FTV: Rockin’ in Their 70s

 

     If you read the title above and started thinking of your favorite bands from the 70s like America, Boston, Chicago, Doobie Brothers, Eagles, (fill in your favorites here), read it again.  Three articles in the Summer 2026 issue of Classic Rock Magazine (Issue 355) got me thinking about the age of the musicians interviewed in this issue.  When Roger Daltrey famously sang ‘I hope I die before I get old’ in The Who’s early hit My Generation, it is hard to judge their intent.  Were they trying to shock people?  Did The Who seriously feel dying young was a better path than a long life?  Even though Keith Moon and John Entwistle left this mortal coil before they should have, Pete Townshend and Daltrey are still with us.  I will let you ponder those questions and point out that a) Roger is still out there rocking at the not so young age of 82, and b) he isn’t one of the artists this FTV will actually be focusing on.  Our discussion here will be on Peter Frampton, George Thorogood, and members of Deep Purple, all of whom are still making music into their seventies.

     When Peter Frampton was diagnosed with the degenerative muscle disorder inclusive body myositis (IBM), it sent shockwaves through the rock community.  At the conclusion of what was billed as his final tour in 2024, he went into the studio to record three albums ‘while he still could’.  Those albums (two blues and one instrumental) were going to be his legacy –  all the cards told him he wouldn’t be able to perform up to his own expectations much longer.  Flash forward seven years from his initial diagnosis to the present and Frampton is releasing his first album of new material in a decade.  At the age of 75, he is also making plans to do at least some touring behind Carry the Light.  Peter says, “My doctor says I am a young 75, which is better than an old 75, right?”

     Frampton is very comfortable with where he is now in life, even with the IBM diagnosis.

As a teen idol member of The Herd, he said they loved the female adulation…at first:  “Being chased and having your clothes ripped off by girls is all very exciting, but it gets old pretty quickly.  All the ‘Face of 1968’ stuff felt terrible, because in The Herd we’d been playing blues and jazzy stuff and had a serious following.  My guitar was now slung behind my back most of the time.  I probably was enjoying it at the time, but being screamed at by girls didn’t mean anything once I realised that they weren’t even listening to the music.”  With the prospect of having his life robbed of guitar playing by IBM, this extension of his career is an unexpected and joyous development.  

     When he left The Herd and joined Humble Pie, he got to shed the teenybopper image and play some serious rock and roll alongside Steve Marriott, Greg Ridley and Jerry Shirley.  People thought he had lost his mind when their breakthrough live album (recorded at the Fillmore) broke big and Peter headed for the exit.  As he explained it to CRM’s Bill DeMain, “If I had stayed in Humble Pie, various things could’ve happened.  I could have become very ill, for one.  Honestly, I’m not sure how I would have been able to handle it going forward,  I don’t know how long it would have lasted, even if I’d have stayed, because unfortunately drugs and drink were playing a much bigger part than I had seen before.  But it was motivated by musical differences, and me wanting to pursue other directions.”

     Of course, the ‘other direction’ was a harder path, but Frampton found opening for other bands gave him the performing PhD he needed to become a headliner.  That degree, of course, culminated in the multi-platinum success of Frampton Comes Alive.  Unfortunately, this peak in his career led to his deepest valley, both professionally and personally.  He said, “I absolutely did not want to record I’m In You (his fifth album rush released in 1977 to ride the success of Alive).  I knew that you’re only as good as your last record.  I wish I had taken my time.  But I had to sift through everyone’s agenda.  I was twenty-six years old and I started making bad decisions.”  The album did okay but the damage to his career started him downslope as he began to disengage from life and his profession by immersing himself in drink.

     The happy coda here came via David Bowie who threw him a life ring.  Bowie asked Frampton to tour as his guitarist on his 1987 Glass Spider Tour.  This act of kindness helped Peter right his ship, regain his career , earn a Grammy Award (for his instrumental album Fingerprints (2006)), and be inducted into the Rock Hall of Fame in 2024.  After Frampton’s  third marriage ended in divorce in 2011, he (eventually) settled in Nashville, Tennessee.  The 9/11 attack motivated him to become a U.S. citizen.  Asked if he is depressed about his state of health, Frampton says, “You have to accept the things you cannot change.  I learned that in A.A., and in many other places.  What I have is not life-threatening, thank God, but it’s life changing, and I’m going with the flow.” Before he died, Mountain’s Leslie West shared a stage with Frampton.  While they reminisced about all of their mutual managers and peers who were already gone, West deadpanned, “Peter – how the hell are we still here?”  Well, Peter still is anyway.

