Ep 48: Let's Talk About Aging

In this episode, John talks about aging as a musician.

We celebrate longevity, but we also make jokes about artists who stay working too long. We admire experience while remaining obsessed with youth. 

So let's talk about aging, music, and the strange relationship between the two.

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:00

You are listening to the Gig to Live Podcast. Welcome everyone. I'm John Foles and I'm a full-time working musician. This podcast is about building a music life that holds up over time. It's practical, enjoyable, sometimes uncomfortable, but it's always about helping you stay in the game and actually enjoy the life that you're building. We'll meet some wonderful working musicians from time to time. So whether you're just getting started or you've been doing this for years, you're in the right spot. This podcast is for you. Well, hey everyone. This week has been interesting for me. I I feel older this week. I'm not necessarily old, but kinda. It wasn't my birthday or anything. Usually that's kind of a marker to make you, you know, feel older. I don't know what it is exactly. I'm I'm a bit sore. I'm tired. Uh I even started to wonder if I needed to scale back gigs a bit, maybe, or maybe not. Or maybe not the late ones anymore. Maybe it's just because I'm fighting this low grade sickness, and for the most part, I've been keeping it at bay, although I've had a couple of bad days. Maybe it's not that. Maybe it's because my 40th high school reunion was the other day, and I keep seeing photos on Facebook of old people that I went to school with. Uh maybe my body is saying something to me. I I don't know yet. But I'm paying attention, and whatever it is, it got me thinking about age. And for some reason, this week, the algorithm has also bombarded my social media with videos of bands uh performing who the bands who were popular once upon a time, and now they've become kind of a joke to some. Uh David Lee Roth, who I think is hilarious to listen to, by the way, uh not sing. When he talks, he's he's just a funny guy. Uh he's had a few videos show up in my feed. Uh Guns N' Roses, Paul McCartney, Vince Neal. There's been a bunch of these videos, and the comments on the videos are so incredibly cruel. Things like, give it up, go back to bed, old man. You have enough money, just rest, you know. And they're often paired with body shaming comments about how much weight the person has put on, or how they're spilling out of their tight pants, or whatever. But I think we've forgotten that these are real people, and they have access to this thing that we call the World Wide Web. It seems like the guys are the ones who are really getting body shamed. It it may happen to the aging lady rockers, but I I've seen the ladies only get attacked with their voices and maybe their appearance rather than their shape specifically. I've seen a few insults hurled at Cindy Lauper about crawling back into her time capsule or mocking her 73-year-old voice. Why are people so mean? Well, today I don't have a top 10 list. I just want to talk out loud for a bit. I don't know how old you are. I am 58. I'm at that age where I guess I still look young because people always tell me they can't believe I'm a grandfather, even though my oldest grandchild is 16. We got started young. Our kids got started young. I was a young poppy. I became a poppy when I was in my early 40s. But I'm old enough to know I'm no longer 28 or 38. Those years seem way far behind for me, and I'm also honest enough to say I don't want to get old. I don't I don't like it. I'm not one of those people who says, Oh, I'm enjoying every minute of getting older. I am not. I have some health issues, you know, fatigue issues that I didn't have 10 years ago, even. Now, I know if you're listening and you're 68 or 78, you're going to say something to me like, oh, you just wait, young whippersnapper. But we are where we are, right? And today I feel 58. Maybe it's just that when people say I enjoy getting older, what they're really saying is they enjoy the person they are and the things that they learn in their later years. Oh, okay. I I agree with that. That the perspective that comes with age is actually underrated. I I love it. I was recently talking to someone who told me they were in some stage of mourning because I quote, in their late 30s, they said they know they don't have the things going for them that they did when they were in their hot-looking 20s. Now, the person I was talking to was a female, and unfortunately, I mean, that happens, especially with the ladies. I talk to a lot of women who are out there making a go of it as musicians, and they start feeling bad for themselves because they don't look the same they did when they were younger, and they know that's part of how people judge them. And oh my gosh, that's incredibly sad. I have a 34-year-old friend who just sent me a great song that he wrote where he talks about aging in the song, and he references the time when he was 28, just a few years before, and how he's different now and he sees things differently. He's 34. We are where we are. We all grow up. You know what? I'll I'll take another risk here, and I'll tell you one thing that I started doing a couple of years ago. I made a list of people in my life that I think I could have done better with. I could have been a better person, I could have been a better