I was a teenager in the 1980s, and I’m still a fan of the popular music of that era. This summer a number of the rock acts that I grew up with have gone on tour. That’s rather amazing when you think about it. Four decades have passed since I was listening to these same musicians as a suburban teen. I just turned 58, and most of these musicians are now well into their seventies.
This is a phenomenon worth examining not merely for nostalgia’s sake, but for what it can teach us about aging and longevity.
Let’s start with Rush. Rush was founded in 1968, the year I was born. The band had its commercial breakout a few years after that in the mid-1970s, when I was in primary school. I was a huge fan of Rush during their second heyday of the mid-1980s. (Rush remains my all-time favorite band.)
Following the death of Neil Peart in 2020, Rush hired the comparatively youthful (43) Anika Nilles to fill in as their drummer. But guitarist Alex Lifeson and bassist/vocalist Geddy Lee are 72 and 73, respectively.
I watched footage of Rush’s 2026 tour on YouTube and other social media platforms. I’ll begin with the now obligatory observation that yes, Anika Nilles is an amazing drummer, and as good a fill-in for Neil Peart as could reasonably have been expected. But Alex and Geddy seem to have lost little in recent decades. Rush’s music, we should not forget, is technically demanding to perform live. But these two septuagenarians are performing as well as they ever did.
There was, of course, one fly in the ointment. A few concert dates had to be postponed because Geddy Lee was suffering from acute laryngitis and bronchitis. Another thing about touring with a rock band: life on the road is physically demanding—no matter what music you’re playing.
As a counterexample, there is David Lee Roth, the former frontman of Van Halen. At age 71, Roth is a shadow of his former self. He canceled his tour this summer without completing it for unspecified reasons. The most probable reasons, however, were weak ticket sales and negative fan reactions.
David Lee Roth received a lot of criticism for his almost painful-to-watch performances. But David Lee Roth has reached an age when most men are traditionally sedentary grandfathers. We also have to remember that during his salad days he set the bar very high. Anyone who recalls Van Halen’s performances from the 1970s and 1980s will also recall his onstage gymnastics. It simply isn’t possible for a man in his seventies to measure up to that.
Somewhere in the middle are AC/DC and Def Leppard.
Def Leppard’s lead singer, Joe Elliott, is 67 years old. He is no longer the trim, energetic young man who captivated MTV audiences in the 1980s. His voice is still serviceable, but there’s no doubt that time has taken its toll.
All of the vintage members of AC/DC, on the other hand, are now in their seventies. The lead singer, Brian Johnson, was born in 1947. That makes him one year younger than my father—and I’m pushing 60. It is still fun to watch AC/DC perform live. But once again, time has left its mark.
I reiterate: playing live rock and roll on stage in a major commercial venue is both physically and mentally demanding. Most of the population could never do it, regardless of age.
What can we learn from the above examples? First of all, the definition of old has definitely changed. If you take care of yourself both physically and mentally, you can keep going for a long, long time.
But that doesn’t mean that any of us is about to become immortal—or that time no longer counts. No matter how well you take care of yourself, it’s impossible to be at 75 what you were at 35. That’s simply the constraints of time and human biology, which get us all in the end.
-ET
