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Home » Time, time, time, see what’s become of me: or, who’s the old guy playing the guitar and singing?

Time, time, time, see what’s become of me: or, who’s the old guy playing the guitar and singing?

The New Neo Posted on by

Or the old guy playing the drums, for that matter?

First, we have some of the guys (Brian May on lead guitar and Roger Taylor on drums; they are featured starting around minute 2:00) when young:

Now for the old guys. They may be dressed more conservatively than before, but they’re still looking good and sounding great (at least, the ones who are still alive and kicking). The young guy they’re with as lead singer, Adam Lambert, isn’t trying to imitate Freddie Mercury. He’s got a powerful voice of his own and a lot of showmanship.

But although Lambert tries to be Dionysian, what seemed really Dionysian when Mercury did it seems somewhat plastic and contrived now on Lambert’s part. Note, also, the crotch grab by Lambert on “I’m a sex machine, ready to reload.” (at around 1:54). Hey, isn’t that lyric graphic enough? Do we really need a lewd gesture to go with it? Mercury, on the other hand, didn’t emphasize the line at all (in that first video, the line occurs at about minute 1:41). May and Taylor, on the other hand, (on both videos, separated by about forty years in time) are much more Apollian, although that may seem a contradiction for rockstars. But maybe it accounts for their longevity both as performers and as people:

This performance of the same song shows the Dionysian quality of Mercury even more. I’m talking mostly about the dance bit here, the part where Mercury jumps up from the piano for a little while—and you really do believe they might actually “call him Mr. Fahrenheit, traveling at the speed of light”:

I love to see and hear music and musicians after a passage of many years. Often the performances are much more poignant later. Sometimes there’s less technique, and voices almost always fade and grow quavery, with a smaller range as well. But often there’s something gained in terms of emotion. Simon and Garfunkel, for example, had a number of songs Simon wrote and they performed when young that were about aging, and those songs can be more moving when performed by people who actually are old.

Case in point, “A Hazy Shade of Winter.” Here they are when in their early 60s:

Comments

Time, time, time, see what’s become of me: or, who’s the old guy playing the guitar and singing? — 34 Comments

  1. First real concert….Thin Lizzy and Queen…….1/28/77……Chicago Stadium…just prior to the We are the Champions album……I was blown away by both bands (was more a Thin Lizzy fan going in). Someone threw eggs on the stage causing Brian May to fall and they stopped for a few minutes. They started with Tie Your Mother Down and went from there. They did Bohemian Rhapsody, and went they got to the opera part, they left the stage as a recording played and changed outfits. Next concert was Led Zeppelin. (The last they ever had in Chicago with all 4 members). Those were the days.

  2. One of the most amazing things to me is whenever you see something about the Doors featuring new interviews with the three (now two) surviving members and their gray haired weathered look and then they invariably show some of the famous photos of Jim Morrison forever young and God like.

  3. My fave example of rock geezer made good is Wilko Johnson.

    Most Americans don’t know Wilko. He played lead guitar for seventies UK pub-rock band, Dr. Feelgood, whose straight-ahead, near-hostile style provided a template for the punk rock to come. Wilko is still a name across the pond.

    Flash forward to 2013. Wilko is diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. He figures he has less than a year to live. Someone contacts Roger Daltrey of The Who. Roger knows and cares about Wilko, gives him a call and says, “Let’s do an album.” It’s supposed to be a farewell, so there are few expectations, but it’s a damn lively good time. The album, “Going Back Home,” goes to #3 in the UK.

    Then, a sort of miracle. The doctors have misdiagnosed Wilko. In surgery they remove close to 7 lbs of tissue and Wilko lives!

    Here’s a YouTube of the title song with Roger Daltrey narrating the backstory:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m94NnnhMywA

    Here’s Wilko in his youthful prime with Dr. Feelgood.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHm7uIC84YM

    So it’s cool a former rock god survives the Big C and jams with Roger Daltrey. But Wilko also has his depths. Among other things he is a dedicated amateur astronomer and has a sizeable Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope. The film director Julien Temple made a documentary of Wilko’s encounter with cancer and death.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEUqFtPETwc

    He’s a deep one. Love the guy!

