‘Rarely has a singer had as full and unique a talent as Rod Stewart; rarely has anyone betrayed his talent so completely’

2006 is coming to a close and one way to sum up is that it’s mostly been a good year for old rockers who by all rights might have been washed up a decade or two ago. Yeah, you kids may moan and ask, “Why the hell is Mick Jagger still on stage, he can’t need the money?” But for some of us, it’s inspirational to see a 63-year-old on stage shaking his ass and enjoying himself in some venue other than a Wanchai disco.

The jazz guys kept going until they dropped and no one complained. The blues guys keep performing even after rigor mortis and everyone goes, “Wow!” But for some reason, people think rockers should disappear after they hit a certain age. Pete Townshend wrote “Hope I die before I get old,” and maybe he meant it when he was 20, but now he’s 61, still recording and still touring. B.B. King is 80 and also still touring and no one tells him not to (except maybe his doctor), but let Paul McCartney stick even one toe on a concert stage and millions of people scream that the world is coming to an end. (Okay, maybe McCartney is a bad example.)

I think it’s because there’s a legacy of great rockers dying young while the survivors allow themselves to be packaged into greatest hits shindigs at amusement parks or show up on reality TV game shows (hello Johnny Rotten). As Denis Leary once put it, “Stevie Ray Vaughan is dead and we can’t get Bon Jovi into a helicopter.” Rock and roll stars from the ’50s, like Chuck Berry or Little Richard, had a short creative peak and then spent the next 40 years just recycling their few (albeit massively influential) hits. We shouldn’t bitch too much about this because, with few exceptions, they were robbed by their record companies, getting ten bucks and a bottle of whisky for songs that made millions for everyone else. They got screwed for years; it’s only fair they get to screw us a bit too.

Now the guys from the ’60s are in their 60s and those from the ’70s are not far behind, while the ’80s kids are showing more than a few strands of grey. But many are refusing to go quietly, and that’s not a bad thing.

Some of the more notable releases this year came from people at or close to retirement age. Bruce Springsteen (age 57) covered Pete Seeger songs and made them sound fresh and vital. Elvis Costello (52) and Allen Toussaint (68) did a great duet album. Elton John (59) just released his first decent album in 30 years. Neil Young (61), Tom Petty (52), Lindsey Buckingham (57) … the list goes on.

2006 was also a year for comebacks. Bob Seger (61) released his first album in a dozen years and it’s okay. Scritti Politti, basically Green Gartside (51), released his first album of new material in seven years and it’s as good as anything he’s ever done – I don’t know how he manages those notes at his age. Scott Walker’s (63) first studio album in 11 years moved him even further away from his pop roots into the depths of avant garde.

The two most notable ‘old guy’ releases of the year would have to be Bob Dylan’s Modern Times and Jerry Lee Lewis’s Last Man Standing. Dylan got to make the record he wanted with no compromises: with his touring band, he spanned the musical spectrum, with lyrics typically angry, funny and oblique. His reward was his first No. 1 album in 30 years. At age 65, it seems like he’ll never run out of steam.

Meanwhile, what to make of Jerry Lee Lewis? He’s 71 years old. He hasn’t been a commercial force in almost 40 years. He’s been at death’s door so many times in the past 10 years a lot of people probably don’t realise he’s still alive. And out of nowhere comes this album of duets, all covers, with guests like rockers Springsteen, Eric Clapton, the Stones, Neil Young and John Fogerty. And he doesn’t neglect his country years with Willie Nelson, George Jones and Merle Haggard among others. There’s even something we should have had 40 or 50 years ago – a duet with Little Richard. This record works because on every track, it sounds like a Jerry Lee Lewis album.

Okay, not to suggest it’s all been biscuits and gravy. Among the few rotten apples in the barrel none is more so than Rod Stewart. In 1980, Rolling Stone magazine wrote, “Rarely has a singer had as full and unique a talent as Rod Stewart; rarely has anyone betrayed his talent so completely.” That was 26 years ago, folks, and it’s only been downhill since then.

Stewart recently became commercially successful again with The Great American Songbook – four discs worth of indifferently sung, boringly arranged insults to the great composers of the ’30s and ’40s. I don’t know anyone who’d admit to owning any of them, yet it seems he’s sold millions of copies.

Now he’s decided to destroy the ’60s and ’70s with an album titled Still the Same … Great Rock Classics of Our Time. Okay, too long a title, and the cover is a picture of him with his legs spread but hands covering his dick, warning you in advance that this album has no balls. As for “great rock classics”, when I wanna rock out, It’s a Heartache, Father and Son and The Best of My Love are not songs that immediately come to mind. The record sounds cheap, as if he gave no thought to the phrasing or arrangements, just booked a studio filled with musicians and ran through the entire thing in two days.

And don’t even get me started on 55-year-old Sting’s decision to learn the lute and then attempt to make all his fans suffer through an album of 16th century British madrigals. One track on this album is Come, Heavy Sleep. Listen and I’m sure you’ll all join me in saying: dat’s da name o’ dat tune!