Old rockers never die they just keep touring
Kiss? Bryan Adams? Aqua? UB40? Why are so many pensionable pop stars heading our way? Grant Smithies investigates.
He ranted. He raved. He thundered with rage and hooted with laughter. When I asked him about his claim to have slept with 4600 women, he gave the impression that it could be much higher, but he’d stopped counting.
I imagined him on the other end of the line, devil makeup immaculate, that distressingly long tongue of his flicking around like a snake’s.
He was Gene Simmons: ageing rock
God, reality TV star, astute businessman, skint Israeli immigrant turned American multi-millionaire.
Simmons’ band Kiss recently announced a local date in its upcoming End Of The Road tour, playing Auckland’s Spark Arena on December 3, 2019.
You’d be forgiven for feeling a strong sense of deja vu. When I talked to Simmons before an earlier New Zealand show, Kiss had already been doing ‘‘final’’ tours for well over a decade. And yet here they are, still letting off fireworks and spitting fake blood and making an unholy ruckus. ‘‘Well, you know, people still want to see us, so who are we to disappoint them?’’ he said when I asked why it was taking so damn long to pull the plug on this band.
‘‘After all these decades together, we’re still having the time of our lives, so why stop? I love playing live! When I get up on stage, I feel like the god that I am. Not only powerful, but also deeply attractive. You know, if you’re a rock star, you can wake up each morning next to a girl who’s name you never bothered to learn!’’
Simmons and co-founder Paul Stanley gave their first performance as Kiss in 1973. In a splendid Spinal Tap moment, Simmons set fire to his own hair while trying to breath fire.
Now 69 and as rich as a small country, Simmons no longer needs the cash that comes from touring, but I got the impression he found it hard to let go of the publicity, the power, the prestige of it.
Who can blame him for taking his time to exit stage left? But let’s also spare a thought for local audiences, who seem to get offered more and more incoming international acts well past their prime. Hardly a month goes by without another band of grizzled geriatrics arriving at Auckland airport, hauling themselves up on stage and doing their best to remember the lyrics of songs they wrote four or five decades ago.
Why are so many pensionable pop stars heading our way? It’s the interweb, innit. Streaming and downloading has killed album sales, so many pop stars in their twilight years are forced to tour more often to make a decent living.
Also, the baby-boomer nostalgia market is huge. The world is awash with crusty old buggers who reckon there hasn’t been a decent album made since 1974, and they’re only too happy to stump up serious cash to see the bands that once made their younger hearts race.
Styx, Foreigner, REO Speedwagon, Journey, Def Leppard, Van Halen, Yes, Aerosmith, Guns N’ Roses, The Beach Boys – all have toured the globe in recent years, playing to largely older crowds who bellow along to every song. Sometimes ill heath intervenes. The late Glen Campbell played here in 2009 while battling earlystage Alzheimer’s, a disease that finally forced him to stop touring two years later.
Now 77, Neil Diamond was due to drop in for a 50th Anniversary Tour in March this year but was forced to cancel after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.
The late Leonard Cohen was driven back on to the touring treadmill by near-bankruptcy, emerging after five years in a Buddhist monastery to discover a dodgy business manager had cleaned out his retirement fund. Cohen toured here repeatedly in his latter years, the shows barely changing from year to year, right down to his patter between songs.
Containing just three original members and minus co-leader Glenn Frey, who died in 2016, archetypal baby-boomer band The Eagles is set to play in Auckland and Dunedin early next year, their first local tour since 2015.
Canadian singer Bryan Adams was briefly a big deal in the 1980s/early 90s and is still dining out on a handful of hits. He plays Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Nelson in March next year, a little over a year since he was last down here singing Summer of 69 to anyone who’d listen.
Then there’s the phenomenon of shonky ‘‘reunion’’ tours in which a few dusty survivors of once-great rock acts reconvene minus key members.
Highly dubious versions of Queen, The Doors, INXS, Thin Lizzy, Pink Floyd, Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Stranglers, The Jam, Grateful Dead, T. Rex and Creedence have all traipsed around the global touring circuit, despite the death or absence of their original frontmen.