  4. huxley,

    Good stuff! Roger Daltrey turned 75 yesterday. Was in the car and they played ‘My Generation’ with of course the famous line ‘hope I die before i get old’ which thankfully he didn’t. Read his autobiography a couple months ago which was a fun read.

  5. Someone said, maybe the older Mick Jagger, that there have been plenty of elder blues musicians, like Mississippi John Hurt and Muddy Waters and today Buddy Guy, so there is no reason not to have older rock musicians still hitting the circuit and knocking it out of the park.

    Indeed, we are seeing that. Some of it’s nostalgia but some of it is the truth that art is not about age.

  6. Griffin: If you’re ever making a left turn at Albuquerque, let me know!

    Roger Daltrey is something of a fellow conservative. He has spoken out against Blair’s Labor Party efforts to shift UK demographics with immigrants.

  7. Yep. He didn’t really go into his politics in his book which was fine with me but he really comes across as a grateful for the life he has lived. Been married for almost 50 years and he and Townshend have arrived at a good point in their relationship.

    I really think the thing about aging rockers that gets people is they were portrayed as Gods in their youth so when they are aged it makes some people uncomfortable. And their comments in their younger days come back to bite them also.

  8. I especially liked “Leaves That Are Green” by Simon and Garfunkel too, which has an elegiac quality too it.

  9. A fun exercise to so is to imagine a world where Freddie Mercury or Jim Morrison hadn’t died when they did. Queen was well past their prime when Mercury died in 1991 but I think it’s probably a safe bet that there would not be a movie if he was still alive. And would the Doors have continued as musical tastes changed or would they have gone the way of other bands that were equally great but not as revered today as the Doors.

    The same can be said for many others from Buddy Holly to Jimi Hendrix to 2Pac to Amy Winehouse. If you’re young and successful dying young can be great for your legacy and lucrative for your estate.

  10. I especially liked “Leaves That Are Green” by Simon and Garfunkel too, which has an elegiac quality too it. –John

    Leonard Cohen once said, when asked about his clothes, “I was a born in a suit.”

    I rather think Paul Simon was born a nostalgic, middle-aged English Lit professor.

  11. A fun exercise to so is to imagine a world where Freddie Mercury or Jim Morrison hadn’t died when they did.

    Griffin: That’s a tough one. I know what you’re saying and it’s a difference which makes a difference. But I still want to dig in my heels.

    I think we’re past the point where people listen to Buddy Holly or Jim Morrison or Jimi Hendrix and think, “Whoa! That dude died young. Heavy.”

    Mostly the young have forgotten almost everyone with less celebrity than the Beatles. If they hear Buddy, Jim or Jimi, I think they think, “Whoa, that’s happenin’. Who was that, again?”

    You may follow the “reaction videos,” where a youngish person watches/listens to a moldy-oldy song/video of an artist they know barely or not at all, and then they say, wow, that was pretty good.

    There’s a young black guy who calls himself “Modern Renaissance Man” and is nurturing an internet career (more power to him). Part of his shtick is reaction videos to white music he has never heard. It’s fun and often insightful.

    Here he is responding to Joe Cocker’s monumental cover of the Beatles’ “With A Little Help from My Friends” which transports the song into a molten blues cauldron.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThS0e27af88

    Modern Renaissance Man called it right out of the box. “Tell me that’s not a church service.” That never occurred to me but he’s right. That’s a black church service. God bless everyone.

    My point, though, is that Joe Cocker could just as well have killed himself with alcohol, cocaine or heroin at the time. He came close enough and his career never really recovered.

    But there was no tragic Joe Cocker myth for Renaissance guy. He just heard the music and responded.

