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Old People are Dying

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I first noticed it a couple of years ago. I went to a local “art house” cinema to watch the Monty Python reunion film of the show. Everyone in there was old – many seemed to be much older than me – a mere spring chicken at 48. Old people are meant to be shocked by Monty Python material, aren’t they?

Mary Whitehouse represented a large group of people that kept their eye on popular media to make sure unwholesome things were not allowed in case the nation’s old people were shocked. They would fondly remember the gentle comedy of Rob Wilton and Arthur Askey and ask with a plaintive sigh – “why does everything has to be so vulgar these days?”.

My parents were part of the generation that were only in their 30s during Beatlemania – yet the generational divide was so marked that they treated that whole 60s thing as something young people did in London or America.

Now I find that people well into their 60s are not transitioning to a quiet biscuit-led life of Countdown in the same way as their parents did before them. Often they’re still at work or they’re caring for grandkids and are often seen living life to the full wearing AC/DC T-shirts, sporting tattoos. This would have been unthinkable/ridiculous behaviour 30 years ago.

So are the beige brigade on their way out? It’s a shame, because I was looking forward to it.

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Comments

  1. I’ve noticed it more and more at concerts in recent years. The last two Yes gigs have been like the AGM of the Baldy and Paunchy Society, with extra tie-die.

    Things came to a head at a Joan Baez concert last year when, at retirement age, I swear I was the youngest person there. A few even struggled in with Zimmer frames (I kid you not) and were helped to their seats.

    They all seemed to enjoy it though, so why not, eh?

    • I think the genre that is having the most difficulty with the ageing process is Thrash Metal. Most of the main acts are now in their early 50s, and are trying to to pull off a look that combines bald heads, long beards (to distract attention from bald heads), 38″ waistlines and Helloween T-Shirts.

      • I sort of know what you mean, but Metallica are still putting on a hell of a show.

        Kerry King, on the other hand, is starting to look like Bizzaro Captain Mainwaring.

        • Yeah, Metallica are doing ok. I had Slayer in mind when I wrote the comment. I also saw a photo of one of the others recently, Testament I think, and thought “whoa! Are these musicians or bouncers?”

      • For all the accolades, toward the end Lemmy was looking a bit sad and ridiculous. Tight black jeans with his gut hanging over the waistband. Unhealthy-looking parchment coloured skin and voice so husky it was barely a constricted, high-pitched whisper.

        • Out of interest I looked at the iplayer footage of Motörhead at Glasonbury last year – it’s up there presumably in tribute.

          It’s bloody awful. Awful awful awful. An unlistenable din, flaccid and not a little pathetic. Lemmy, bless him, looked v much as if he had about 6 months to live.

          • Motorhead are designer T shirt treasures and Lemmy was a loveable cartoon who lived the rock n roll life which seemed to include spending his last year’s sitting in a bar near his home playing fruit machines all day. As a band they pretty much played the same set for the last 20 years with the odd newbie thrown in to justify touring.

            Metallica are now following that pattern, no longer appear to be a coherent studio band and release live albums, films and games to fill the gap. Still a great live band

      • Bob – the world is undeniably a better place now. It’s not perfect but the progress just in medical science alone tips its slightly into better. And that’s without mentioning online grocery ordering.

        • I was being a bit facetious – of course the world is a better place but I also think many of the biggest social advances were made by the generation befor the Boomers: the Atlee generation. And I do think the Boomers are in some ways possibly the greediest, most selfish, most self-satisfied generation in human history. Shinned happily up the ladder constructed by their parents and kicked it down behind them. But that’s fine because rock n’ roll and 1968.

          • The Boomers, as a generation, are driven to mythologise their youth and achievements because they’re uber conscious that their parents fought a war and they did not.

            They did make some pretty good movies and records, mind.

            • “they’re uber conscious that their parents fought a war and they did not.”

              This is because the oldies were always on about it and would bring it up in the most random contexts. “Get your hair cut, we fought in a war for you!” Yes, and Hitler would have made us get our hair cut too, so what was the point of that? The main thing that boomers were subjected to, in England at least, was resentment.

              I don’t resent the young people of today. The world’s going quite spectacularly to shite and they’re welcome to it.

              Have a nice day!

              • I suppose I just qualify as a baby boomer, being born 1962. I think it was probably my parents who had it so good. They took full advantage of the property boom, have had all the benefits of well-funded public services and the NHS, and enjoyed the then new social freedoms plus had have had good health and long life due to growing up being active and eating healthily parlty due to rationing. They then retired early with good pensions. It’s absurd to blame or resent them or us for that matter. They only did what any of us would do and didn’t know what the future would bring. Everyone thought it would just get easier and better. We would fix any problems like diminishing resources.