     George Thorogood, now 76, took a slightly different path to get where he is today.  Thorogood actually began his career as a solo acoustic performer like his heroes  Robert Johnson and Elmore James.  George moved west and while performing on the streets of San Francisco, a tape of one of his sets found its way into the hands of Bonnie Raitt’s manager who convinced him to return to his East Coast roots.  After spending time with Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Robert Lockwood told George to go electric.  In 1973, he and a high school friend and drummer Jeff Simon formed The Delaware Destroyers.  They gigged frequently on the bar band circuit and their 1974 demo (later released as Better Than The Rest by MCA Records) got them ‘discovered’ and signed  to a record contract with Rounder Records.  Their eponymous debut LP was released on April 16, 1977.  

     The Boston based Destroyers toured the circuit behind four well received albums but their profile took a big upswing when they opened for The Rolling Stones during their 1981 U.S. tour.  Just to add an exclamation point to their rigorous 1981 schedule, the Destroyers decided to play a gig in all fifty states in fifty days.  The travel alone was enough to kill a mere mortal, but they still managed to do 51 shows in 50 days when they finished off the 50/50 tour by playing in both Washington, D.C. and Maryland on the last day.  

     George expanded on the 50/50 episode when asked about it by CRM’s David Sinclair:  “It was an effort in lunacy.  We had that tour planned, and then we got offered more shows with the Rolling Stones.  (Promotor) Bill Graham wanted us to open for all the remaining dates of the Stones’ Tattoo You tour, but we couldn’t do it because we had already made the 50/50 obligation.  So the whole time on that 50/50 tour I was kind of kicking myself, knowing what I had passed up.”  Overall, Thorogood remembers getting along with Mick Jagger well:  “He was a wonderful host.  Very funny guy.  He’s got a natural way of making you laugh.  Very smart guy.”  The Stone George was most influenced by was Brian Jones.  He asked Sinclair, “What do Keith Richards, Mick Jagger, and George Thorogood all have in common?  We all heard a slide guitar for the first time being played by Brian Jones.”

     Asked if he was ever pressured to write more original songs, Thorogood’s take was honest.  His answer to the record label was always, “What if the material’s not any good?  How about that?  I wasn’t going to drop One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer (by John Lee Hooker) and Move It On Over (by Hank Willaims) just because I didn’t write them.  That would be crazy.”  For the record, George has penned some pretty solid original hits over the years (see Bad To the Bone, I Drink Alone, and Born To Be Bad), but the Destroyers cut their teeth doing wham bam covers of other people’s songs.  If a fifty year career isn’t testimony enough that it worked just fine for them, then what is?

     Being friends and playing the music that he loves with his long-time band members, Thorogood isn’t close to hanging it up.  A collection of live tracks from 1978 to 2024 called The Baddest Show On Earth:  Greatest Hits Live is out now and gaining traction.  After seeing the Destroyers open for Ringo Starr’s All-Starr band a couple of years ago, I commented the only thing that disappointed me about their set was the ‘sameness’ that seemed to carry over from one song to the next.  That should be tempered with my second observation:  George Thorogood takes no prisoners and the Destroyers are just about the best boogie band around.   Their rabid fans certainly howled their approval.

     Our last stop on our ‘Rockin’ in their 70s’ jaunt brings us to Deep Purple.  Truth be told, founding members Ian Gillan and Roger Glover are actually 80 and drummer Ian Paice is ‘only’ 78 as is keyboard player Don Airey.  Current guitar slinger Simon McBride is just a youngster weighing in at 47 years-old.  As the fourth six stringer in Purple’s history, he carries quite a burden having to fill the shoes of former guitarists Ritchie Blackmore, Tommy Bolin, and Steve Morse.  As I recall, they launched the Long Goodby Tour in 2017 and were supposed to hang it up in 2019.  What happened?  To make keep it short, The Whoosh Tour (2022-23) and the #1 More Time Tour (2024) happened in the wake of albums with the same names.  Let us not forget their newest album (SPLAT!) and the SPLAT! Tour that is occupying their time in 2026.  Too old to rock?  I would say not if they are still touring and enjoying themselves doing it.