  13. Huxley,

    Yes, you’re right that the music is the thing but I think the other affects how people view the music. Think about two bands whose peak career perfectly overlapped. The Doors and Creedence Clearwater Revival. Stylistic difference, psychedelic vs swamp rock aside one is much more in current consciousness now than the other. Morrison lives on as the rock God while Creedence is more forgotten. In fact Creedence was probably more popular in their time sales and hit wise. But the story of a band that fell apart and devolved into lawsuits and feuding is not as romantic as the charismatic dead guy.

    I guess I’m arguing that the music is not the biggest decider of long term relevance.

  14. Griffin: I would hate to have to choose between the Doors and Creedence! Although if I have to, I would give the nod to the Doors, with or without Morrison’s death. The Doors were providing a more fundamental synthesis of music than Creedence.

    I’d agree Morrison’s death mystique was a big deal for later bands. Young rockers are genetically programmed for Doors-ish angst and a lot of that is silly. (I still like “Black Angels” who hit a satisfying spot between the Doors and VU.)

    But further out, will anyone care how young Morrison was when he died? Or will they hear the Rimbaud lyrics melded with Coltrane jazz, a bit of Bach and American pop, and say, “What was that?”

    Likewise, is there not a possible Creedence Clearwater Revival revival based on the sheer primal gutsiness of their rock? I can go there.

    Oh Lord! Stuck in Lodi again.

  15. Huxley,

    I agree the best Doors songs are better. And they’re unique because of the sound of Manzarek if nothing else.

    I’ve heard CCR referred to as the first Americana band and I think that’s accurate. So in many ways they live on in many country rock type acts.

    In some ways many bands wanted to be the Doors but not sound like them and at the same time many bands wanted to be like CCR lyrically but not so much their drink and drug free life.

    Saw Fogerty on that Elvis special couple weeks back and he still sounds pretty good.

  16. huxley said, “I rather think Paul Simon was born a nostalgic, middle-aged English Lit professor.”

    This is making me smile. I would only add, “. . . who was very good at music.” Thanks, huxley.

  18. Back in the day in Berserkeley I knew a dude who claimed that when in junior high he had jammed with Simon and Garfunkel. Maybe he did: he did play guitar, he was about the same age as them, and was also a graduate of Forest Hills High.

  20. “Oh Lord! Stuck in Lodi again.”

    Aha. I’m not a big CCR fan but I really like that song “Lodi”.

  21. After the Beatles/Wings, when I was a kid Queen was my fav band. Those were the days you had to defend them “Isn’t their singer a homo or something?” plus their somewhat twee offeerings like Millionaire’s Waltz or My Melancholy Blues or In Only Seven Days or Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon or Lap of the Gods 2 by playing Now I’m Here or Tie Your Mother or White Man or Stone Cold Crazy or in latter days Hammer to Fall or Hitman for your friends to prove Queen really could rock in a very unique and cool way with as much musicianship as other prog-rock bands. They kind of lost me during Hot Spaces and were never really as good again, but I followed the band right up to Innuendo.

    However, my point is, like Led Zep or the Beatles, Queen had 4 very iconic member, never changing throughout their career, and I always thought they should have hung it up, at least the name Queen, when Freddie died. Having some lesser hack like Lambert or (gah) Paul Rodgers in Freddie’s place is an insult to his memory and degrades all Queen ever did. At least they aren’t trying to write songs with him. He has a wide range, period. He none of Freddie’s timbre, phrasing, warmth, growl, sweetness, control or richness of tone. He has no bottom end at all, and Freddies low voice was magnificent (the aforementioned Melancholy Blues).

    They can’t possibly need the money. Deacon did the decent thing and retired. What is it with today’s old rockstars they can’t let it go, years after their prime? I mean the ones who don’t need the money like the Stones or McCartney (basically a Beatles’ Tribute band now) and “Queen” + some guy? Is they just can’t bear to lose the limelight and the applause? Because really, the people aren’t applauding them, they are applauding their reputation and what they did in the past. Like Deep Purple touring without Blackmore. Why, for fuck’s sake? Bitter Gillan wouldn’t even let him play at the R&R HOF, and Steve Morse may be a fine technician but he’s no stylist. Anyway, I digress.

