It’s an old-school paper ticket, harkening back to a time before QR codes, announcing the Rolling Stones’ performance at Wembley Stadium on Saturday 26 June 1982. I was 15 years old, and I still vividly remember the excitement leading up to that show. The newspapers were filled with jokes about the band needing walking aids to reach the stage and frequently taking bathroom breaks. They called them “the Strolling Bones”. At that time, Mick Jagger was 38 years old.
This joke revolved around the idea that rock’n’roll was music for the young. It burst onto the scene in the mid-1950s with a surge of hormones and rebellion, focusing on themes of teenage desire, longing, and an expansive and mysterious future. It seemed ridiculous for men pushing 40 to still sing about such things. And yet, last summer, the Stones made a comeback with Jagger nearing his 80th birthday, performing the same old songs.
These thoughts crossed my mind again on Thursday night as I joined a crowd of 65,000 people in London’s Hyde Park to witness 73-year-old Bruce Springsteen deliver a three-hour set. A similar feeling arose when Elton John, aged 76, performed at Glastonbury in front of an enormous television audience, declaring it as his final UK show. And once more, when I visited the National Portrait Gallery to view a collection of Paul McCartney’s photographs capturing the Beatles’ early years. McCartney himself is now 81. Rock’n’roll, an artform born from and associated with the young, has spanned a lifetime. Its greatest icons were once the epitomes and poets of youth, and now they have aged.
The tension between these two realities is what captivated headline writers four decades ago. The generation that dreamed of dying before growing old, the generation that vowed never to trust anyone over 30, has long surpassed those milestones.
For some artists, the response has been an attempt to defy time, tirelessly running up the downward escalator, striving to simulate youth. Mick Jagger stands as the epitome of this, his performances in 2022 described as “extraordinary in a zoological way” by writer Sarfraz Manzoor. Audiences marvel at the fact that someone his age can still possess such youthful energy and movement.
However, what I witnessed on Thursday was a different kind of response. Springsteen, too, is in remarkable shape – fit, toned, and brimming with vitality. He can still toss a guitar into the air and rip open his shirt to reveal a bare chest, but now these gestures are accompanied by a self-deprecating wink, acknowledging their absurdity. Unlike Jagger, he doesn’t appear to be desperately clinging to his glory days. He is not, as Manzoor describes Jagger, “stuck perpetually in his 20s”.
On the contrary, Springsteen’s new show gazes directly at aging and mortality. His bandmates are of the same generation and don’t try to conceal it – the massive screens showcase close-ups of their gnarled, veined hands on guitar strings. Springsteen’s performance is astonishing, but it never appears effortless. He speaks at length only once, introducing a 2020 song about the band he formed with schoolmates at the age of 15. He informs the crowd that he is now the last surviving member. “Death is like standing on the railroad tracks with a train bearing down upon you,” he says, “but it brings a certain clarity of thought.” It compels you to seize the day, to embrace the time and the people you have left. And then he proceeds to perform “Last Man Standing,” a song that delves into the passions of youth, the phase in life when “it’s all hellos” before being outnumbered by “hard goodbyes”.
Consequently, the other songs take on a whole new meaning. It no longer seems absurd to hear a septuagenarian singing about childhood friends running through the backstreets or young sweethearts born to run, yearning to escape their small town. The joy and exuberance of those classic songs now carry an extra layer of poignancy, evoking reminiscence and loss. The two sets of emotions no longer clash but complement each other, amplifying each other’s power – the Glory Days become even more glorious because we know they are fleeting.
“It’s an incredible act of transubstantiation,” says Eric Alterman, author of a study of Bruce Springsteen. On stage, the singer simultaneously transforms into the 26-year-old he once was while retaining his current 73-year-old self. This magic also works on the audience. As Alterman describes it, “I’m reclaiming my 15-year-old self, along with the 63-year-old man I am today, while encompassing all the years in between.”
This is the power of rock’n’roll, aging in real time and right before our eyes. “Nostalgia” fails to capture its essence, as it implies an unsuccessful attempt to resurrect a bygone youth. Instead, standing amidst a crowd, singing songs you’ve known for ages, becomes an invitation to reflect upon and cherish an entire life – not just the performer’s, but also your own.
That’s what I hear in Joni Mitchell’s album, where her voice resonates several registers deeper than the one that first captivated millions. It’s in Tom Jones (finally) embracing his naturally white hair and proclaiming, “when I’m dead,” urging us to acknowledge that he had “one hell of a life”. It’s in McCartney’s album titled Memory Almost Full, featuring a track called The End of the End. It’s in the Glastonbury crowd passionately singing Goodbye Yellow Brick Road to Elton John, who feels as enduring in their lives as Queen Elizabeth II once did.
Of course, artists have always contemplated time and mortality, but they didn’t do so in a medium devoted to worshipping youth. Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, for instance, confronted death in their music even before they reached old age, but their craft was always slightly different: as Alterman notes, they weren’t crafting dance-worthy tunes.
Now, a form of music that revered the blossoming of youth is embracing the falling of autumn leaves, preparing even the youngest fans for a future brimming with unknown possibilities, but also marked by a familiar end. As the show concludes with encore after encore, Springsteen delivers a song hinting at a rendezvous in dreams when all our summers have come to an end. By then, the sun has set, and it feels like the sweetest goodbye.
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