     CMR’s Paul Rees caught up with DP as they returned from a quick run of five shows – three in Japan and one each in South Korea and Kazakhstan.  They talked with CRM before dispersing to their various abodes in Portugal (singer Ian Gillan) and to homes in Switzerland (bassist Roger Glover), Buckinghamshire (drummer Ian Paice), Cambridgeshire (keys player Don Airey) and Belfast (McBride).  Gillan says, “As personalities they are five polar extremes, yet ever so alike in their apparent sheer good ‘blokey-ness’.”  Leave it to Paice to quantify those qualities:  “Glover is still the hippie he was fifty years ago.  McBride, I’m always laughing at, can’t help it.  But when I am with him I end up sounding Irish too.  Airey is gloriously dry-humoured.”  

     Paice himself got introspective when asked what springs to mind about playing music:  “Any musician, or any artist in any form, goes back to when they started.  The glory of finding you can actually do something without it being a strain.  Doing what you were put on this planet to do.  Whatever happens after that, whether it becomes part of your life, the way you support yourself, or whether it’s just something you do for fun, that little niche is an amazing thing to have found.”

Purple keeps the peace by following a couple of hard-and-fast rules:  1) Know when to leave each other alone and 2) no political or religious discussions.  Their common ground, according to Gillan, is humour.

     Nobody is copping as to why the ‘farewell’ tour Purple started nine years ago wasn’t the end.  Paice hints that they may be free from major touring, “in the not-so-distant future, but still playing the odd weekend engagement sandwiched in between bursts of recording.”  McBride sees DP as proceeding, “moment to moment.  It’ll last until it stops.  Everybody needs a purpose in life, I think, so keep going, keep moving.”  Reminds me of my old college Geography advisor Pat Farrell who used to say kiddingly, “Remember, wherever you go, there you are.”  It seems they have already penciled in dates into 2027 but the SPLAT! Tour still has to navigate 83 shows in 27 countries before the end of this year.  Airey says his wife is always happy to see his two big suitcases sitting in the hall waiting to be picked up:  “It means I am out of her hair for a few weeks.”

     What will the end look like for two 80 year-olds, two 78s, and a 47 year-old?  Glover says having a final show would be too stressful:  “We should just go on until we can’t.  As Ry Cooder said, ‘Bop ‘til you drop’.”  Paice claims, “Ian (Gillan) would be the one that calls time.  He has the most fragile of instruments, and the fact it works as well as it does now is remarkable.  Even still, we all have to be aware of how that vessel could shatter in an instant.  At the moment, it’s okay and he’s having fun.”  Gillan himself sees the end coming, “If I felt for one minute that it was becoming embarrassing…I remember the stories of Sinatra and that sort of thing.  When it gets to the point of being senile and forgetting where you are, or whether you just start getting sloppy with the performance and the energy, I think I’d recognize that.”

     I think it is sound logic to have an exit strategy.  Some stars are just too big to have one of their managers or band members say, “Yeah, it is time to hang it up.”  It isn’t that they can not still produce some outstanding moments on stage, but they are just too close to their own legacy to believe they could put on a bad show.  I truly love Paul McCartney, but his band’s body language on the last couple of videos I have seen is telling.  When Paul sings off key and they look at their shoes, one can tell they know the end is near but they can’t tell the boss.  

     Ian Anderson said it a long time ago:  No, you’re never too old to rock and roll if you’re too young to die (from the album Too Told to Rock ‘n’ Roll:  Too Young to Die (1976)).  So to all of those aging rockers out there – keep on, but make sure you know when to stop – your legacy will be safe as long as Classic Rock radio exists!  Sure, go out and play a few club gigs but don’t have stadium size audiences pay enormous amounts of money to see a shadow of your former selves.

Top Piece Video:  Oddly enough, Ian Anderson is still creating music and sounds pretty good for an old rockin’ roller!   But then again, this was recorded for TV in 1976 and he might just be miming …. but you can find more recent clips and decide for yourself!