Oldies, not necessarily goodies

Frank Cerabino

Friday, Aug. 2, 2013 | 2:02 a.m.

I have a modest proposal, a gentle suggestion that “term limits” ought to be put in place for rock musicians.

We do it for elected leaders. After a certain number of years, we tell them thanks, but no thanks. You’ve done this long enough, and we think we’d all be better off with some new blood.

So why not do it for the stars of rock ’n’ roll, a musical genre created as a youthful expression of sexual awakening co-mingled with a rebellion against adulthood?

There’s something contrary to rock’s very essence when it’s performed by guys in their Medicare years parading onstage as wrinkled, gray and creaky remnants of their former selves.

Last month, what’s left of The Monkees performed in Boca Raton, Fla., more than a year after the band’s lead singer Davy Jones died of a heart attack at the age of 66. And Black Sabbath performed in suburban West Palm Beach with its 65-year-old lead guitarist Tony Iommi rebounding from chemotherapy and radiation treatment for lymphoma.

When The Eagles go on tour, the band is expected to include 65-year-old bassist Timothy B. Schmit, who had surgery last year for throat and neck cancer.

And poor Paul McCartney. Every new song he makes seems to tarnish his Beatles brilliance a little bit more. It’s not his fault. He turned 71 this summer. At this point, encouraging him to come up with another song and hoping for a good outcome is like tossing a glove to Willie Mays and trotting him out to center field again.

When Rod Stewart first sang the song, “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?” he was 33. He’s still singing it this summer on his world tour.

Except now Stewart’s a 68-year-old man warbling, “If you want my body and you think I’m sexy, come on, sugar, let me know.”

Which is creepy, but yet not as creepy as the Beach Boys, a trio of men in their 70s, still fretting on stage this summer over the fun they won’t be having once their girlfriend’s father takes her T-Bird away.

At their ages, when girlfriends get their cars taken away, it’s most likely due to a Silver Alert situation.

I have a feeling there’s going to come a time when the Rolling Stones, still on tour in their 51st year, will be singing “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” while cruising the stage in their mobility scooters.

It was 12 years ago when I first realized that the gig was up with what is now quaintly called “classic rock.” That’s when Earth, Wind & Fire played in Florida as part of a concert tour sponsored by the makers of Viagra, the erectile dysfunction pill.

Sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll. Available by prescription.

Aged rock stars keep going on tour because people my age are still ruthlessly clinging to romantic notions of their youth. And there’s an alchemy to those old songs that works like time travel.

It’s the same impulse that makes some people so fiercely loyal to their college alma maters. It’s not the school as much as that 19-year-old version of yourself that you’re clinging to.

The Czech novelist Milan Kundera put his finger on it the best.

“The Greek word for ‘return’ is nostos,” he wrote. “Algos means ‘suffering.’ So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.”

So watching these wizened rockers perform is a kind of ritualized suffering, an unappeased yearning to return to those younger versions of ourselves.

Ultimately, it’s not a healthy pursuit. We’d be better off without wallowing in this sort of regret.

And it’s not right either. Return rock music to where it belongs, the young. It’s bad enough we’ll be glomming their Social Security. We should at least let the young have their own music.

If we had term limits on rock stars, it would be easier to make this transition to reality.

Frank Cerabino writes for the Palm Beach Post.