The Perils Of Turning Thirty

[Doctor J]

Ronnie James Dio turned 30 in 1972, after which he recorded Richie Blackmore's Rainbow, Rising, Long Live Rock and Roll, Heaven and Hell, Mob Rules, Holy Diver and quite a few more proper bangers.

 

I think you'd find a more accurate indication of quality dive if you could map out the timeline of their bank balances 😉

[MacDaddy]

How many bands, with individual members who are under 30, are filling stadiums when they gig?

[Munurmunuh]

6 minutes ago, MacDaddy said:

How many bands, with individual members who are under 30, are filling stadiums when they gig?

 

How many bands filling stadiums get the crowd bouncing when they play the music they wrote after 30? 

 

I love that video of ACDC playing River Plate in 2009, the crowd a massive sea of life, everyone having a great time to music Malcolm Young when he was in his twenties

[Munurmunuh]

Jimmy Page, Houses of the Holy, 30th birthday, Physical Graffiti

[chris_b]

Bob Marley.

[zbd1960]

3 hours ago, Ricky Rioli said:

 

How many of your truly great albums did you write after turning thirty?

I'm not a composer so the answer is none. Artists seem to fall into two broad camps: live hard, die young; live less hard and probably die a bit older. Some artists peak at an early age, others mature more slowly. For some weird reason the focus is always on either those that die young, or who produce nothing better in their later years. Generally, people's work usually gets better as they get older. I suppose some lose their muse, some like Rossini make so much money when they're young, they're not bothered, others like Sibelius became alcoholics and produced nothing for decades.  

[hiram.k.hackenbacker]

2 hours ago, Mykesbass said:

Some might argue this proves the point.

Absolutely. My favourite is Tejas, but Eliminator was a huge success for them.

[Lord Sausage]

6 hours ago, Ricky Rioli said:

"Robert Smith's depression prior to the recording of Disintegration gave way to the realization on his 29th birthday that he would turn 30 in one year. This was frightening to him, as he felt all the masterpieces in rock and roll had been completed well before the band members reached such an age." 

 

Robert Smith was born in April 1959, finished recording Disintegration before he turned 30, and next produced Wish, which kind of proved his point.

 

Here are four more songwriters of the 80s, and what they produced either side of their 30th birthdays:

 

Steve Harris – Mar '56 – Powerslave – Somewhere In Time

 

Andrew Eldritch – May '59 – Floodland – Vision Thing

 

Dave Mustaine – Sep '61– Rust in Peace – Countdown To Extinction

 

James Hetfield – Aug '63 – The Black Album – Load

 

I had the idea of looking up every songwriter I could think of but seem to have run out of energy.

 

Plenty of songwriters seem to fall off their creative plateau well before 30 - Black Francis, Paul McCartney, erm Simon Le Bon. You get the gist.

Ah, the classic songwriters.

 

Lennon & McCartney,Dylan, Cohen, Paul Simon......Dave Mustaine!

[Doctor J]

Lemmy formed Motorhead as he turned 30. They had a decent song or two, no? One must surely think his post-30 output was better than what went before?

[Lord Sausage]

U2 did two of their best albums in their 30's Achtung Baby and Zooropa.

[MacDaddy]

3 hours ago, Ricky Rioli said:

 

How many bands filling stadiums get the crowd bouncing when they play the music they wrote after 30? 

 

 

 

Aerosmith?

[Downunderwonder]

5 hours ago, MacDaddy said:

How many bands, with individual members who are under 30, are filling stadiums when they gig?

Ed Sheeran only turned 30 this year.

[neepheid]

I didn't start playing, let alone writing songs until I was 33, so I guess it must all be crap then. All hail the sad, delusional old fool, can't even call himself a has been because he never was, playing a ridiculous game of catch up he'll never win.

 

Sometimes I do wonder how utterly awesome I would have been if I started playing on my teens. Mere competence is the best my dessicated brain can achieve, lest I forget my PIN number.

[Munurmunuh]

6 hours ago, neepheid said:

I didn't start playing, let alone writing songs until I was 33, so I guess it must all be crap then. All hail the sad, delusional old fool, can't even call himself a has been because he never was, playing a ridiculous game of catch up he'll never win.

 

Sometimes I do wonder how utterly awesome I would have been if I started playing on my teens. Mere competence is the best my dessicated brain can achieve, lest I forget my PIN number.

 

The upside is that you will never have to fear that most devoted fans are desperately hoping for a return to the form of your early 20s, you can enjoy knowing that they will be simply appreciative of the consistency of your output over the years. 

[MacDaddy]

8 hours ago, Downunderwonder said:

Ed Sheeran only turned 30 this year.

Not a band.

[DiMarco]

It's not the age of the musicians. It's the era the music was written in.

Everything stopped being interesting after the nineties.

 

Dinosaur me.

 

[Waddo Soqable]

1 minute ago, DiMarco said:

It's not the age of the musicians. It's the era the music was written in.

Everything stopped being interesting after the nineties.

 

Dinosaur me.

