HOPE I GET OLD BEFORE I DIE – by David Hepworth

David Hepworth writes about the rock trade with great authority, often spiced with dry humour. He mixes facts and figures with judicious comment that can come only from someone who’s seen it all and done it all, and emerged with an understanding that enables him to reveal not only what goes on behind the scenes but also humbug and hypocrisy, occasionally on a large scale. The subject of his latest book, its title a neat transposition of the best line in Pete Townshend’s most famous song, is how and why rock stars and the music they make go on and on and on, gathering younger audiences as the decades pass, a seemingly incomprehensible denial of rock and roll’s first principle, which was to rebel against anything and everything embraced by our parents. 

This subject matter offers Hepworth the opportunity to paint a broad canvas, both chronologically and musically, and include plenty of tales that portray rock stars in a less than favourable light. It unfolds over 36 shortish chapters, all highly readable, that explain just how much the music industry has changed since the days when he and his teenage friends bought vinyl LPs and 7-inch singles, queued at box offices for inexpensive concert tickets and obtained all the info they needed about their rock heroes from the UK’s once thriving weekly music press. This latter aspect of Hepworth’s book has a special significance for me, of course, and I was wryly amused by his observation that, “In the twentieth century, when the job ‘rock journalist’ could at least have been said to exist, there were no academic courses teaching it. In the twenty-first, when the job no longer exists, there are hundreds.” 

        Hepworth astutely cites Live Aid in 1985 as the turning point in the fortunes of the rock industry and those who toil within it. Designed initially as a charity event to benefit the starving in Ethiopia, it became a showcase for several rock stars and groups whose best years were perhaps behind them. It was, writes Hepworth, “the dawning of the Age of Spectacle” and, largely because it attracted a massive global TV audience, it supercharged moribund careers by reminding the world at large, not just fans, of rock’s existence. Experienced performers with savvy, most notably Queen, used the opportunity to present an assured suite of greatest hits, a 20-minute free advertisement for their wares, and since Live Aid coincided roughly with the dawn of the CD age, with it came the realisation on the part of record labels that they could resell all those vinyl records all over again in this shiny new user-friendly format. Ka-ching. 

        His concept established, Hepworth goes on to illustrate it through various manifestations: the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; groups reforming, not always harmoniously, to cash-in in middle-age; the rise of merchandising, or branding, with the Rolling Stones’ lips and tongue logo “arguably a greater asset than their music”; Elton at Diana’s funeral, signifying that what was once anti-establishment was now the establishment itself; the arrival of computers and iPods and the wholesale realignment of the record industry brought about by the internet and file-sharing; how performance became more significant than selling records; the requirement for once famous headliners to sustain a certain income level in order to maintain obscenely large mansions; how Bob Dylan’s 1985 retrospective box-set Biograph ushered in the trend for expensive multi-disc sets that feature alternative, previously rejected, material; exhibitions of rock ephemera at the V&A; tribute bands; rock at Las Vegas; Dylan’s Nobel Prize; the rise of Clear Channel and Live Nation; how sampling can enrich those who least expect to be enriched; negligible sales of new records by old acts; acts selling their back catalogues to hedge funds; how Abba’s Voyage might signpost the future; and, last in this far from comprehensive list, how death can be good for business. “Death and social media were made for each other,” writes Hepworth, “making it possible to mourn without putting yourself to even the smallest inconvenience.” 

        The book is not without a few minor shortcomings. The chapter on Liz Phair seems surplus to requirements. I fail to understand why in the chapter on Christine McVie and Fleetwood Mac Hepworth fails to mention the extraordinary success of their 1977 LP Rumours and how this impacted on group dynamics. Chapter 18 – The Not Entirely Lonesome Death of John Entwistle – relies overmuch on material gleaned from Paul Rees’s depressing book The Ox. And was Bing Crosby really “the most successful musical entertainer of the twentieth century”, as claimed in chapter 34, when that same century produced Sinatra, Elvis and The Beatles? But these fairly trivial quibbles are mitigated by my delight at the pinpoint turns of phrase with which Hepworth litters his book: Kiss described as “reliably preposterous”, Elton “cannot abide to be idle”, Dylan is “never appropriately dressed”, Mike Love is “traditionally the least modest of the Beach Boys” and Roger Waters “prides himself on not fitting in”. They reminded me of how he described Marc Bolan as “not one for digging out a valuable away point” in his earlier book 1971 – Never A Dull Moment. I still chuckle at that one. 

Hepworth closes his book with a lovely chapter on the legacy and longevity of The Beatles – who else? – and Paul McCartney in particular, entitled – what else? – And In The End.... He equates the life Paul has lived with that of Queen Elizabeth II, “with whom he had something in common… he knew that a large part of his job was simply to raise national morale by being seen, to smile and to wave and give people something to go home and tell at least a hundred other people about… being Paul McCartney might just be wholly unlike being anyone else on earth.” Quite. 

Published today, Hope I Get Old Before I Die has 414 pages, black and white photos introduce each chapter and there’s an eight-page colour section, an idiosyncratic playlist and a useful index. RRP is £25, £20.99 on Amazon.