... But seriously Can any self-respecting thirtysomething music fan turn their back on a record collection dominated by hip bands such as Muse and Interpol and revert to their first love - the Moody Blues, ELO, Queen, Toto and, yes, even Phil Collins? In a bold move, Sarah Dempster decided to risk all and face the indignity. Then she found that she was not alone - and it's all to do with ageing http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0,11710,1478304,00.html Saturday May 7, 2005
The Guardian
One night at dinner the conversation turned, as conversations often do, to the subject of Phil Collins. Having quickly dispensed with the facts - plays drums, previous tax "issues", head like a ball of Gouda - we moved on to matters of taste, whereupon I foolhardily admitted that I "quite liked" this small, bald man. After all, I explained, he'd been in Genesis, who were great in the early days, and he has a reasonably nice singing voice, which is more than can be said of Robbie Williams and just about anybody else in today's charts.
The response was remarkable. Instead of the violent protests and pitying sighs I might have expected from a group of discerning 29- and 30-year-old music fans, there was an outpouring of agreement, a sense of something close to relief.
"Couldn't agree more," said one friend. "He's really underrated."
"Well done," said another friend, passing me a congratulatory cocktail sausage. "I bought his greatest hits the other day - Against All Odds always makes me cry."
No one was more shocked at this communal fall from taste than me. For five years, I was a writer for NME, a ferociously hip publication that demands its writers' tastes be above any accusations of obsolescence. There, I had smothered my less defensible preferences - Supertramp, ELO, Queen - reasoning that no 14-year-old boy wants his cutting-edge music reviews written by a woman who enjoys prancing around the lounge to The Very Best Of The Moody Blues. Soon, I was reflecting on the dazzling splendour of electroclash, sneering at anyone who favoured dad rock's bluster over art rock's arch decorum and scattering references to obscure German electro acts throughout my reviews.
But five years is a long time in music journalism. The relentless pace of the industry contrives to turn a month into a minute, a week into the lifespan of the average McFly single. By the age of 29 (a pensioner by pop standards), I was beginning to run out of steam. The Hives hurt my eyes. Kasabian made my ears go funny. I got the bends from trying to fathom the point of the Strokes, and developed the dreaded "hack's back" (like sciatica, only throbbier) as a consequence of too much gig-going. I found myself thinking, "Music isn't as good as it was", and "Why doesn't anybody sound original any more?", and "£4.99 for The Best Of Toto?! Jesus! I'll take three!" I was an impostor, a sheep in wolf's clothing.
What's more, I had rediscovered prog rock, a passion that had lain dormant since my teens, when, bored and lonely at home in Perth, Australia, I had fallen hard for the bearded and the contrapuntal. In unearthing Yes, King Crimson, Hawkwind and Peter Gabriel-era Genesis from my record collection, I found a safe haven from the paper's constant onslaught of fresh - though ironically also quite rubbish - new music. Prog's inventiveness only compounded my dissatisfaction with new bands, most of whom suddenly seemed staggeringly unimaginative and indecently young by comparison. The fact that prog was considered "the enemy" by the music press only encouraged me: I was now a secret anarchist.
Eventually, however, this double life - Tales From Topographic Oceans by day, pseudo-new-wave combos from Huddersfield at the Camden Barfly by night - soon began to feel less like a fabulously eccentric wheeze and more a clarion call to pack my bags and leave the NME. And so I did. The days that followed were full of self-doubt. Had I done the right thing? Were an increasing sense of futility and a fear of being exposed as a 30-year-old unenthusiast good enough reasons to concede to early middle age? They were, I decided; they are
My friend Stephen, a 29-year-old writer, thinks that developing crap taste is natural, something that happens to us all. "I don't think there's anyone who hasn't approached their 30s without thinking, 'Can I really be bothered trying to convince myself that such and such a band are any good?' There's no point."
"When you're young, you devour everything you can about new music," adds 32-year-old teacher Andrew (current opinion of Phil Collins: "not entirely loathsome"). "It makes you feel like you're in control. It's about one-upmanship with your mates and inventing an identity. But when you twig what the whole thing's about, that being 'cool' is all about selling magazines and records and just generating a sense of insecurity, you realise there's no reason to continue taking part. What's the point?"
The point is that there is no point. We are programmed to develop different tastes as we get older. It's as inevitable as backache and beginning to quite like the Antiques Roadshow because it's soothing and - always a clincher, this - educational. Attempting to fight the early symptoms - a growing sense of unease engendered by youthful company, irritation at noise levels in record stores and bars, whimpering confusion precipitated by CD:UK - is useless. These changes do not necessarily signify the onset of squaredom, or a decline in one's critical faculties (unless, of course, you find yourself humming along to Dido, Sting or Jamie Cullum, in which case you may consider yourself irretrievably stuffed).