friend, a better leader, a better listener. There aren't many of those people. There's three so far, but it's been amazing and healing to reach out to them and to say those words and to hear their responses. In one case, it was a way bigger deal in my head than in theirs. And in two others they understood and they forgave me. And that's a gift of getting older. Servers and restaurants, yeah, they call me sir now. One thirty something young man behind the bar the other night called me mister Voles before a show. And not in the cool way that we do with friends. I listened to a recording of me last week from about 22 years ago. I was singing a song that I wrote in a key that I I wouldn't, I probably couldn't sing it in today if I still was performing the song live. I don't do it live anymore, but my voice on that recording was clear and strong in those high notes and the uh scream back in my rocker days. Uh, no matter how old we are right now, we need to think through how we are going to deal with the process of getting older and all of the things that come with it for the gigging musician. So let's go back to those videos on social media where people are getting slammed. When we watch an artist today who was at the absolute peak of their abilities 30 years ago or 50 years ago, we aren't comparing them to anyone else. We're comparing them to a memory that we have of them back then. And that is an impossible standard, and it's completely unfair. A 75-year-old singer isn't being judged against another 75-year-old singer. Not that anybody should be judged anyway, but they're being judged against a 25-year-old version of themselves that lives forever in recordings and videos. And that's why people say, Yeah, they should quit. But what they're really saying is they aren't who they used to be, or I miss who they used to be. At the same time, there are artists who do seem to be chasing a ghost, you know, chasing the younger version of themselves. They haven't adapted, they perform as though time hasn't passed. And the audience, uh we fill that gap, and that's when we might say, hey guys, uh, you know, denial is more than just a river in Egypt. We know the strongest performers with longevity stop trying to live in the past and they lean into who they are now. Their voice may be lower, their movements might be slower, but there's an authenticity that wasn't there when they were 25. We talked about this on a recent episode when we talked about soul. And honestly, doing that episode played into me wanting to do this episode as well. Uh let's go back to David Lee Roth. He's 71. Since I mentioned his videos getting slammed, let's talk about him for a minute. You don't have to like him. He's been a huge part of my musical life and you know, just my life in general. Lots of memories tied to that dude. Okay, so let's picture him. And now, separate him from everything you know about him. And just imagine a 71-year-old musician walks into a small theater and nobody knows who they are. They sing exactly as they do today. They tell stories from 50 years on the road, their voice is weathered, but it's expressive. Chances are people are going to say, man, that was inspiring. And they wouldn't be saying, ah, he doesn't sound like he did in 1975, because they have no 1975 to compare him to. The other thing that we do is we confuse the technical decline that happens in the body and the voice with artistic decline, and that is totally unfair. If my father-in-law, who is in his 80s, got on stage like Paul McCartney does, and my father-in-law was writing songs like Paul McCartney still does, I would think my father-in-law was a freak of nature, and I would only hope that I would be as prolific and interesting as him in my 80s. But some people crucified Paul's recent performance on SNL. Not a lot, but some did. Plenty of older artists have lost their vocal range, their speed moving across the stage, their endurance. But a voice can become less technically impressive and more emotionally moving at the same time. And the best of them, you know, wows us decades later. I don't I don't think it's fair to ask, can they still do what they used to do? I read an article about Mick Jagger this month in Get Ready for It, AARP magazine about aging. And Mick said he isn't a big fan of aging, but he also said it with humor and self-deprecating humor, and it made me think he's also playful about his age. He said, I forget all my wisdom. I might have had a couple of pearls drop, but I've already forgotten what they are. So no, it's not particularly pleasant. You can't do things as quickly as you want to. Physically, you've got to be more careful. End quote. Then he compared aging as a performer to an aging athlete like a soccer player, and he said, you know, when you're playing football, they put you in goal a lot. And I'm not very good at it, end quote. But is is that really true? Because their new album, the Stones' new album, is pretty freaking good. NPR said it was a late season victory lap, and I think it's fun and energetic, and it reminds me of a lot of the stuff that is celebrated from their early years. If I didn't know the Rolling Stones and I had nothing to compare it to, and a band just hit the scene full of guys in their 80s, and someone asked me what I thought, I would poop my pants in on belief. I how old are these guys? They did a cover of Amy Winehouse's song You Know I'm No Good on that