.

As I mentioned earlier, the challenging part is now live performance. Some rockers of that generation, the ones who first made their impacts in the ‘50s and ’60s, have voices that have aged remarkably well. Somehow, Neil Young can still summon his eerie, high falsetto, as can Judy Collins with her soprano. Mavis Staples’ voice contains multitudes of lived lives. At his New York show (filmed for an in-the-works doc), Dion, accompanied only by his acoustic guitar and trademark cap, told stories about growing up in the Bronx and lapsing into drug addiction. But whether swaggering through “The Wanderer” or recalling “Abraham, Martin and John,” he also displayed a voice that has somehow retained much of its youthful strut and vocalese, even as he nears 90.

As many have witnessed lately, an equal number of heritage artists are showing their vocal ages. On tour last year, Simon, then approaching 84, refused to turn himself into an oldies act by devoting half his show to Seven Psalms and the other half to a number of deep tracks that rarely appeared in his setlists. (We were finally able to hear “St. Judy’s Comet” live, thank God.) Vocally, though, we watched him walk a tightrope. But just when you thought his voice felt rickety, it would slip into the supple and moving notes of old. As with McCartney on SNL and in concert, his delivery improved the more he sang, as if his throat needed more time to warm up than it once did.

No matter the veteran artist, the experience can be alternately nerve-wracking, heartbreaking and heart-warming. (When voice and song come together, even for a few notes, the feeling is exhilarating.) In these economic-rollercoaster days, it’s also completely understandable for anyone to balk at paying hundreds, sometimes even thousands, of dollars for that experience. Part of me does the same math when I consider clicking onto one of those ticket-resale sites and see how much some of these shows cost. If it sounds like I’m grappling with all this, I am. Do I want to see a diminished version of people whose music was a life soundtrack? Not always. It’s jarring to hear McCartney not sound super chipper. But if the alternative is the Stones’ recent AI-enhanced video, I’ll take reality.

But what’s made me hit the “pay” button more often than not isn’t mere nostalgia. The next decade is going to be brutal in terms of boomer musicians leaving more than the stage. We’ve already experienced a heavy dose of rock-related deaths lately: Within the last year alone, we’ve lost Bob Weir, Brian Wilson, Jimmy Cliff, Sam Moore, Ozzy Osbourne, Donna Jean Godchaux, David Johansen and Garth Hudson. (I’ll stop before I depress myself and you even further.)

In other words, it’s increasingly becoming now-or-never time, no matter how anyone’s throat is cooperating on any given night. Given that scenario, attending these shows no longer feels like another pilgrimage to another jukebox-hits recital. We’re honoring these people, their songs and our own memories. And to paraphrase Dylan, maybe we’re hoping these people, even at this advanced stage of their lives, can still solve something for us.

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