The Last Straw: We hear a lot these days about Europe's ageing crisis, as people live longer and longer and their needs increase the strain on a shrinking workforce. But the problem will be dramatically highlighted next month when the Rolling Stones - who, combined, are now older than US democracy - visit Dublin as part of their world tour, writes Frank McNally.
The continued existence of so many 1960s rock stars is a sobering reminder of the challenge posed by changing demographics. Already this year, Ireland has hosted concerts by Paul McCartney, the Beach Boys and Neil Young, with Bob Dylan on the way soon. Yet it may take the arrival of the Stones to underline the shocking longevity that even hellraising rockers can now achieve.
Back in the 1960s, the life expectancy of a top rock star was about 27. Which was only fair, because in the short time they were here, they led lives of intense excitement, unlike the rest of us. Now, thanks to improvements in healthcare and diet (in particular, many rock stars have discovered the importance of food as an energy source), musicians are living into their sixties and beyond. I know you're probably saying that comparisons with Europe's pension crisis don't hold up here, since that problem is caused by retirement, whereas the problem with the Stones and their contemporaries is their refusal to retire. And I take your point. But the parallel is that the burden of attending concerts by 1960s rock stars still falls largely on younger people. A common reason to attend these concerts is the fear that this one might be the last before the legendary combo finally breaks up.
For naïve young concert-goers, this is still a realistic prospect in the context of the Stones. But the rest of us know that, with the money at stake, the polar icecaps will break up first. On the other side of the coin, it's a notorious fact that rock music has not caught up with this increased life expectancy. Some fans will see the Stones' failure to mature as a heroic achievement in itself. But the Financial Times rightly lamented recently that, unlike the great poets, songwriters like Mick Jagger and Keith Richards seem to have nothing profound to say to us about the ageing process, despite their increased experience of the subject. It's small consolation that some veteran groups have lived to be embarrassed by their lyrics, notably The Who, and their famous line: "Hope I die before I get old." According to the FT, the now-wizened Pete Townshend has protested that the lyric was intended to be "ironic and life-affirming" (Keith Moon must have missed the band meeting at which this was explained).
But that's not the only example. Paul McCartney's When I'm 64 was probably ironic and life-affirming too, especially the lines "Doing the garden/ Digging the weeds/ Who could ask for more?" Unfortunately, the irony wore off a bit when he turned 60, and asked for a world tour and a wife young enough to be his daughter. In fairness, a number of Rolling Stones songs do address real problems - coping with a rampant libido being one major theme. But by and large, they tend to be the problems of a 23-year-old. And in fairness to Mick Jagger, he never had anything profound to say about those either. One of the group's few attempts to address the transience of youth was the song Time Waits for No One. This contains the advice: "Drink in your summer, gather your corn/ The dreams of the night-time will vanish by dawn." But that was way back in 1973 - the year we joined the EEC. And the band have gathered so much corn since then that if the EEC was in charge they'd have put most of it into intervention to protect prices.
The Stones' corn mountain includes another song called 100 Years Ago, which also concerns loss of innocence and youth. Even in 1972, when Jagger and Richards wrote it, the title was already semi-autobiographical, but the line "Can't you see the furrows in my forehead?" was probably intended to be ironic and life-affirming. These days, when the furrows in Keith Richards's forehead can be seen from space, this irony too has waned. Still, the fact that a multi-millionaire lothario is performing (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction past retirement age is ironic and life-affirming enough. Apparently, the tour's set-list also includes back-to-back performances of Wild Horses and Dead Flowers (maybe they'll combine them in a medley called "Dead Horses", and flog it as the new single). But anyone hoping to hear the classic It's All Over Now anytime soon will probably be disappointed.