Staying alive
Marcus Berkmann
Best April Fool of the season? Undoubtedly the news that, after the mighty success of boybands, someone is now attempting to put together a 'manband'. What a glorious prospect. Five
weathered quinquagenarians, leaping around on stage like teenagers, fuelled by monkey glands, buckets of cocaine and occasional bursts of high voltage whenever they begin to flag. It's not what you'd call dignified, but then ageing rock stars aren't.
All is quiet with the Rolling Stones at present, but do any of us genuinely believe that they won't tour again at some time in the future? Accompanying the manband story in whichever newspaper I read it was a wonderful photo of Tom Jones, whose cheeks are now so taut it's amazing his eyes don't fall out and roll around on the floor. Instantly one began to look afresh at rock's most august figures. Paul McCartney, who suddenly looks rather frightening, with his young girlfriend and startling black hair. Elton John. photographed in Hello! last week in a bright new Michael Fabricantstyle wig. Bob Dylan, who to everybody's amazement is only now celebrating his 60th birthday. They are not a pretty sight and nor should they be, after the lives they have led. How could any manband compete?
Especially when there are so many of them around already. This column continues to keep a close watch on ancient rock stars who reform their old groups decades later to make huge piles of money. Now it's Roxy Music's turn, as Bryan Ferry teams up with Phil Manzanera and Andy Mackay for his Paying The School Fees Tour. As a dedicated fan I am still hoping they will record together again as well — and so perhaps prod the long dormant Ferry muse into action — but don't hold your breath. Instead we have the astonishing prospect of a new Electric Light Orchestra album. Led again by their songwriter Jeff Lynne, this most 1970s of all 1970s groups will shortly be touring the world and most outlying planets of the solar system in their enormous spaceship. (Or was that an April Fool too?) Millions will no doubt flock to see both bands. Many will leave feeling faintly disappointed. I myself haven't wholly recovered from Steely Dan's underwhelming Wembley Arena gigs of 1996. But if our old favourites must reform, then we must go and see them, compelled by nostalgic forces beyond our control. (Old bands always start on time and never play too late. They understand about babysitters.) Meanwhile it's up to the loft to dust down old LPs and marvel at the artistic triumph that was the gatefold sleeve. I recently got my old record player working for the first time in three years, and have since leapt into the long abandoned record collection with pathetic glee. I was going to write about new young songwriters this month, but at the moment even the magnificent new James Grant CD has been supplanted by scratchy old vinyl. Some of these old records are good. Many are so terrible I can only play them when everyone else goes out. A handful will soon leave the house for the last time and be donated to a charity shop, where they should eventually decompose. But amazing numbers of them are by bands who are still going in one form or another, or have split up and reformed, or have split up, reformed and split up again, having finally remembered why they split up in the first place. (Soon they'll remember why they reformed, and the whole process will begin again.) And what do they look like, these manbands? A photo of the recently reconstituted Doobie Brothers (without Michael McDonald, of course) showed half a dozen old blokes wearing black suits, some with grey ponytails, others wearing baseball caps, most with beards. At a charity quiz last year I spotted a man on the next table in a black suit, white shirt buttoned up to the top, no tie, long grey ponytail, groomed grey beard, big turn. That's Jon Lord out of Deep Purple, I said to my teammates. No it's not, said my teammates. Indeed, we argued so long about it that we took our eye off the quiz ball and came third. But it was indeed Jon Lord out of Deep Purple, who are still going, amazingly. Or perhaps not so amazingly. What else can they do?
Even the most fresh-faced boybands will turn into manbands sooner or later. If ELO and Roxy Music and the Doobie Brothers and Yes and Supertramp have done it, what chance have Boyzone and Take That? Imagine Westlife in 30 years' time, wheezy and arthritic, still doing those silly little dances to audiences of goggling matrons. Who have only come to see the main act, 91-year-old Tom Jones .. .
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