album, and if I didn't know the stones and someone gave me that track, I would not believe they were in their 80s. It's so good. Well, I said in their 80s, but actually Ronnie Wood is much younger. He's 79. It's it's funny. There are so many professions that we would never expect someone older to perform with the same energy or skill or agility. You know, hey, down off that roof, mister, you're 84 years old. You're too slow at putting new shingles on my roof. That that doesn't happen every day, right? I used to work with a carpenter who was aging and he dragged one leg behind him. Nobody expected that guy to do their finish work at the speed that he did in his twenties, but that is not why they hired him. He was good. The irony is that the very artists who taught us that authenticity matters are often the ones who are criticized for showing us what authenticity looks like. Getting older. The ones who gave the finger to the critics when they were young and they said, We're going to be true to ourselves and they gathered hundreds of thousands of fans are unfortunately being crucified for doing the same thing. I think this goes even deeper because it exposes something about us. Not just the musician who is taking our jabs. We have a weird relationship with nostalgia, right? I we we don't just remember music. We remember who we were when we first heard that song. You know, a song from 1978 isn't just a song. It's high school, it's a first kiss. Uh, when we lost our virginity, when we got married, it's it's driving with the windows down in our Jeep Wrangler, smoking clothes and listening to Van Halen. Or was that just me? Uh, when we see those musicians years and years later, we're subconsciously asking them to beam us back to that version of ourselves. And by the way, I have a series of business cards where I use my likeness on a bunch of toys that I had in the 70s. Speaking of nostalgia, I have cards of me as Debra Dan, Mr. Potato Head, a Weeble. You know, Weebles wobble, but they don't fall down. You might not know that reference. Look it up, kids, on YouTube. I have my uh face on a speakin' spell. I have me as an evil can evil doll riding a motorcycle from a toy that I had where evil would rev up and shoot down the ramp. Man, I love that toy. So, true story, I gave that card to a couple the other day at a show I did in Grand Haven, Michigan, and they loved it. And by the end of the show, the guy showed me that he went and bought the toy off eBay after he saw my card while he was watching me play. He was 60 years old, he told me. We love nostalgia. I think sometimes we aren't mourning the lost youth of the musicians that we love as much as we are mourning our own. Patsy Klein did the song I Fall to Pieces. It was written by a famous Nashville songwriter who said that country music is just three chords and the truth. Isn't that what we believe? Really? I mean, music isn't really about creating a time capsule and freezing some moment to compare to the future us. Real art is very much about telling the truth. And the truth at 25 is different from the truth at 35, as it is from 55, as it is at 75. You know, I'm glad that I don't perform like I did when I was 25. I wasn't that good. And not that I think I'm the cat's meow now, but you know what? I'm better. More honest for sure. I say things that I would have been afraid to say back when I was 25, and now I don't care. There's I mean I care, but I don't care. There's also something really uncomfortable beneath the surface of all of this. Because every time we tell an older artist that they should hang it up, we are rehearsing what we will eventually say about ourselves. Humans worship youth. Uh new things. We get tired of things easy. We like flashy things. There will always be a kid in their room yelling back at their parents, you just don't understand. This music is my life. I don't want your old person music. I love it. I'm actually thankful for that spirit in youth. But but what they will find one day is uh while the punk rockness has so much value, an older musician has something that younger musicians can't possibly possess. Decades of heartbreak, pain, betrayal, joy, failure, forgiveness, grief, perspective, those experiences don't make every performance technically better, but they can make it richer. I still have things to say at fifty-eight, and I think they matter more now, at this point in my life. If not for those of you who hear my songs, they matter more for me. It feels so great to finally be honest. If music has honesty and human expression at its core, then I am in and I will do this as long as I can. I think if you and I ever start asking questions about if it's time for us to hang it up, there's a few questions that are age related, uh, but most are purpose related and self-fulfillment related, or just plain old wisdom questions. So am I healthy? Yeah, that's a good question to ask. Is it still safe for me? Yeah, that's a good question to ask. But how about do I still enjoy this? What do my family and my friends say? Is there something I'd rather be doing? Do I still have things to say? Do I still have things to offer? Does my soul still feel fulfilled? And by the way, all of those questions we should be asking ourselves in any job we have, no matter how old we are, it's not just music related questions. Well, that's it. That's all for today. I love you. Stay creative, stay after it, stay hired.