                For us lot it’s not necessarily so rosy – public services are becoming unsustainable, economic growth is stagnating, inequality is rising, the retirement age is going up, pensions aren’t worth as much or have gone bust, climate change will only cause more economic problems and soon antibiotics will no longer work plus we didn’t take such good care of ourselves as our parents. We’re fucked basically.

  3. I’m comfortable now with gigs where the audience is sitting down. What with my back and all. I’m just not quite ready for gigs where the band is sitting down as well.

    Old people in band t-shirts always looks wrong to me. There must be a point at which it stops being an advertisement for your beloved heroes and starts becoming a liability – more likely to drive people away than attract them.

    • Quite right. Had my epiphany about band t-shirts a couple of years ago. Was in Dallas on business and went to a Wall-Mart at the weekend to kill a couple of hours with a colleague (well .. it is pretty boring in Texas). Whilst perusing the clothes aisles we spot some rather lovely looking garments with band monikers emblazoned on them. I took a fancy to a nifty Dark Side Of The Moon tie dyed number, he a strident AC/DC Back in Black thingummy with a cannon on it (natch). Egging each other on, we purchased said t-shirts and carried on with the day.

      Imagine my surprise when back at the hotel and trying on my DSOTM t-shirt I discover I not only look a pillock .. but an old, should-know-much-better pillock? Apparently my colleague had a similar ‘a ha’ (or is that ‘oh no’) moment when he tried his on when he returned to the UK. I tried to palm mine off to the older son, but having much better taste than his old pa, he was having nothing of it.

      What became of said t- shirt? Duster.

      Band t-shirts should be illegal for the over 35s.

      • It dawned on me quite recently that when we were young the codgers wore baggy trousers up to their nipples and caps, because that’s what they wore when they were young. They never grew up either.

      • Disagree, but the choice is a challenge; AC/DC and Dark Side were clearly always going to be naff, as they are popular to civilians of our age who know no better and wear them, unself-consciously, with terylene slacks, anoraks and trainers. We, the fashion gods and icons of our own minds, can wear a band, but only if it is off anyone elses radar, or ironic, which is the let out clause when caught in breach. Otherwise it is the usual disclamer of never wearing a T with the dates of the tour you are currently at. The same band from 40 years before is also a bit too knowing.

        • Overthinking it all. It’s the curse of hipsterism.

          The people who will quite happily wear a DSOTM T-shirt with their Terylene slacks are almost certainly completely oblivious to the disdain of hipsters.
          Paunchy old farts such as myself, in my Rezillos “Flying Saucer Attack” T-shirt and skinny black jeans (from George at ASDA) take the occasional look at ourselves in a mirror and think “Not too bad..”. I’m just going out in my civvies doing what I do.
          If some young galoot thinks I look a bit ridiculous, why should I care? So fucking what?

  4. Ian MacDonald pointed out in Revolution in the Head, that the emergence of the Beatles signaled the end of the generation gap. That was in 1994, and now it’s pretty clear he was right. To a certain extent that is why music culture is dying out. Where is the rebellion in pinning up a flag that the old folks may like too?

    • That’s patently untrue. A cursory look at this website on any given day will reveal a degree of fogeyism entirely consistent with past generations. Not just about music; clothes, speech, social mores and most importantly technology.

      You’re literally saying here that there’s no generation gap, and then in the same breath that “music culture is dying out”. Ask a bunch of teenagers if they agree with you: there’s your generation gap in action.

      • Dead right, especially since we have more generations than ever. I was arguing with SFWIC about this the other day – I reckoned that initially baby boomers weren’t a generation, they were part of a boom….it’s only when Generation X was suddenly defined that the tail end of the baby boom was stretched from the late 50s to the mid 60s to fill in the gap, (so to speak), and they were suddenly labelled a generation (despite all the “talking ’bout my generation” talk).

        I was probably wrong, though.

      • Good point BL but Yes and No.

        I guess what I was saying was shorthand for this: Of course there is a difference between what I like and what my daughter likes. I am saying that I would never think “What the hell is this jungle noise?” and she may think my music is acceptable. I am saying that the kind of music fans on this site are slowly become rare – it is a long tail. Like Leedsboy says below there is a whole smorgasbord of things now – including gamers and youtubers, etc that have taken on being cultural signifiers that music held in our life. SO perhaps I should refine my point music no longer defines a generation Gap

      • There may be older people on this site and elsewhere who complain about modern music, but it’s the opposite of the complaint that I remember from the seventies. Then it was pop music is rubbish because it doesn’t sound like it used to; now it’s pop music is rubbish because it still sounds like it used to. I don’t think it’s quite that simple, but when someone on this site tries to refute this view, it’s surprising how old the contemporary music they refer to is: What about all the innovation going on in rap? Have you never heard Enter the Wu-Tang (1993)?