 

Make that the 80s

[Downunderwonder]

14 minutes ago, MacDaddy said:

Not a band.

Only because he's a master of looping his own beats and 'bass'.

[BigRedX]

I've found that how well received the music I write and play is entirely down to how much effort I put in to the writing, recording, performing and promoting, and absolutely nothing to do with how old I was at the time.

 

The most "successful" band I've been in was one that was formed a few months before my 50th birthday.

[Beedster]

15 hours ago, skankdelvar said:

Couple of things:

 

* It's only to be expected that musicians working in rock and pop might feel uneasy at the prospect of hitting thirty. For one thing, we live in a society which widely venerates youth and beauty, and beautiful youth. Pop music and its deriving genres amplify this societal foolishness but one can't get away from the sad fact that a pretty face sells product. Next up, the characteristics associated with hormone-drenched youth - impulsiveness, wild emotional swings, excessive focus on the 'now', idealism, a consuming desire for friendship and lurve - look a bit odd (if not sinister) when exhibited by someone over thirty. 

 

Then there's the commercial aspect. It's much easier for a record company or manager to slit a bunch of kids up like a kipper compared to a bunch of wary, older types (though not always). So, signing young people and throwing them away when they get older is a music industry thing. Point of comparison: the vibrant and highly profitable South Korean music industry makes ours look like a playgroup run by social workers. The Korean pop moguls sign 14 year-old kids off the street for their looks, formally train them in pop music and image, put them on a salary, squeeze the life out of them for a few years then dump them at 21 or 22 years-old for being geriatric.

* The confining nature of pop music (repetitious songwriting, simplistic musical formulas, trite melodies, stale harmonies) means that if you're any good with your voice or your instrument you'll have reached the industry standard fairly early on in your career and no one will encourage you to go any further. You might be bored mindless  but nobody will let you make the Jazz album or write the string quartet or even slightly subvert the audience's expectations by dallying with another pop genre. That's why Anthrax had to shelve the Reggae album.

 

Of course, in musical forms other than pop we find that performers and composers are more free to experiment and to develop as musicians and artists than are pop stars; the walls of the pop 'cage' fall away. Likewise age is far less of an impediment. Indeed, in Folk, Classical, Jazz (and even some supposedly 'rock' genres like Blues) age is a draw rather than a turn-off.  When a celebrated violinist takes the stage at the age of 84 no one cries 'Where's your stick, Grandad?' or comments unfavourably upon his wrinkled hands. OK, some critics might bimble on about 'missing the fire of youth' but critics are ar5eholes.

 

TLDR: Pop's a game for young people, no getting round it. Other genres of music offer the aspiring musician a longer shelf-life.

 

Many genres, far from being less biased against older performers, are biased against the younger. Who wants to see an 18-year old singing real blues, even Jazz. There is a sense that, even if the performance is outstanding, the emotion and experience underlying it is lacking, that the performer is going through the motions. Of course, this isn't always the case, plenty of 18-year olds have had enough emotional upheaval to last most of us a lifetime, and there's probably a few rugged and rusty old blues performers who've actually had very little, but either way there is a perceived authenticity that come with age and the absence of youth and beauty in some genres.

 

I am currently working very hard on losing my youth and beauty, and am going to take the blues world by storm in about 7 years. Watch this space 👍

[Storky]

Pop music derived from rock n roll was always music for teens done by teens (ideally). That type of music is not aimed at older folk and it is light and fun, simple and easy to play (generalising). So if you’re looking at the original question through the prism of “pop” music, yes many of these bands etc will have had their best (most successful) years before they turned 30.

 

As others have said, other art forms and even music styles, do not have that age constraint and often the better stuff is produced post 30 as artists develop. 

[Munurmunuh]

15 minutes ago, Storky said:

That type of music is not aimed at older folk and it is light and fun, simple and easy to play (generalising).

 

What I find fascinating is the case of those examples of rock music which have clear roots in rock and roll, but which aren't light or fun or simple and definitely aren't easy to play, but which are – it seems – still dependent on youthful energy and naivety to come into existence. 

 

Metallica might have put a lot of deliberate effort into recreating their early style in the title track from Hardwired....

 

 

....but does it get anywhere close to, say, Dyers Eve?

 

 

[Doctor J]

Metallica are a poor example, having tightly embraced mediocrity for 30 years. How about Sepultura, Voivod or Anthrax who continue to put out creative and interesting music well past thirty years into their careers?

 

 

 

[paul_5]

Agreed - the last 2 Anthrax albums (Worship Music from 2011, and 2016's For All Kings) have been absolute belters!

 

[4000]

4 hours ago, BigRedX said:

I've found that how well received the music I write and play is entirely down to how much effort I put in to the writing, recording, performing and promoting, and absolutely nothing to do with how old I was at the time.

 

The most "successful" band I've been in was one that was formed a few months before my 50th birthday.

I’ve found that how well received the music I write and play is is entirely down to the listener’s tastes and absolutely nothing to do with anything else. 😉