    Queen + somebody is just stupid. I disagree mightily that Adam Lambert is anything but an “American Idol” calibre talent, meaning big on vocal gymnastics, poor on actual phrasing, pitch and delivery, because they never paid their dues.

  22. The Stones still put on a great show. I doubt they need the money so probably they just love their work.

    I agree that Freddie is irreplaceable. There is no one like him. Adam Lambert is an acceptable stand in for people who want to see “Queen.” He lacks Freddie ‘s vocal range and physical grace but he does show a true affection for the material and the audi nice if that clip is any indication. I agree with Neo’s observation that he goes for the obvious (crotch grab) when it would never have occurred to Freddie that that line needed any special emphasis. And also the song came out before the crotch grab era in any event.

  24. My memories of “Hazy Shade of Winter” were from the “springtime of my life,” during the “hazy shade of winter” season, when I was working the counter at the greasy spoon that doubled as the local hippie hangout joint. That song played from the jukebox quite often. (Re “hazy shade of winter,” I would add that my most vivid memories of the seasons- and I spent a lot of time outside- were of the winter.)

    While I definitely remembered the chorus with “hazy shade…patch of snow on the ground,” I never bothered closely listening to all of the lyrics. Rather said, the lyrics were sung so fast that they didn’t completely catch on with me. (On one occasion in Latin America, I was asked to translate the lyrics of a rock song. I listened. My reply was that as I couldn’t tell what they were singing in English,I couldn’t translate the song into Spanish.)

    This time, I listened to the song while also looking at the lyrics. Before, I had liked what I had heard of the lyrics, but this time I saw the lyrics were even better than I had previously thought. One more example of Paul Simon’s talent as a lyricist- better at lyrics than at music.

    BTW, in doing some further research on Paul Simon’s father, I learned that he was a bassist who had some studio gigs with nationally-based radio shows and orchestras, but who had to supplement his income playing the likes of weddings and bar mitzvahs. While I didn’t find out any more information about his father’s experience as a professor, I would judge that being a professor was an incidental part of his father’s professional life.

  27. When it comes to rock god vocalists, Robert Plant is up there with Freddie Mercury and Roger Daltrey. Ten years ago he teamed up with bluegrass violin goddess, Alison Krauss, for an album, “Raising Sand.” Together they pulled down a Grammy.

    Obviously they came from two very different musics. They found common ground in a smoldering, timeless rockabilly. Beautiful. It’s almost shocking to see Plant so restrained and subtle.

    “Robert Plant & Alison Krauss – Rich Woman/Gone, Gone, Gone/Done Moved On (Grammys 2009)”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siMngU66j1Q&index=2&list=RDoPggeBUVZmI

    They also did a low-key version of Zep’s “Black Dog” good for a burn and a sting:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siMngU66j1Q&list=RDoPggeBUVZmI&index=2

  28. huxley,

    The Bangles version of ‘Hazy Shade Of Winter’ came out while I was in high school and had never heard the original at that point. Really I would say the Simon and Garfunkel type of folk music or whatever it’s called is one kind of music that has never appealed to me. Just too sleepy for my taste. Don’t dislike it as much as Springsteen whose music I hate with a passion but that’s just me.

    As for Plant I happened to DVR an interview he did with Dan Rather of all people and watched it this morning. I think it was from last year as he is referred to as 69 years old. Really interesting to hear him talk about the US. Speaks fondly of driving around backroads and visiting small towns. Interesting guy.

    And I would say that he is the greatest rock frontman. Had the whole package vocals, songwriting (Daltrey’s one weak spot) and charisma.