        • No one tries to refute that view, because once someone has decided to show how unshockable they are to prove a point, it becomes impossible to shock them.

          The fact is that most people on this site are convinced that all modern music sounds like the music of the 60s and 70s because they only want to listen to things that sound like they were made in the 60s/70s. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy.

          There’s plenty of innovation going on, it just doesn’t involve pale young men with acoustic guitars and beards.

          • Oh I agree with that entirely, BL To be honest I do listen to the original 60 – 70s groups, but that is of its time. Like Jazz from the 1950-60s or Central African music from the later 70s to the early 90s. Contemporary stuff? I like the the NON pale young men with acoustic guitars and beards. So you aren’t a signed up PYMWAGAB fan? What age re you then?

            • Heading into my late 30s.

              Occasionally I do a bit of reverse mentoring with work: an hour a month spent with a teenager so I can found out a bit about how they consume “content” and generally see the world.

              There’s a chasm between how they see the universe and how I do. Kids who’ve grown up with the Internet are an entirely different species to what went before, in nearly all aspects. God knows what it’ll be like when by the time my own kids hit a similar age.

              • I live with a 15 and 17 YO. TBH, and contradicting a bit of what I said above, I’d be pretty depressed if they liked the same stuff as me.

                Being webnatives, one thing that *is* very different is their use of social media. My 15 YO got very excited while standing next to another teenager in a queue in one of the Costas in Heathrow airport. Turned out the lad was a Instagram star, with like ~50,000 followers.

              • Bingo – brilliant, thank you!! I think you’ve just solved a work problem I’ve been pondering over today. Though I’d never heard the term before, a reverse mentor (or 2 or 3) is exactly what I need.

                I work with students and if we’re going to have any relevance to them, we need to look at the world from their perspective. I’m 50+ and don’t have kids and though I’m more tech and social media savvy than many my age, it’s not so much the technology but the way it changes their world view & behaviour that I need to understand.

                Things you learn from the Afterword, eh?

  7. I’m not a boomer, but I was born in ’68 and find the modern world and its culture quite repellent. I have more in common with someone 30 years older than me, and nothing whatsoever with someone 10 years younger than me. They are a baffling alien species, so I don’t know what classification would apply to those of my ilk.

  8. In my day pensioners had (if men) flat caps and beige slacks and (if women) blue-rinse perms and cardigans, and would sit in front of Countdown in Shackleton’s high-seat chairs.

    Now they have loon pants, glitter and play their bongoes in the dirt.

  10. I was walking past Euston station the other day and saw a bloke in his mid to late 40s in mod get up – Harrington, tight jeans, lambrettas t shirt or something. And his hair cut in the right feathery way with heavy side burns. And I thought ‘he thinks he still has it, any self respecting kid thinks he looks like a sad old man living in the past. He is basically exactly the equivalent of the middle aged teddy boys that I remember were all around when I was a kid and that were without exception weirdos.

      • Oh I don’t know. Why shouldn’t he style himself exactly as he pleases, not giving a toss for what kids think about him? He probably looks better than most kids, anyway. What’s the alternative? Sensible slacks from the mailorder pages of The Oldie? Loden coats? So huzzay for costumery and preening, especially for blerks. Of any age.

        • It probably depends on why he does it. If he likes the clothes and thinks he looks sharp then full marks to the man. If he’s doing it because he still feels he belongs to a long lost youth tribe…actually, full marks to the man as well. If it makes him happy, who am I to judge?

          • Exactly, Lee. It sounds as if he did the look justice, too, gave it le plein monté. What style are the “kids of today” going to sport in their dotage? Has anyone noticed what they’re wearing? Will anyone notice in forty years’ time? Bah. Young people are rubbish. And so is their music. And their clothes. An’ that. An’ all.

            • Oh I don’t care about any of that. It’s a shit look.

              And anyway, as much as people should of course be allowed to dress how they want, do I still dress like I did when I was a teenager? Fuck no. There’s something to be said for growing up, and I reserve the right to be judgemental about middle aged men dressing like they did when they were 18. So there.

                • I wore them until quite recently, then decided I was way past the point when I could do so without looking a bit daft. For me, they’re slobbing-at-home wear. I think they’re just get-away-able-with until you’re about 35.

