You Are Never Too Old — To Call It Quits! (Naked City)

It’s slightly apocryphal but legend has it that American ragtime pianist Eubie Blake had just finished playing a concert in the UK, well into his 90s at the time. As he acknowledged the rapturous applause, he informed the crowd he would be back next year. I’m not sure whether he ever made it, he died at the age of 96 years old, but was apparently playing brilliantly right up to his final performance. And a smoker all his life!

The same can’t be said for a litany of other entertainers who have pushed the boundaries of age and plastic surgery to keep peddling their craft. Over the years we have seen a number of visiting singers and musicians, obviously well past their prime, but still able to lure loyal fans to the box office here.

Meatloaf’s disastrous appearance at the 2011 AFL Grand Final in Melbourne and PJ Proby’s catastrophic show at the Paddington RSL in February of 1990 are just two that spring to mind. Even if it’s not a debacle, and the ‘legendary’ artist delivers a reasonable performance, many fans are left disappointed.

During his heyday, Wilson Pickett was one of America’s greatest soul singers with a scream that could cut through steel. When he played the Enmore Theatre in Sydney in 2003, that scream was more of whimper and his voice was all but gone.

Sydney Morning Herald reported at the time, “The crowd was with him all the way: they wanted to enjoy this and were trying damn hard. But when a nostalgia show ends with the lights going up and the respectable middle-aged crowd booing, you know something has gone badly wrong.”

Likewise, B.B. King’s so called ‘Farewell Concert’ at the State Theatre here in 2011 left a lot to be desired if you were a hardcore fan and witnessed some dynamite shows on his previous visits. B.B. was not only a great blues vocalist but a superb guitarist. At the State he could hardly finger the guitar and didn’t play a solo the whole night. In fairness the expectations of the faithful audience were probably not that high, given that he was well into his 80s, and he was warmly received.

There was once a time, noticeably in the 60s, 70s and 80s when the media was often accused of ageism as they celebrated everybody who was young, beautiful and sexy – and often ignored the older generation. Maybe the tide has turned in 2015 with your more senior entertainers treated with dignity and respect, albeit with a touch of the patronising.

The octogenarian Cliff Richards recently held his ‘Can’t Stop Me Now Tour’ in Australia with the Daily Mail announcing:

“Sir Cliff Richard proves he’s still got it at 85 as veteran singer wears a trendy double denim outfit ahead of his final Australian tour date in Brisbane.”

What were they expecting – a freshly tailored body bag?

If you knew nothing about AC/DC and their army of fanatical fans you would have wondered just what the fuss was about last week at the MCG and Accor. With their lead singer Brian Johnson barely croaking at 78 and a prancing 70-year-old white haired Angus Young, still the world’s oldest schoolboy, they appeared every bit a parody of their former selves. It might have sounded ordinary in a tiny suburban pub but cranked through a brain jarring giant PA, with every audio enhancement, the fans weren’t complaining.

It could be a lot worse. John Laws, who has been lionised in recent weeks, may well have called on Autotune and at 90 years of age, recorded a collection of country favourites on his Woolloomooloo death bed. Yes, the same shock jock who once told an elderly caller who had suffered sex abuse in the 1940s to “go to the pub and have a lemonade”. None of the army of sycophants who have recently lamented his passing would have dared bag the album and it could well have boomed out at his State Funeral.

With AI and the spread of rampant technology, who knows what lies ahead in the entertainment world when it comes to overcoming the inevitability of old age. Could we witness a musical adaption of the infamous Elvis autopsy at the upcoming Parkes Elvis Festival, with cheeseburgers removed from a naked warbling impersonator and thrown gleefully into the audience? Could Oasis return in thirty years’ time with Liam in an Iron Lung and Noel emerging all green and slimy from a cryogenic tank?

Finally, if they are not all struck down by a recurring bout of the measles, will Australian stadiums again be stacked by AC/DC fans in twenty year’s time, with PAs cranked to 150DB and the band’s mummified corpses animated via a laptop computer?

Industrial deafness will reign supreme but in the words of George Bernard Shaw:

“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”