Why was being a rock musician over 30 years old considered a bad thing back in the day?

What I'm saying is that Bill was an "older" guy by those standards and yet was able to jump on board with a rock band and into psychedelia and such and all the later developments of the times. I really think it's more of a social set than anything. I think like say if Buddy Holly were alive in the 60s he'd have gotten it. Rock music is just an outlet for non-conformists in my opinion. I mean, the older rockstars in the 60s weren't as politically oriented or openly so anyway as the younger guys but they really didn't seem to be like hanging out with John Wayne, you know? Yes, Elvis met Nixon but I honestly believe that was just for the badge.

 

OK, methinks you are stretching too far on this....looking for the exceptions and seeing them as the norm?

 

Back in 1971 we were eager young rock fans reading Rolling Stone, Circus, et al. We saw that
John Mayall was 40 years old. Forty-years old!! Wow. He might as well been 100 as far as we
were concerned. John Mayall, God bless him, is still going and so are we.

 

AC/DC almost refused to let Bon Scott be their lead singer because they thought he was too old. He was 28. (Malcolm and Angus Young were 21 and 19 at the time.)

 

I'd say in the alternative world, 30s and even 40s seem to be as viable as your 20s. It's mainly genres like top 40 pop and hip hop that thrive on youth. In comparison, a 35 year old Father John Misty is being seen as just entering his peak artistically, as opposed to a 35 year old pop star who is seen as winding down and past their heyday (see someone like Britney Spears who is 35 and already doing Vegas and her last couple albums have been duds)

 

I was nine when the Beatles played Sullivan and it was life changing. Consider what happened to rock by 67 or 68 and I was only 14. The people that were creating that were in their mid twenties and in some ways seemed impossible older to me and pals, but not old like our parents or grandparents.
I started playing in garage bands at 12. Someone 3 years older in our 'hood in a hot group would be considered really cool. If anything we aspired to look and act slightly older, just not " parent age" older. Sure there was the never trust anybody over 30 slogan . But we also all started sporting beards and exotic facial hair as soon as we could to look older. Flip thru high school and college year books from the late 60s to early 70s for proof. Doubtful that has really changed . As my 90 year old mother is fond of saying....Youth is wasted on the young.

 

Even 20 years on people were the same way. I remember how it was such a shocker that Sonic Youth were "old" (ie, Kim Gordon was 40 and Thurston Moore was 35) in the early/mid 90s.... now 35-40 is a drop in the bucket lol

 

That certainly explains a whole lot about this Forum.

 

Not at all. Made no impact at all at the time, still doesn`t.

 

In a lot of ways with each passing year, I appreciate my parents' generation more and my own generation less.

 

Remember Blondie, they kept Debbie Harrys age a big secret for years, I was shocked when I found out she was the same age a my mum

 

Looks like you're one of them if you're going to be an a**hole here and personally attack somebody. Take an L.

 

You hit the nail smack dab on the head......Bullseye. I feel the same way...

 

To teenagers anybody over 25 is looked at as "old". But for people in their early 20s these days don't see it like that as much as they did in the 60s or 70s, maybe even 80s. It has a lot to do with the fact that young people now have kids much later then previous generations. When at that time people in their 30s was already parents or about to be parents. Now people have kids more closer to 40 then 30. Now and days the saying is "30 is the new 20" because of this.

 

but, according to the record (no pun intended) looks like you started with the insults!
Moving on ...

 

Don't forget that Alan Vega and Ian Hunter fudged their ages in the beginning. Hunter dropped six years off of his age while Vega dropped 10.

 

That's a good point, they got away with it though...

 

I agree that the age of performers has definitely shifted older in indie rock, where there are lots of vital performers in their 30s, and not a few as well in their 40s. When I looked at acts that made a Pitchfork reader's poll of the best albums from 1996-2011 (link here), the average age for a performer's best work was in their late 20s, and plenty of acts were in their 30s when they made their best work. That's a shift from the '60s and '70s, in which most acts made their best work in their mid-20s.

But this might be starting to extend to pop and hip-hop, too. While Britney Spears is 35 years old, so is Beyonce, and she's at a peak in her career. Bruno Mars is 31, Drake is 30, Kendrick Lamar is 29. We're in kind of an interesting time in popular music, where the most popular genres (pop, hip-hop, rock, country) have all been around for a while and are all quite mature.

 

I think another reason is that it seems like people "foster" youth longer than they used to. Taylor Swift is currently the same age Jimi, Janis and Jim died yet she's still being nurtured as a "young artist" and people defend her youth as an excuse for her making bubblegum music. Same goes with Bieber who is almost 23 now and even someone like Katy Perry who is 32 and still basically making music you'd expect from a teen pop artist. It used to be that people expected artists to be adults by the age of 21 in the past and now you have artists in their late 20s and beyond who are making the kind of music you'd expect from a high schooler.

 

I still think most rock bands have done most of their best music by 35. There are some exceptions, but not many.

 

in previous eras yes, but nowadays many artists are still getting started. Spoon and Flaming Lips are two who really didn't even enter their prime until their lead singers were over 35.

 

I think it's more that we don't really even think of most pop as "bubblegum" anymore--so no excuses necessary for it. I don't think it's unusual anymore for an adult to enjoy an act like Taylor Swift or Katy Perry. Swift has placed her last two albums in the top twenty of the Village Voice's annual Pazz and Jop critics' polls, and Perry played a major political party's national convention last summer. I think many millennials aren't leaving pop behind as they get older, just as many boomers didn't leave rock behind as they got older. And I think that some people in older generations are warming to pop, as well. I think it helps (in my own opinion, of course) that pop has just gotten better since the turn of the millennium, but I also think that there's been a more purely attitudinal shift about pop being just for teenagers as well.

 

Indeed. Like, I was surprised to learn that Carly Rae Jepson was 26 when she debuted with " Call Me Maybe" - that song is such a piece of t(w)een pop froth that I figured she must be about 17-18, tops.

 

I do think there's varying degrees of pop music though. For instance, Madonna's Ray Of Light or Beyonce's Lemonade come to mind as two impeccable pop statements but they aren't pandering to the top 40 crowd. People like Madonna (except for the abominable MDNA), Michael Jackson and Cher were proving you could age and still be a good pop singer, the difference is that you have someone like Britney who is in pop music and has never made any steps further artistically from her Baby One More Time days. At the age of 35, she artistically never evolved past the 16 year old in a schoolgirl outfit, whereas age/era peers like Beyonce and Timberlake were able to mature and evolve while still making accessible music. There are different degrees and wisdom that comes with the territory, no different than nobody would want to hear Paul McCartney trying "I Saw Her Standing There" at his age, a pop singer in their mid-30s still singing teen pop doesn't fit too well. That was Madonna's biggest blunder in recent years, songs like "Bitch I'm Madonna" and "Girl Gone Wild" may have been fun pop songs but nobody wanted to hear them from someone at her stage in her career, someone who has proven she's one of the greatest pop stars of all time, only to put out songs Miley Cyrus would cringe at performing.

 

because back in the day being in a rock band was not about the money... so it was kind of like being a bum.... as music evolved and money flowed into the industry and more to the musicians and the idea of charging more for shows took flight.. well then it was not so bad any more..