Aging rock stars: Deep Purple and Co.: Why can’t old bands die?

They never come back? The saying may apply to boxers, but it doesn’t apply to successful rock musicians. Because they are always there. In March 1981 I went to see The Who’s “Rockpalast” performance with my uncle. That was a highlight in the TV program at the time: concert broadcast live on television and on the radio at the same time! The first song was “Substitute.” My uncle was very happy and I asked him: “What is that?” “Well, ‘Substitute’ – don’t you know that?” he asked me, dumbfounded, from the side on the sofa. It had been a hit in 1966, two years before I was born.

The only Who song I knew was “My Generation.” It’s easy to remember because Roger Daltrey stutters while singing: “I’m not trying to cause a big ss-sensation… I’m just talkin’ ’bout my gg-generation.” He later said it was so cold in the studio that he was shivering. In fact, he stuttered so that he could formulate “Why don’t you all … fff …”, and then instead of singing “fuck off”, he switched to “fade away”, otherwise it wouldn’t have been played on the radio, even if it means the same thing. Everyone liked this subtle vulgar allusion and the single reached number 2 in England in 1965.

The implied “fuck off” applied to the world of old and bourgeois people, but never to the band themselves, who are still singing the song for almost 60 years. Including the most famous lyric from this song: “I hope, I die before I get old.” It’s now a running joke in the pop business for all bands who act as if they were immortal superheroes.

Of course, the younger you are, the older your elders seem. In 1981 I was in the seventh grade, and even the ninth graders seemed to me to be on another planet. Back then, the 1960s were only 13 years ago. The Who seemed to me like an ancient band from the time when there were still knights who lived in castles. Roger Daltrey in the “Rockpalast” was 37 years old, I looked it up now.

To me he seemed like a survivor. The big bands from the 60s had almost all broken up in 1981: Beatles, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Velvet Underground, there were only the Rolling Stones and the Kinks and the Who. They were the rumors of the past that I read about in the Rock Lexicon. I had to borrow their records from relatives and older friends. The 60s were considered a decade of timeless elegance and rebellion.

But their bands seemed lost or dead. But what has been repressed always returns, even if it is to be refounded. These bands were the canon before punk and they are the canon after punk and to this day clog up all the best lists of the last 50 years. Not so much because they are so good, but because they are good at business. That was the real “big SS sensation” that Roger Daltrey always sang about. In 2023 The Who played at the Berlin Waldbühne. A friend of mine was there with her daughter, who was the same age as I was when I was with my uncle. The ticket for 150 euros. Roger Daltrey was 79 years old, the best Mick Jagger age you would say, even if he is a year older.

In the 80s the Rolling Stones actually seemed even older than they do now. When the band celebrated its 20th birthday in 1982, there was an extra program on television, hosted by Nina Hagen, who grinned at the camera at the end: “We’ll see each other again in 20 years.” Today we know that this joke was no one was. “There’s the sun, the moon and the stars – and the Rolling Stones,” Keith Richards once said. The old bands never want to die. They are valuable brand names that absolutely need to be preserved for the big concerts, because they are the only ones that count and record sales can hardly be measured anymore. And yet there are these expensive deluxe box sets for the fans who actually buy them. How crazy are these people?

You definitely must have been young at some point. As a rule, the first experiences are best remembered. Music immediately unlocks feelings, otherwise only the smell can do that. The music you liked as a teenager will never leave you. In the rock and roll fairy tale, standing still is a mythological quality. The old Persil advertising slogan apparently applies: “You know what you have.”

The new should always be the best, but the old wants to be even better. Musical developments beyond the third album are the exception, but who wants surprises? People admire the fact that they stay there forever. Grandparents with their children and grandchildren make pilgrimages to the concerts, or at least that’s what these bands claim in interviews. There was something for everyone, Horkheimer and Adorno said about the culture industry, but it should always be the same band, that was not the case.

But big names can also become small ones. In the mid-90s I happened to see Hot Chocolate performing in a beer tent in a small town in Lower Saxony. 20 years later I saw a poster at a bus stop in Saxony announcing a Hot Chocolate concert in the country. In 1981 they played at the wedding of Lady Di and Prince Charles. In some parallel universe you can definitely encounter the undead Bay City Rollers, who, according to Wikipedia, have been around since 1968. Pay attention to the bus stops in the province! No, they probably won’t bring back the energy they use up.

At the “Rockpalast” in 1981, The Who was followed by another legend: The Grateful Dead. They no longer exist; after the death of their guitarist Jerry Garcia in 1995, they disbanded after a comparatively short 30 years. They were famous for their three-hour concerts. I fell asleep after the second song, and so did my uncle.