A subconscious opting out from the musical zeitgeist is a vital part of adulthood. It's a survival mechanism, a gentle nudge to remind us of the fundamental division between the end of youth and the onset of early middle age. Most musical attempts to transcend this barrier are unremittingly awful. See, among other crimes, Velvet Revolver's album, Eric Clapton's skater wear, and Jimmy Page's heartbreakingly ill-advised collaboration with P Diddy. Ditto, in the opposite direction, the prematurely menopausal Starsailor and Keane, who might as well be discussing the benefits of a high-interest savings plan for all the zest and zing they contribute to the messy, magnificent panto of rock.
The sense of relief that has followed my realisation that I need no longer try to convince myself that I must love the latest rock/rap/indie/pop sensation has been extraordinary. I've discovered the moronic thrill of glam-rock, the frozen beauty of krautrock and the hirsute splendour of mid-1970s AOR. I've immersed myself in the works of ELO (bouncy), bathed in the hypnotic electronic lather of Germany's Neu, and re-embraced the melodic wonder of the mighty Supertramp (dead good). I've discovered Cockney Rebel, Ian Dury, Gentle Giant and Sailor's A Glass Of Champagne, a song so toweringly tremendous it obliterates approximately 97% of this week's chart entrants with a single swish of its satin loons. I've argued with a friend who insisted, preposterously, that the Killers were better than Queen (I won, obviously), and managed to buy a copy of The Eagles' Hotel California without saying, "It's for my dad/uncle/probation officer." Most recently, I held a dinner party at which the sole disc "spun" was Mike Oldfield's magnificent, 1975 proto-world music opus, Ommadawn (the general consensus? "Nice bongos"). Most of my previous, NME-driven favourites have been eclipsed - Muse, Interpol, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and countless other zeitgeist-reliant, unoriginal, ne'er-do-wells superseded by the likes of Yes, Hawkwind, Black Sabbath and Roxy Music.
Little wonder that nostalgia often leads us back to the music we loved as children (see Elton John and Duran Duran's ascendancy to the ranks of the respected). DJ Sean Rowley has built an empire upon this fact, his hugely successful Guilty Pleasures albums - dazzling compilations of underappreciated AOR/MOR corkers such as Manfred Mann's Earth Band's Blinded By The Light, Andrew Gold's Lonely Boy and Chas 'n' Dave's devastatingly poignant Ain't No Pleasing You - rightly acknowledge the ability of a great tune to transcend the constraints of fashion, youth, and even common sense.
Getting older makes us more forgiving towards those bands we once mocked for their paunches and receding hairlines. A 31-year-old friend recently told me that he'd just bought U2's entire back catalogue, despite "never being that much of a fan". "They're still here," he explained, "and that counts for a lot." He's not wrong. Longevity is as important to the maturing listener as appalling attitudes are to a teenager. It's badge of honour, proof that mortgages and fallen arches may dampen one's ardour, but the spirit of rock is inextinguishable. Similarly, I know of few thirtysomethings who weren't ecstatic on learning that Iron Maiden are headlining this year's Reading festival, a fact that bears testament to the timeless appeal of middle-aged cockneys in denim gilets.
Of course, the onset of one's 30s does not necessitate a blanket disregard of new music; that would be self-defeating and a bit weird. Indeed, this is a fecund time for what was once touchingly known as "indie", with Trail Of Dead, Art Brut, Bloc Party and the Rapture all doing fine things with the gifts the good Lord has bestowed upon them. Yet the appeal of such music is so intrinsically linked to youth - it's about possibility, about arrogance, about contempt for authority and middle-aged men in denim gilets - that to be really into it beyond one's 20s demonstrates a fundamental lack of self-awareness. It is, in other words, time to move on.
A waning interest in new music is often helped by a parallel decline in peer pressure. Paul Rees, editor of Q, the UK's best-selling music magazine, and a former Saxon fan, believes this is down to confidence. "You're infinitely less bothered about what your mates or colleagues think," he says. "It's a comfort thing - as you become more comfortable in your own skin, you're more likely to listen to things you might once have dismissed. You're much more prepared to admit that you like Billy Joel."
I don't like Billy Joel. He looks as if he's been punched by a piano and sings as if he has a tiny cauliflower wedged up each nostril. But I do agree with Paul. Unshackled from the pressures of Bothering About Stuff and Being Cool, we thirtysomethings are free to roam the naffer aisles of the CD store. There's an excitement to be had in exploring Fleetwood Mac's back catalogue, in realising that not all European bands sound like the Scorpions, in succumbing to the sudden, inexplicable lure of jazz. You're not bound by notions of credibility or by a desire to impress: it's simply about expressing your individuality - which is surely the credo at the very heart of rock.
And besides, what are your 30s for if not to unleash your individuality on the world and watch, smiling proudly, as it prances around the lounge to The Very Best Of The Moody Blues?
Embrace your unfashionable instincts. Nurture your inner nerd. Offer your inability to muster anything more than a passing interest in the World Of Pop a nice, comfy chair by the fire, give it a Walkers' Shortbread Round and nod sympathetically when talk, inevitably, turns to Phil Collins. You're only old once.
