Last week we posted on Facebook an LA Times article entitled, “Reporter’s Notebook: Enough ageist cracks about ‘Old-chella,’ OK?” The cracks are the result of a star-studded concert featuring Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, The Who, Neil Young, and Roger Waters, scheduled to take place in Indio, CA, site of the far more youthful Coachella annual music and arts festival. Dubbed “The Coachella Wheel Chair Tour” and “Rockers with Walkers,” the concert generated such a venomous response to the idea that older rockers could still rock and put on a great show that it took the writer, Randy Lewis, by surprise:
All I can conclude is that ageism appears to be among the last bastions of socially tolerated discrimination. We’ve reached the point where racist insults are considered bad form, sexist comments are to be avoided and ridiculing people with disabilities is insensitive. But put on a show led by rock stars old enough to collect Social Security and the tirades begin.
The “passionate” and “voluminous” response that Lewis got to that article was revealing. Some were supportive:
These (evidently younger) bigots with their walker jokes can only wish to be so lucky as to feel passionately engaged with life, and sharing a major talent, in their later decades of life.
You nailed it; people of age are the last unprotected species.
Some not:
Ageism cuts both ways. I hear a lot of folks in their 40s, 50s and 60s griping about “dirty millennials,” blaming all manner of social troubles on younger folks.
I think you missed the point. The old gents you mentioned — Horowitz, Goodman, Sinatra, Les Paul — were performing as musicians. Rock stars are performing as sex symbols…. So to see old guys on stage trying to act like sex symbols is rather laughable, don’t you think?
We Boomers don’t like to see favorite musicians from our youth trashed just because they’re old, partly because it’s unfair criticism (and most often inaccurate) and partly because it’s a bit painful to acknowledge that we’re at an age that’s vulnerable to that kind of disparagement. But maybe there’s more to it. Many of us we’re a fortunate part of the generation who saw unlimited possibilities when we were young, who embraced creativity as a natural part of our lives, who wanted and expected more from life than retiring into quiet invisibility in our later years — if we even thought about our later years at all.
Lewis’ original article includes this exchange between Ringo Starr and Larry King:
“Why don’t you retire?” asked the 73-year-old Larry King to a 65-year-old Ringo Starr in a 2007 interview. At that moment, “the funny Beatle” aptly replied, “Why don’t you retire, Larry? This is what I do. I play music. What am I going to retire from?”
At EngAGE, we don’t talk about retirement; we talk about reinvention. We encourage older people to explore their creativity, to find ways to give back, to stay fully engaged in life. How fortunate those old rockers are who love what they’ve been doing so much that they simply want to continue doing it. Really, why would they want to retire?
UPDATE @ 3:30 PM: Tickets sold out in five hours!
(Photo Credit: marfis75 on flickr Creative Commons)
