Then, more recently, we had 16-yr-old Spaniard in the works, Lamine Yamal, who turned a gerontic 17 yesterday. On Wednesday at the Euro, he wowed old, young, and chartered accountants who were born aged 40, not just with his right-left sway and then evaporating right foot curler into the French net, but also with his general demeanour that would make any fixed deposit mature faster.
But in all this talk of old and young age, I realised that the folks caught in a tight time warp are many pop and rock stars of a certain vintage. We are witnessing the first generation of aged youth icons.
There was a time when pop-rock’s primary job was to extol youthfulness. In the early days of rock’n’roll, the likes of Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Bill Haley, Elvis created a rift – the generation gap – between young people and their older variants. The USP of this tidal force was to accentuate this rift, play up one’s chronological rawness and take a stab at age. Ageism was prescribed rage against the ancien regime.
In the pop cultural universe, dead-at-42 Elvis’ hips never needed replacing. Chuck Berry, who passed away in 2017, aged 90, was frankly believed to have died as a legend in the B&W age. John Lennon was shot dead at 40. The rest, by just being around, conjoined rock’n’roll with being ever youthful. Being old – growing old, not on the menu – was seen as a form of selling out.
So, when Robert Daltrey stutter-sang, ‘I hope I die before I get old’ in the Who’s 1965 anthem, ‘My Generation,’ he really meant it. Now aged 80, I’d bet my George Solti-Vienna Philharmonic recording of Mozart’s Requiem that he avoids listening to it. And ay, there’s the rub – the Baby Boomer generation now has the Old Brown Shoe (old people will get this Beatles reference) on the other foot. And not all of them are taking to age kindly. Seeing Madonna – of ‘Like a Virgin’ fame – at the non-Bidenable age of 65 look, post-botox and other cosmetic conflagrations, like a wax mannequin in a heatwave is not body-shaming. It’s recognising someone in thrall of the cult of youth while in an ageing body. Sportspersons have a tougher time, as age literally affects their day job, pushing them to retire earlier than almost all other professions, the 39-yr-old Portuguese Dorian Gray, Cristiano Ronaldo, notwithstanding. Because they are the first ones whose bodies tell them, ‘Boss… chronology samjhiye.’
‘It’s better to burn out, than to fade away,’ sang the now-78-yr-old Neil Young. The likes of Kurt Cobain, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Amy Winehouse – members of the infamous ’27 club,’ an informal list of artists and celebrities noted for their high-risk lifestyles who died at 27 – did indeed burn out, rather than take the long road paved with cellular degradation that most of us have taken, or will take.
At the disjointed core of it all is the old person desperately trying to stay young. An 80 yr-old-Keith Richards now looking like an 180-yr turtle is far more natural to behold than the paunch-ridden, eye-bagged boomers looping on Classic Rock, and behaving the way they think they look, and vice versa. Instead of hoodwinking time, they give it a Grand Guignol spotlight.
As Ian Anderson wryly predicted in the 1976 Jethro Tull song:
‘The old rocker’ wore his hair too long
Wore his trouser cuffs too tight
Unfashionable to the end
Drank his ale too light
Death’s head belt buckle, yesterday’s dreams
The transport caf’, prophet of doom
Ringing no change in his double-sewn seams
In his post-war-babe gloom
Now he’s too old to rock and roll
But he’s too ‘young to die.’
At the tender age of 53, I know I’m not kidding.