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mtaylor
Just saw Eric Clapton in MSG this month and he has changed to a more comfortable style. He cannot pull off the same kind of lead solos as he did just 10 years ago and his voice isn't as flexible as it used to be .. the age factor.

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dcba

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schillid
Zappa

Zappa the tight-arsed dude who never came up with a piece of music worth remembering?
Zappa the guy who in the 80's worked closely with the FBI to find the perpetrator of a bootleg boxset of live tapes. A bootleg boxset which was said to be better than the official "You Can't Do That Onstage" series...

Frank should have lit up a fat one!

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stone4ever
It must be one of the mysteries of the world, why do people , musicians loose their creativity. Writers don't, they can go on into their 70's delivering some of their best work. Personally where music is concerned i put it down to musicians either stopping drugs or the drugs stop working. Most of the best stuff comes from the 60's and 70's when people were experimenting with all kinds of mind expanding drugs. I actually wonder if drugs are just shit these days lol. Keith said in 98' he tried Heroin again and it just didn't work for him like it used to, he said he thought drugs were lousy these days, who knows.
The other consideration is when people mature and become relaxed in their own skin, they seem to lose something creatively, when people are falling in and out of love when they are younger it seems to inspire creativity. Being married with three children in a stable relationship seems to diminish the insecurity which can sometimes drive people to do amazing things. Also proving ones self, ones hunger for stardom and all the goodies that come with it are no longer desired when fame is achieved. Sorry i'm rambling now.

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RollingFreak

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mtaylor
Just saw Eric Clapton in MSG this month and he has changed to a more comfortable style. He cannot pull off the same kind of lead solos as he did just 10 years ago and his voice isn't as flexible as it used to be .. the age factor.

Has it changed really that much from 10 years ago? I saw him with Cream whenever that was and I don't see why he couldn't still do all that today. He wasn't very energitic or anything. My feeling with Clapton has always been he can turn it on when he wants, but usually coasts, which is more than fine because his coasting is better than most. But I didn't really see anything inspired when I saw him with Cream, and I wonder is it possible he's even less so now? I'd just assume its about the same, and just the really fiery playing comes a bit less frequently. Maybe I'm way off.

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RollingFreak

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mtaylor
Just saw Eric Clapton in MSG this month and he has changed to a more comfortable style. He cannot pull off the same kind of lead solos as he did just 10 years ago and his voice isn't as flexible as it used to be .. the age factor.

Has it changed really that much from 10 years ago? I saw him with Cream whenever that was and I don't see why he couldn't still do all that today. He wasn't very energitic or anything. My feeling with Clapton has always been he can turn it on when he wants, but usually coasts, which is more than fine because his coasting is better than most. But I didn't really see anything inspired when I saw him with Cream, and I wonder is it possible he's even less so now? I'd just assume its about the same, and just the really fiery playing comes a bit less frequently. Maybe I'm way off.

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backstreetboy1
there last record,2013..now what,there best album ever....hard to believe but as good as machine head.

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HMS
I cannot listen to Nick Cave, Ian Hunter & Tom Waits. Springsteen´s last good album was released in 1987.

Iggy Pop not reaching former hights? This guy never reached any "hight". His music was always poor.

I know it´s sacrilege but Bowie´s last two albums after his 10-years hiatus were the lousiest albums in his career. Blackstar most of all, it has two ok songs, the rest is pure cacophony.

Getting older, leading a stable life and stop doing drugs kills Rock n Roll. But it keeps the musicians alive at least. Although they bore us to death like Clapton does. David Gilmour & Mark Knopfler too. Dylan is making bad jokes in a row instead of a decent album... what a drag it is getting old for Rock n Rollers.

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MileHigh
There is some MSN clickbait today, pictures of Eric Clapton in LAX being moved in a wheelchair. Apparently he had a severe bout of bronchitis. He looked very frail and old in the pictures.

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Hairball

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MileHigh
There is some MSN clickbait today, pictures of Eric Clapton in LAX being moved in a wheelchair. Apparently he had a severe bout of bronchitis. He looked very frail and old in the pictures.

This story was on many news sites a couple days ago.
Here's a link with video - Eric doesn't look 100%, but he's smiling at times while being wheelchaired around LAX.

Clapton Spotted At LAX

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LongBeachArena72
Great artists redefine themselves. They continually refocus the discussion of their work and refuse to allow themselves to be evaluated in terms of their pasts.

The Rolling Stones, like most pop stars, are not great artists. In their youth, they possessed a remarkable artistry and produced some songs which may indeed survive the test of time and pass into posterity as part of the "canon." But they did not take sufficiently seriously their "gifts," and they did not commit to a life of constant redevelopment. Like many people who are successful in art, or music, or literature, they allowed themselves to become prisoners of their past. Their unwillingness to go further, to dig deeper, to question everything, to lay bare their souls, if you will, consigned them to that weird hellishness of "the Vegas years." They will do down in history as human jukeboxes who for the final 4 decades of their careers essentially recycled the products of the first decade of their career, with ever decreasing quality, but to ever increasing $$$.

