There was Roger Daltrey, 68, with his open shirt revealing a Palm Beach perma-tan, and abs so snare-tight that they immediately raised suspicion. (“Implants!” charged a few skeptical members of the Twittersphere.)
There was Jon Bon Jovi, 50, with his flowing mane now a shade of coppery gold that only a hairdresser could love.
There was Paul McCartney, 70, with his unlined face retaining an eerie degree of his Beatlemania-era boyishness.
Last month’s star-studded 12-12-12 concert — a showcase of retirement-age rock icons like the Rolling Stones, the Who and Eric Clapton — not only raised millions to benefit victims of Hurricane Sandy, but as “the largest collection of old English musicians ever assembled in Madison Square Garden,” as Mick Jagger joked onstage, also inspired viewer debate. Rock stars, after all, face the same battles with crow’s feet and sagging jowls that everyone else eventually does. But their visible aging happens under the microscope and seems somehow more tragic since they toil in a business built on youthful rebellion and their look contrasts so sharply with our shared cultural images of them, frozen in youthful glory.
The issue takes on added relevance for graying fans from the baby boom and Generation X who grew up taking style cues from these rock heroes (and continue to make geriatric acts like Bruce Springsteen and Roger Waters some of the biggest draws in the concert business). If rock immortals can’t accept with a certain grace the ravages of time, what does this portend for the rest of us?
Perhaps this is why so many of the concert’s 19 million U.S. viewers turned into fashion critics during the show, zapping the rockers on blogs and Twitter not just for looking old but for their occasionally clumsy efforts to appear young.
“I want to re-knight Sir Paul for those next-level dad jeans,” tweeted Julieanne Smolinski, 29, a New York writer, in reference to McCartney’s crisp, pre-faded dungarees, which looked like Gap deadstock from 1991.
“I will donate $1,000 to #121212Concert if Roger Daltrey buttons his shirt,” tweeted Alan Zweibel, 62, a comedy writer.
Visual dishonesty
The quickest route to ridicule, it seems, is for aging rockers to proceed as if nothing has changed. The truth is, years have passed, and to deny this is a form of visual dishonesty. With his shirt thrown open during a rousing rendition of Baba O’Riley, Daltrey — a specimen for his age, to be sure — unfortunately invited comparisons to his groupie-magnet self from the Tommy era. In doing so, he violated an obvious dictum for seniors: Keep your clothes on in public.
But he is not the only offender. At 65, Iggy Pop still takes the stage wearing no shirt, just jeans, as if it’s 1972. It’s not that his body is not freakishly impressive for a man his age. Aside from a few sags and bulging veins, his torso generally looks as lithe as a Joffrey dancer’s.
The problem is not the image itself, so much as the image suggested, as if these aging sex symbols are still attracting hordes of groupies to the cozy confines of their tour buses.
That may well be true, of course, but when these flesh-baring rockers are men of Viagra-taking age, that’s a visual most people could do without. It’s like hearing that your grandparents still have sex: Bully for them, but spare us the details.
Hair is complicated for seemingly anyone over 40 — to dye or not to dye, that is question. But it is a tougher call for rock stars like Bon Jovi, whose hair has always been a key element of his brand. If, one day, the pop-metal crooner were to appear singing Lay Your Hands on Me sporting a professor emeritus shock of white hair, as the fellow 12-12-12 performer Waters of Pink Floyd did, would anyone heed his siren call? (I guess we should be grateful that Bon Jovi hasn’t gone the route of Roy Orbison, who maintained his jet-black coif well into his 50s, giving him the unfortunate look of an aging blackjack dealer at a lesser Vegas casino.)
Hair or not
Given the raised eyebrows that Jagger and McCartney attract with their ever-chocolate locks (although at least Jagger’s wrinkled magnificence suggested his face had been untouched by a surgeon’s blade), it is no wonder the new tonsorial compromise of choice for aging rockers is strategic baldness. A close-cropped buzz cut or shaven head simply erases all visible evidence of follicular aging, as well as lending them a vague bouncerish tough guy appeal. It works for Phil Collins, Moby and Seal.
With his shaved head, Paul Shaffer, the David Letterman foil, looked nearly as age-ambiguous playing piano behind Adam Sandler on the comedian’s Hallelujah parody during the 12-12-12 as he did playing in the Saturday Night Live house band in the late ’70s. It would have worked for Michael Stipe, too, if he hadn’t chosen to tarnish the effect with a silver Robert E. Lee beard. Ultimately, there is little to be done about graying temples or sagging jowls (short of medical intervention, anyway). This leaves clothing as the prime area for rock stars to experiment with age denial, without looking plastic.
Most fading rock gods seem to intuit that overly sexualized stage outfits turn into clown costumes after a certain age. David Lee Roth, who scissor-kicked his way through the ’80s in skintight tiger-stripe jumpsuits, took the stage on a recent Van Halen tour dressed more like a groom atop a biker wedding cake: black leather pants, shiny blue shirt, black pinstripe vest.
Take a lesson from Eric Clapton and his well-fitting suits: After 40, it’s time to lose the sequins, unless you’re Liberace.
Sometimes, though, even a keen fashion sense is not enough to ward off the jibes.
At the 12-12-12 concert, Jagger took the stage in a subtly snazzy gray python jacket, a Bordeaux taffeta shirt and black jeans. The jacket and shirt, designed by his longtime companion L’Wren Scott, were a far cry from his sequined jumpsuits of the ’70s, but that did not stop the wisecracks.
“Mick Jagger looks like your aunt trying to be cool at a wedding,” tweeted Gregg Hughes, known as “Opie,” the SiriusXM radio shock-jock.
But Jagger, who at 69 still bounds and gyrates through unimaginably athletic, 2½-hour sets, has a built-in response at the ready.
As he put it long ago, “Anything worth doing is worth overdoing.”