Rock Of Ages

 "Never trust anyone over thirty," was the adage that was tossed around frequently when I was eight or nine years old. But I do think it's important to consider that age and wisdom are often found in the same place, if only because a person makes enough wrong turns that eventually they start making the right ones and suddenly the know exactly how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop. 

That being said, I would like to point out that last week Roger Daltrey celebrated his eightieth birthday. He has been married to his second wife for fifty-three years. He outlived the drummer in his band by forty-six years and counting. He was diagnosed back in 2015 with viral meningitis, and after a lengthy convalescence, he was able to go back into the studio with the other surviving member of the Who and record a new album in 2019. Then he and Pete went out on the road one more time. 

That was way back when he was in his seventies. 

I bring this up because this is the fellow who, at the ripe old age of twenty-one, declared "hope I die before I get old." 

Ah, youth. 

Here was are, pushing the limits and definitions of age around to suit ourselves, complaining about putting an eighty year old man in the White House. Mick Jagger is eighty years old. He and some of the other Stones just put out a new album that is as good as anything that the have released in years. They are hittng the road to play stadiums full of fans from eight to eighty. With a guitar player who is also eighty and has looked it for the past forty. 

I have tickets to see a seventy-four year old Bruce Springsteen later this month. I would have seen him some months ago, but a bout of peptic ulcer disease kept him from making that date. Age is just a number we tell ourselves. Those of us who are over thirty, anyway.