Drummer Chris White and sax honker Chris Whitten from Dire Straits dragged a bunch of randoms down here to tour as The Dire Straits Experience in 2016, around the same time as Micky Dolenz and Peter Tork toured New Zealand singing Monkees songs, despite being not the full chimp.
Who’s that elderly gent in tights, tootling on a flute? Why, it’s ‘‘The Laird of Luton’’, Ian Anderson, who shows up in New Zealand every few years to belt out Locomotive Breath and other musty prog-rock anthems he once wrote for his band, Jethro Tull.
Like a mutating cell, an unhappy band sometimes simply splits in half. One version of Birmingham band UB40 is touring New Zealand in January, led by singer Ali Campbell, while another UB40 is touring somewhere else, led by Campbell’s brothers, Duncan and Robin. In 2014, an unlikely pop-reggae grudge match occurred
Hardly a month goes by without another band of grizzled geriatrics arriving at Auckland airport.
when both UB40s were booked to play in Dubai on the same day. Awk-ward!
Come on, Barbie, let’s go party. Aqua, Vengaboys, Blue, B*Witched, Eiffel 65, Lou ‘‘Mambo No 5’’ Bega, 2 Unlimited: the ‘‘So Pop’’ tour featuring an assortment of 90s teen-popper and one-hit wonders will be descending to play Auckland on February 5, 2019. In an inspired move, the show is to be hosted by the doyenne of direct marketing, Suzanne Paul.
But, of course, the advanced age of some touring acts is precisely why people go to see them: it might be their last chance. You just never know if some of these people will make it back here again, so you pull finger and grab a ticket.
When Bob Dylan’s wryly-titled Never-Ending Tour passed through New Zealand recently, the shows rapidly sold out, even though Dylan’s voice is shot and he seldom moves from the piano. But this was a man who changed the face of popular music – the audience just wanted to loiter nearby while this 77-year-old legend croaked and mumbled his way through those great songs.
More than 70,000 acolytes went to see Bruce Springsteen play Auckland and Christchurch last year, the press photos showing a sea of long grey locks and gleaming bald patches directly in front of the stage. The Boss himself is impressively sprightly at 69, but his marathon four-hour sets are surely an act of cruelty to a standing crowd with dicky tickers, bad backs and replaced hips.
When Paul McCartney played here last year, one hardened music critic of my acquaintance admitted to standing in the crowd, weeping with joy, overwhelmed to just be in the vicinity of the world’s greatest living songwriter. If I’d had the cash, I would have been there too. After all, who cares if this guy is 76? He wrote She’s Leaving Home and Here, There and Everywhere, and he might never pass this way again. But perhaps the greatest example of a past-itsprime band that steadfastly refuses to retire is The Rolling Stones, who gave their debut performance in 1962 and are still touring 56 years later. With a median age of 75, they can still be found belting out Brown Sugar and Satisfaction to huge stadiums of fans rather than dozing away the afternoons in their stately homes.
The band first played in New Zealand in 1965 and were here for their sixth local visit in 2014, a tour billed as ‘‘possibly their last’’. Or possibly not.
‘‘We haven’t finished yet,’’ tweeted Keith Richards when the band announced yet another European tour earlier this year. ‘‘It’s still too early to talk about the Stones’ legacy. ‘‘There’s one thing that we haven’t yet achieved and that’s to really find out how long you can do this.’’
But what’s the attraction in a bunch of mouldering millionaires in leather trousers whacking out creaky approximations of songs recorded half a lifetime ago when they were still lithe and dangerous? Why do we still care about a band widely considered a tribute act these days?
We care because this music meant something to us when we were younger; their songs make us forget our own rapid journey towards the grave and plug us back into more carefree times.
In his book The Rolling Stones: Fifty Years, writer Christopher Sandford considers the law of diminishing returns as it applies to rock bands, surmising that you don’t really need to still be at your peak to get the average rock audience excited: you just need to show up.
People want to look at you, even if you are a tiny speck in the distance, while they sing along to the anthems of their golden youth. The band itself is merely a memory trigger, a glorified jukebox, a monument.