Now don’t get me wrong - there are certainly going to be folks out there that’ll try and size us up and try to belittle us as “that old guy/gal”. It ain’t gonna to be easy, and the voice of Resistance that lies inside of us will try to sabotage us.
When I got into punk in the late 70's, and totally immersed myself in the scene at some risk in the early 80's, I'd already heard many people consider the Stranglers as old men posing as punks. I found that as offensive then as I do now! I was still a kid, but it was the fact that the Stranglers obviously knew how to navigate the same weird hard world I was in, that made me interested in them. Also, when I was a much younger kid, the people I admired were usually either musicians, who I knew, including my mum, or people like uncles, or friends of the family who had interests in radio and other technical or scientific stuff.
If ANY of these people had given up these things, I would have had far less to respect in them, it was that they DID it, and it kept them going. I knew it could do the same for me when I got older. JJ Burnel is over 70 and he can still play better than I can. Mind you, I'm a late starter and a determined sod when it comes to solving interesting problems, so I get by.
What depresses me about the state of music now is the cult of youth and beauty, the astounding obsessions with celebrity, and worst of all, uncreative autotune!
The Stranglers played at the Albert Hall, in one of the proms, and they don't put on side about that. Actually the mix was awful at times but it was still a good show they put up there. I even learned to like Duchess, not previously one I liked very much.. They got that one sounding great with an orchestra in tow. Moments like those are surely rare, once-in-a-lifetime moments, and it's worth keeping going and taking any chances offered, at any time, because it's probably the only way chances like that one will ever arise, and the only way people could prepare for such unlikely events.
My only concern is that I may not be good enough a bassist to put myself about that much, but I still take a chance on having others hear me. It's the strangers (no, no 'l' missing there, I meant that specific word) that are most receptive, the people who thought they knew me are far harder to please, but I'm not here to satisfy their memories. I guess finding new audiences may well be less scary than NOT finding them, unless we lose the habit of trying.
When I saw the Stranglers at Grillstock in Bristol a few years ago, when Dave Greenfield was still alive and playing well, I was waiting and watching the flux of incomers who were obviously there to see them too, before I moved to get close to the stage just before they started up. One of the most amazing thing was the huge range in ages, the large number of very young people who were there, specifically because a band of 'old men' was capable of inspiring them to pay over 25 quid for a three-quarter hour at the end of a long sunday afternoon. THAT is a mark of real respect.
EDIT: probably worth adding this even to a long post.. There were punks I'd known since the early 80's who I later learned had been drinking and listening from the dockside, outside the arena where the Stranglers played. They were willing to listen, which is great, but it was the commitment of the younger ones who paid so much to get in, right at the end of a long day, who impressed me as much as the Stranglers did. I think they got their money's worth. They are the ones likely to live without regret dogging them all the way to the grave.
/end introspection. These things happen after a long night playing bass to people..
