Rock of ages: Why Bruce Springsteen and Mick Jagger never seem to grow old

Macca is going on tour at 81, Springsteen is hitting the road in his seventies, and Debbie Harry remains a force of nature on stage at 78. Ed Power explores the new norm for ageing rock stars in the era of the go-getting golden oldies

(Getty)

When Blondie’s Debbie Harry took the Glastonbury stage in June, wearing a vintage CBGB T-shirt and cyberpunk mirrorshades, she was a musical icon lit up in splendid technicolour. But as the post-punk legends blitzed through classics such as “Heart of Glass”, one fact quickly slid into the slipstream: that the group’s three founder members have a combined age of 219.

Nobody was making pensioner jokes or cracking wise about Zimmer frames. Weeks shy of her 78th birthday, Harry was as much a force of nature as when Blondie were imperious newcomers 40 years ago.

Famous musicians have been growing old for a long time. When millennials rediscovered Johnny Cash circa his 2002 cover of “Hurt” by Nine Inch Nails, the then 70-year-old’s grizzled melancholia was part of the charm. Here was an artist who had lived, loved, lost, and had the worry lines to prove it – a fact leaned into by Mark Romanek’s ennui-filled video.