Dylan understood that he could not write "Highway 61 Revisited" indefinitely and so he "pivoted" and produced "Not Dark Yet," and "Mississippi" and "Thunder on the Mountain," and "Early Roman Kings." Bowie knew he would never produce another Ziggy Stardust and so with uncompromising fury and a refusal to allow himself to be judged commercially, he wrote "Slip Away," and "Heathen," and "The Next Day," and "Heat," and "Blackstar," and "Lazarus." Dylan and Bowie moved the goalposts, in other words ... in fact, they obliterated the goal posts entirely, so that it was absurd to try to evaluate their "mature" work solely in the context of what they had produced as young men.

We all change and grow and atrophy and bloom as we age. Great artists make these facts the cornerstone of their work as they grow older. Lesser artists are doomed to simply repeat over and over again the products of their glory years until, at least from an artistic point of view, they become irrelevant.

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Palace Revolution 2000

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HMS
I cannot listen to Nick Cave, Ian Hunter & Tom Waits. Springsteen´s last good album was released in 1987.

Iggy Pop not reaching former hights? This guy never reached any "hight". His music was always poor.

I know it´s sacrilege but Bowie´s last two albums after his 10-years hiatus were the lousiest albums in his career. Blackstar most of all, it has two ok songs, the rest is pure cacophony.

Getting older, leading a stable life and stop doing drugs kills Rock n Roll. But it keeps the musicians alive at least. Although they bore us to death like Clapton does. David Gilmour & Mark Knopfler too. Dylan is making bad jokes in a row instead of a decent album... what a drag it is getting old for Rock n Rollers.

I agree 100% with your last paragraph. And it kind of makes my point about the artists who you negate in your first line. It isn't even about liking these guys ( I happen to like them all), just about keeping the pedal down. They get the points.

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LongBeachArena72
Great artists redefine themselves. They continually refocus the discussion of their work and refuse to allow themselves to be evaluated in terms of their pasts.

The Rolling Stones, like most pop stars, are not great artists. In their youth, they possessed a remarkable artistry and produced some songs which may indeed survive the test of time and pass into posterity as part of the "canon." But they did not take sufficiently seriously their "gifts," and they did not commit to a life of constant redevelopment. Like many people who are successful in art, or music, or literature, they allowed themselves to become prisoners of their past. Their unwillingness to go further, to dig deeper, to question everything, to lay bare their souls, if you will, consigned them to that weird hellishness of "the Vegas years." They will do down in history as human jukeboxes who for the final 4 decades of their careers essentially recycled the products of the first decade of their career, with ever decreasing quality, but to ever increasing $$$.

Dylan understood that he could not write "Highway 61 Revisited" indefinitely and so he "pivoted" and produced "Not Dark Yet," and "Mississippi" and "Thunder on the Mountain," and "Early Roman Kings." Bowie knew he would never produce another Ziggy Stardust and so with uncompromising fury and a refusal to allow himself to be judged commercially, he wrote "Slip Away," and "Heathen," and "The Next Day," and "Heat," and "Blackstar," and "Lazarus." Dylan and Bowie moved the goalposts, in other words ... in fact, they obliterated the goal posts entirely, so that it was absurd to try to evaluate their "mature" work solely in the context of what they had produced as young men.

We all change and grow and atrophy and bloom as we age. Great artists make these facts the cornerstone of their work as they grow older. Lesser artists are doomed to simply repeat over and over again the products of their glory years until, at least from an artistic point of view, they become irrelevant.

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35love
stone4ever when you mentioned you thought Keith has stated 'drugs are lousy these days'
Keith said that in context to pharmaceutical prescription pills.
Don't know why I feel compelled to correct that, but I distinctly remember how he said it/ I agree.
Also, whenever there is a 'they are old' thread,
SO ARE WE.

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Hairball

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MileHigh
There is some MSN clickbait today, pictures of Eric Clapton in LAX being moved in a wheelchair. Apparently he had a severe bout of bronchitis. He looked very frail and old in the pictures.

This story was on many news sites a couple days ago.
Here's a link with video - Eric doesn't look 100%, but he's smiling at times while being wheelchaired around LAX.

Clapton Spotted At LAX

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dcba

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schillid
Zappa

Zappa the tight-arsed dude who never came up with a piece of music worth remembering?
Zappa the guy who in the 80's worked closely with the FBI to find the perpetrator of a bootleg boxset of live tapes. A bootleg boxset which was said to be better than the official "You Can't Do That Onstage" series...

Frank should have lit up a fat one!

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RollingFreak

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keefriff99
That's why I respect Robert Plant...that guy truly does what he wants, and it shows...even if you don't dig his softer sound, it's awesome that he refuses to pretend it's still 1977.

Agreed. He may go out and play mostly Zep stuff live, but the man won a Grammy for his Allison Krauss album then turned down a Zep reunion to do another one of those in 2008. May not be my bag, but he's doing his own thing, at least studio wise, and I'm sure he's more fulfilled than most rockers his age doing stuff he actually cares about and is new and fresh.