Do musicians really get worse with age?
Aside from death and taxes, there are actually a few other things in life that seem pretty inevitable. Whether or not you want to think about it or not, you probably will start to see your basic faculties deteriorate with age, younger generations will consider you an embarrassment, and you’ll find increasing pleasure in using phrases like “it’s not as good as it used to be”.
With those morbid thoughts in mind, is it true that musicians decline with age, or is it possible for them to continue writing and performing to the best of their abilities? There are certainly many artists who continued to work to the highest standard until their deaths, even when faced with the struggle of battling illness in some cases. Names that immediately spring to mind as recent examples of this are David Bowie and Leonard Cohen, both of whom released their respective swan song records to great acclaim back in 2016.
There are countless others who also kept innovating until their final moments on earth. Scott Walker is a fine example of an artist who, with age, arguably pushed even more boundaries than he did in his younger years, producing expansive albums such as The Drift and Bish Bosch well into his 60s, and even later went on to record an album with cult drone metal act Sunn O))) that was far removed from his work as a member of The Walker Brothers in the 1960s and ’70s.
But are these simply exceptions to the rule? In a recent interview with Inside Blackbird, Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan discussed how the trope of the washed-up ageing rock star is still alive and easy to fall into if not careful.
“There’s a lot of people living out in LA wearing bedazzled jeans who are rock stars but haven’t done shit in a really long time,” says Corgan before going on to say how that doesn’t mean those individuals should be looked down on upon. “I’m not going down like that,” he continues. “I’m gonna write until the end and hopefully have something to say, and some of my heroes have proven that that is completely within reach.”
It probably is a fine line to tread, but one that is avoidable if artistic integrity is stuck to vehemently and if the change in trends or what is currently culturally relevant is something that is paid close attention to. It’s also possible for younger artists to lose sight of these things and suffer a decline in popularity in just as brutal fashion.
On the performance side, there’s room to argue that musicians can decline in a much less avoidable manner due to the nature of ageing. A singing voice might become raspier, or motor functions might begin to mean a lead break can’t be played at the same speed it used to be, but Corgan specifically refers in his interview to the ability to write being something that should be possible to hold onto forever.
“You’re constantly navigating,” says the singer, “But when I was younger I really noticed that a lot of my favourite music artists past a certain age tended to not make music at the level they had done when they were young. I thought that was a very curious thing, because I don’t think talent is something that evaporates with time.”
It is true that not every successful musician will retain the level of skill or talent for writing music into their later years. Still, there’s no reason that it isn’t something that can be fought for. As long as fewer artists bow out in the same way as Lou Reed did with an album as horrifically misguided as his Metallica collaboration Lulu, then they’re probably on the right track.
