Retire gracefully, please

WANNABE: OLD ROCKERS KICKSTART THEIR CAREERS WHEN THEY SHOULD BE IN SHADY PINES Stop flogging old hits to death and rock in you rocker.

Sofia Petrillo of The Golden Girls was often threatened with displacement to Shady Pines, a retirement home, by her daughter. It was an ongoing joke throughout all seven seasons of the show.

These days, when I see some attempts to revive their careers by artists ranging from one-hit wonders to former rock gods, I often wish they would be relegated to a rocking chair at Shady Pines, sipping Pina Coladas and dining on mushy food. Some stars should fade away in the protection of a seniors’ compound.

One-hit wonder singer Tiffany should have read the writing on the wall of her career a long time ago. The once gorgeous flame-haired singer who belted out the hit I Think We’re Alone Now used to be the fantasy of every young man. Now, as evidenced by her performance late last year, Tiffany could be cast in a Halloween drama as the overweight, drunk singer belted out a raspy, off-key and hardly intelligible version of her hit.

According to reports Tiffany lashed out at fans during the performance, too. “F-ck you guys,” she apparently said. “This is my hit and I am going to sing it right.” Watching the video on YouTube made me wonder how she did not barrel off the stage. Definitely a candidate for Shady Pines.

Make no mistake, I am a huge fan of Guns and Roses. The FNB Stadium concert was one of the best I have ever seen, thanks to Slash. He matched expectations to the absolute, his performance exceptional, energy boundless and he looked the same as he did in music videos of yore. When Axl Rose hit centre stage, my gaze had to switch to the large screens, or I had to close my eyes and imagine the energy I had seen on so many videos of the band.

Where Rose used to run across the stage, he now strolled, donning a ribboned bowler hat.

Yes, songs were there, his energy, not. I could not reconcile the legend with this middle-aged uncle on stage telling me I am in the jungle. It somehow just felt a little off-kilter, and not authentic.

It made me wonder though. How does Mick Jagger still manage to entrance audiences at oupa-age?

For some reason he has not lost the crawling-king-snake energy of his music. When the Stones played Ellis Park in 1995, Jagger was 52. When Axl Rose got to Joburg, he was 56. Small difference in years but a major chasm between performances. Mick, now 78, is still not a candidate for Shady Pines, but Rose, on the other hand, should get on the waiting list. Mostly, rock and roll was never about middle-aged men or frumpy desperate housewives. Alanis Morrisette, who also tried to get her once illustrious career going again, should have stayed at home pottering around the garden.

Because 25 years ago, her music was angry, relevant to a generation of the post-grunge and emotional rudderless. Two years ago, her ninth studio album became the seventh recording too many.

Such Pretty Forks In The Road was the title of a collection of songs that just feel like more of the same droll, now flaccid, biographical codswallop served up by someone in denial of a career that ended at album number two.

Then, there are the poor substitutes for the real thing.

I do not want to hear some other singer covering Michael Hutchens’s Devil Inside or Need You Tonight in some INXS revival tour.

Plonking a new vocalist at the front end of a band’s remains is pretty much the equivalent of a hyped-up cover band cashing in on a dead man’s legend.

In 2005, the band flogged a dead horse in a reality show where contestants competed to become its new front man.

The success of winner JD Fortune as singer for INXS is evidenced by the Irish singer Ciarin Gribbin that replaced him a few years later, and the concomitant chart-topping hits and packed stadiums, not.

INXS announced, quite responsibly, that it would cease touring in 2012.

For many bands, retiring gracefully at Shady Pines is a better option.

Rather be content with your place in rock and roll’s hall of fame than be relegated to a wannabe in an irrelevant attempt to restart a career.

People either are not listening, or big plans by ageing rockers are simply going unnoticed.