                  I also think it depends on the state of the t-shirt and the state of the wearer. A faded band t-shirt stretched over a paunch is a clear case of NUT UP AND BUY SOME ACTUAL SHIRTS IN YOUR SIZE, MAN. A new t-shirt with some otherwise decent clothes on a not-fat 40 year old is acceptable.

                  I don’t really wear t-shirts any more. I’m a big 38 year old. They look a bit shit. I like shirts and shoes – my t-shirts and trainers years are behind me and I’m quite happy to accept that.

                  • You’re … THIRTY EIGHT? That explains everything. Your rotten taste, your no-style, your general sitting-sideways-in-armchairs “whatever”-ness. You’re a kid. FFS. And therefore rubbish.

                    It’s a bit of a relief, actually. Henceforth – great word, go it H.P. – I can sport a paternal smirk of indulgence on my grizzled phiz when I read your comments.

            • To be frank, HP, you being a pal an’ all that, I know it’s live and let live, but I’m not sure that New Romantic look you’re still clinging to does you any favours.

    • This isn’t gonna be a popular statement but the reason he couldn’t carry the mod look off anymore was because he had middle aged spread, or was pretty chubby, even though he was otherwise fairly youthful looking. If he had, say, been a gay guy then he’d have looked pretty cool because he’d have all the basics in place before he threw on the expensive garb. Gay guys can, usually, carry off this sort of clone look because they are almost always in the same or better physical shape than they were when they were 18. So it’s not completely an age thing as such.

      The tight look with a gut isn’t a good one on anyone especially so if you’re older, and fat is just very ageing.

      It’s an interesting debate though. Of course the guy is entitled to wear whatever he likes and if he gives a shit if people think he looks great (you don’t pay that much attention to the detail if you don’t) then he can’t take offence if people think he doesn’t.

      I suspect that rather like Archie’s really interesting comment above about the old men of our youth wearing trousers up to their tits and flat caps because they were actually clinging on to their youth, Mr Mod just looks like the way ‘some old blokes dress for some reason’ to kids of today.

      What I’m trying to say to you all is this. Throw away the Baracuta G9. You don’t look like steve McQueen in it, you look like all the other mid 40s geezers who wear them.

  11. Old people are indeed dying and we are they. I think this notion that somehow we aren’t old like the oldsters who were old when we were young is one of those perpetual fallacies every generation labours under. I’m bloody convinced we are as old to young people today as our parents were to us.

  12. I wonder if/when the time will come when the music most of us like ceases to be played on the radio ? This fate has pretty much befallen the over 80s save for an hour or two on Radio 2. And that is a pretty large group nowadays, with as many people over 80 as there are children under 5.

    • Of course it will. That’s how it should be. I am just interested in what – if anything – will last for another 50 years. By that time, listening to the Beatles will be like listening to Al Jolson now I guess.

          • I disagree. Go back before the 50s and you leave the rock & roll era and enter a strange new world where everything was different.

            A music fan of the 50s or 60s would recognise much of today’s music as fundamentally coming from the same blueprint as the records he was listening to, but perhaps with much improved production/fidelity.

            Not so if you go back to the 20s or 30s. The template of pop had not yet been drawn up and so today’s music would be unrecognisable.

          • Mathematically that ought to be true, but I think the gap is not so great. Young music fans at a festival will want to go and see Brian Wilson, Macca etc. That music belongs to a musical tradition they belong to.

          • Except that the rate of change in popular music (and in other areas) between the Charleston and The Beatles/punk was much greater than it has been between The Beatles time and now. The differences aren’t as great. People still play in bands using the same kind of instruments.

            • That’s only if you restrict yourself to guitar music inspired by the 60s/70s. If you sit and listen to Ryley Walker all day then, yes, that’s nothing the heads of the 60s wouldn’t be able to immediately understand.

              If you went back in time 50 years and played yer average music fan Untrue by Burial (a record that is already nearly ten years old) they would have absolutely no frame of reference for it, it would just sound like noise. Ditto Kanye West, to use a more populist example: lyrically, sonically I’ve no idea what someone in January 1966 would make of that.

              Deafheaven produced one of my favourite albums in 2015. Play that to someone in 1965 and it would be impossible for them; you need some basic conception of death metal and post rock to even begin to understand what that record’s doing.

              And these are just the examples which spring immediately to mind for someone fairly deep into their 30s. If we asked a teenager I dare say we might hear some really out there stuff.

              Music is always changing and morphing. You just have to be open to new stuff, something that becomes increasingly difficult for all of us as we get older.

  14. I thought casting Bill Nighy as Wilson in the new Dad’s Army film was an odd choice as he is obviously much younger than John Le Mesurier was when he played the part. It turns out that John Le Mesurier was 65 when the TV series finished. Bill Nighy is 66.

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