  29. Griffin: Robert Plant is amazing. That voice! Those moves!

    Plant’s last solo hit, “Big Log,” seems to be the link between him and Alison Krauss. Her brother, Viktor Krauss, covered “Big Log” with Alison killing the vocals, so dreamy and gorgeous. I like it better than Plant’s original. Three years later Alison and Plant collaborated on “Raising Sand.”

    “Alison Krauss & Viktor Krauss – Big Log”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFg1vS7OXdU

    Speaking as the resident stoner in these parts, I say “Big Log” is one of the finest song evocations of the marijuana reverie around — hypnotic, moody, timeless, leading on to some vague, yet certain destination.

    The “Big Log” is the big joint. “Red-eyed and fevered with the hum of the miles” — hah!

  30. Alison Krauss ain’t old yet, but I’m sure she will season admirably. She has a great quote about bluegrass which I would like to have in stitched lettering:

    Bluegrass music is about basic human values and shooting somebody.

  31. I don’t like much of the music ever mentioned here, (though I more or less agree with Neo politically). But I can’t stand Broadway show tunes, the Four Seasons, or Queen. However, I don’t expect everyone to agree with me culturally.

    I was friends for years with rock critics Richard Meltzer, Mikal Gilmore and Jimmy McDonough, and whereas we often agreed there were areas in which never the twain shall ever meet. Somethis seemed to be a matter of maybe two years or so difference in ages/. And Meltzer liked the Grateful Dead while they seemed to me one of the worst bands in the history of Rock. (They just flat-out couldn’t sing.)

    I connected with the Velvet Underground when I was 13, connecting their use of dissonance by means of piano and violin to music by Bartok and Prokofiev. I also liked the Doors.

    The album “Zuma” by Neil Young (Jimmy McDonough, his biographer, approved). The Sex Pistols, Iggy Pop (before he got old), early Patti Smith, then Joy Division and Nirvana (with their suicidal singers), even Depeche Mode.

    Their are clubs in Eastern Europe, that is, Budapest, Prague, Sofia, Warsaw, Saint Petersburg and so on, which are only called Depeche Mode. That’s the only music they ever play. “Twilight” brand heroin (named after the vampire series) is usually available to enhance ther atmosphere.

    I also still enjoy the music of Tricky (the originator of triphop — the only music I listened to during my year at the Chelsea), Burial (dubstep), and so on.

    No nostalgia acts. It tends to be a form best realized when you’re young. The Rolling Stones’ blues album a couple years ago was surprisingly good. I’d previously regarded their creative years as ending in 1975. And yes, Robert Plant with Alison Krauss.

    Bands make a lot more money on tour, and many performers simply become addicted to applause. It makes you high.

  32. miklos000rosza: Ah yes, the great Dead vs Velvet Underground divide! They are equally important to me. My mother must have dropped me on my head.

    Patti Smith bridged that gap too. When her album “Gone Again” came out in 1996, I got caught between the two sides when I claimed the song, “Dead to the World,” was Patti’s posthumous tribute to Jerry Garcia of the Dead, which offended the punkish, Velvet sentiments of the Patti Smith camp.

    Nonetheless, the interpretation fits the song: “DEAD to the World,” the magical musician with “life in his fingers,” and the delicate, spiraling Garcia guitar licks which embroider the edges of the lyrics in this Smith song and no other.

    In a subsequent tour Patti would place an empty chair on the stage for Jerry to sit, showing her special affection for the man and his music.

    QED.

  33. …the only music I listened to during my year at the Chelsea…

    miklos000rosza: How does one qualify for a Chelsea residency?

  34. the film less than zero is controversial for not being faithful to its source materials but man if there was a film that symbolized the 80s that was it, and its use of the song and the downfall of Julian illustrated in the film gave the song a whole deeper meaning. Pretty woman would be a great film too if Vivian died of an overdose at the end too only have her body discovered by Richard gere after he climbed into her apartment as the supposed knight of the silver armor. her wish was realized only after losing her battle with drug addiction, that would be one of the greatest tragedies of all time.

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