The Tell-Tale Sign You're An Aged Rock Star

Each generation is presented with new, never experienced before challenges. Think of the cohort who invented the wheel, then had to cope with their teenagers taking the first ever joy rides. Or the first Catholics who suddenly had to get culinarily creative on a Friday night. Or Morse's peers who had to deal with the first prank telegraph messages (just what is the dot-dash configuration of "Do you have Prince Albert in a can?"?). Obviously, the daunting, never-before-have-people-had-to-face-this challenge of the present generation is, what to do with aging rock stars. It's amazing to think of it, but many of the Founding Fathers (or Queens, and here's to you, Little Richard) of Rock'n'Roll are still alive--Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, and the previously mentioned Mr. Penniman. Hell, Elvis would be/is only 77. All hail them and the rest, but still, we as fans are faced with several thorny issues concerning how to deal with these former paragons of youth now that they ain't that young anymore.

For years now we've rather naturally taken in stride the gradual steps of an aging career: the balding, the hearing loss, the myriad "comeback" tours and albums (when you've got at least three of each on your resume, you know you're getting old, Mr. Rock Star), the Rock Hall induction, the Super Bowl gig, the tribute albums and concerts, the third or fourth box sets, the ironic singing of lines penned in youth--and all of that's just the last thirty years of Pete Townshend's life. Like Medicare, senior coffee at McDonald's, and EZ Lift chairs for the rest of us, an entire network of safety nets has been erected to ease the once callow, rebellious rocker into senescence. There's Unplugged, and Storytellers, the duets album, the album of standards, the greatest hits live album, the hook-up with the hip young producer album, the songwriters in the round concerts, the rock cruises, and the inevitable writing of the memoirs (David Ritz thanks you all). Say what you will about Elvis's tragic death, but the man put out a lot of schlock when he was alive, and, all the merchandising since his death notwithstanding, imagine the crap he would have made lo these last 35 years!

But, accustomed as I am--and I'm sure you are--to all of this by now, the question that has bugged me for some time is, what's the Rubicon, what's the jump the shark/couch moment, the definitive dividing line between being an aging rock star--where we can salute the career, bask in past glories, honor, if a bit sadly, the god while he or she is still alive --and being an aged rock star, where the whole thing is just downright depressing and should be kept away from the public? Well, like Steve Jobs must have felt years ago when he realized, "Phones, my God! Who knew? The future is phones!" yesterday I had a eureka moment concerning this aging/aged rock thing. I now know the exact moment when it is clear that our beloved aging rock star, the hero of our youth, has landed at the bottom of the slippery slope and is now not simply completely irrelevant but is dangerous to our collective joie de vire and should be put out to pasture for good--however you want to define that euphemistic idiomatic phrase.

But first let me qualify things. I love the Rolling Stones. It might be an oldies station playing it, but whenever I hear "Jumpin' Jack Flash," or "Brown Sugar" or "The Last Time" on the radio, they all still sound like the freshest, nastiest thing on any airwaves. If I were a pugilistic sort, I'm sure by now my oft-repeated, and oft-scoffed at, statement of incontrovertible fact that the Stones were/are/and ever shall be greater than the Beatles would have gotten me engaged in many a fisticuffs over the years. It's such a foundational truth, that I guess only the hoariest, most despicable cliche applies--you look up Rock'n'Roll in the dictionary, and you'll find a picture of the Stones.

Of course, duh, I'm speaking of the Rolling Stones only in the first 20 years of their by now 50 year existence (sic). Go ahead, name three great songs the Stones have made in the past thirty years; here's a hint, I'll be beyond aged by the time you can even muster an argument for the third one. Hell, they've made a grand total of six, 6! albums in the past thirty years. (By the way, the answer is one. One great song in the last thirty years: "The Worst," off Voodoo Lounge; a Keith song, ironically, from 1994!).

Now I won't bother going through yet again the "pathetic parodies of themselves," "only in it for the (huge amount of ) money" arguments. You've read them all before. And will undoubtedly read them again as they mount whatever becomes their 50 Year Celebration, i.e., hopefully, Swan Song, in the next few months. No, my beef at the moment is with Keef. The Human Riff. The alleged poster boy of all things Rock. Mick is Mick, always was, always will be. God save him. Ronnie's just a hired gun. Charlie is irreproachable; always was and always will be the coolest guy Rock has ever created. But Keith. My God. Years ago I thought it, and I still do, now more fervently than ever--every day he lives he gets less cool. For thirty years now he's been trading on the lovable bad guy schtick. Now he's Goofy Grandpa, professionally raconteuring rather than rocking and touring. We love you Keith, always have and always will, but shut up and go away already.

And what has brought me to such apostasy today? What has me so sacrilegiously blaspheming the mighty Keith Richards? The eureka moment I experienced yesterday. The discovery of the tell-tale sign that the aging rocker has become aged. The end of the living rock god's relevant life: At the bookstore where I work, we received two remaindered (duh) copies of Keith's autobiography, Life, IN LARGE PRINT! Trust me, I know the book retailing business. Keith's audience is not the LARGE PRINT audience. Unless he's ditched Patti and is shacking up with Debbie Macomber, Danielle Steel, or Barbara Taylor Bradford, Keith Richards has no place in the LARGE PRINT section of a bookstore. Good God, Keith, I know you've raised reckless nonchalance to an art form, but why in the name of Robert Johnson did you sign a publishing contract that allowed them to print your book in LARGE PRINT? If you do ever tour again, you better have a special ring of seats for AARP members, where earplugs, Depends, and seat cushions are included in the senior discount price. You never even made a standards album, Keith! How can you go LARGE PRINT on us?

R.I.P. KEITH. IT'S ALL OVER NOW.