Sex, yoga and rock and roll: how to be a music star at 80

“I hope to die before I get old” sang Roger Daltrey, the singer of the Who, in the emblematic My generation. Anthem of the rock and roll generation published in 1965, which questioned adulthood and celebrated post-war youth. Today, when several musicians from the sixties have crossed, or are about to cross, the age of 80, it seems that growing old is not so bad. This is the case for people like Roger Waters, Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, among others.

Paul McCartney remains active. During the pandemic he released the good album McCartney III, recorded in his home studio. But you can’t avoid the feeling of being live. In the coming months, he will return to South America, with concerts in Brazil, as part of his Got Back tour. Additionally, the release of the Beatles’ final unreleased song is expected, pieced together from an old John Lennon demo and additional recordings by Ringo Starr, George Harrison and “Macca” himself.

Born in June 1942, in the middle of the Second World War, McCartney was also concerned with maintaining good physical condition. He usually enjoys running and follows yoga routines . Although he doesn’t have a personal trainer. As in music, he does things his own way. “I’m not the type of person who needs a trainer to stay in shape. “I’ll observe what they do and then I copy them,” he said in an interview.

Reaching 81 like the former Beatle requires giving up other habits. In the 60s he was blunt in detailing that he had used LSD, at a time when there was a certain permissiveness with drugs and that, in some way, was linked to creative processes. It’s already behind us. “The last time I smoked marijuana was a long time ago. Instead of smoking a joint, I now drink a glass of red wine or a nice margarita cocktail,” says McCartney.

Such is McCartney’s determination to stay fit that he even practices yoga for his eyes. . How nice. As he revealed on Jessie Ware’s podcast, it’s a method he learned in 2000, which allowed him to maintain good eyesight and thus not wear glasses. “I learned from a yogi in India. He explained to me that our eyes are muscles. Our ears are not, so we cannot exercise our ears. But our eyes, we can,” he stressed.

Something similar to what happens to their traveling companions, the Rolling Stones. Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Ron Wood have both left years of savagery and piecemeal drugs behind to get clean. A few days before the release of a new album, Their Satanic Majesties have opted for a healthy lifestyle, without drugs, cigarettes or alcohol, in which fruits and vegetables constitute their most recurring option on the menu.

Another who continues to be active is Roger Waters. . He turned 80 last September and in a few days, on October 6, he will be released Dark Side of the Moon Reduxa reinterpretation of the classic Pink Floyd album released half a century ago, the advanced cuts of which are already known as money, time And Talk to me/Breathe. Nothing strange in a career that in recent years has focused on revising the band’s work, in fact he hasn’t released any new music since the album Is this the life we ​​really want? (2017).

“He The dark side of the moon The original seemed to be something of an ancient being’s lament about the human condition. . But Dave, Rick, Nick and I were very young when we created it, and if we look at the world around us, it’s clear that the message didn’t stick. That’s why I started thinking about what the wisdom of an 80-year-old man could bring to a reimagined version,” Waters himself commented on this version.

Waters doesn’t just (very often) look back at his parent group’s glory years . From his accounts on social networks, he gives his opinion on the global contingency. He has asserted his position on subjects as hot as the Russian invasion of Ukraine or the most thorny, the Israeli-Arab conflict. There, he showed himself to be a strong critic of the State of Israel, which earned him criticism. Not only for his words, but also for his staging.

This happened, for example, with the dictator costume he usually wears for shows in which he performs passages from the album. The wall. This has sparked criticism even of the Israeli ambassador to Chile, Gil Artzyeli, regarding the It’s Not an Exercise tour, which will bring him to the Monumental Stadium of Santiago on November 25 and 26. “Roger Waters is anti-Semitic to the core and I am allergic to anti-Semitism. You have to face it, you can’t leave it -he said to Culto-. He’s a problem, but the bigger problem is the thousands of people who listen to him. “Kanye West, with his anti-Semitic statements, was limited, no one listened to him and Adidas broke all his contracts.”

Bob Dylan is another famous octogenarian. At 82, he continues to tour . In fact, this season his shows made news thanks to his famous resistance to phones. For his 12 exhibitions in Spain during the summer, the artist used the services of Yondr, a company specializing in the creation of spaces without cell phones.

Dylan releases the thirty-ninth album of his career, Rough and rowdy manners in 2020. It was with this that he hit the road again some time later. But with his usual taste for the unpredictable, he was also attentive to other crossroads. So, he returned to the stage last August with part of the Heartbreakers, the opening band for the late Tom Petty, who was once his opening band on tour. True Confession (1986) and Temples in Flames (1987).

With them, he performs a set of three songs from his repertoire signed in the sixties, in which he includes Maggie’s Farm , positive 4th street And Ballad of a Thin Man . The most surprising thing is that the performance was also very close to the studio versions, different from what Dylan usually does in his own shows, where he reinterprets his material until it is almost unrecognizable, except for the lyrics .

Dylan also crossed the finish line of current stars. In August, the possibility of a collaboration with musician Post Malone, an avowed admirer of the Bard of Minnesota, became known. Even though the singer-songwriter gave him some texts to put to music, everything ultimately came to nothing. But the fact that a 28-year-old star wanted to take charge of what comes out of the writing of someone who could be his great-grandfather shows how rock and roll has maintained the legend of this generation which installed change as the axis of artistic creation. And even though times have changed, as Dylan himself wrote, the music continues.