Are Bob, Rob, Rod and Tom the walking dead or corpse evangelists of rock’n’roll?

Live fast, die young and leave a beautiful corpse… well I’ve outlived all that then.

To be honest, the best thing I could do now is keep strutting my calcifying knees and bones and act like I have some kind of faded elegance.

But it may just all be a soupçon of memory of the times when I was a young dude and had a chance of dying before my time.

I wanted to go in a coffin like the sidecar of a Vincent Black Shadow, its lid drumming down the dark alleyways of time, a bat out of hell headed for ditches and lampposts.

I am a homeopathic memory now, skin dry as a painted desert, liver in a wheel-barrow and a belly like a battered old bumbag.

But, if you too have disappointed yourself by out-living your own personal plan to die with a joint in one hand, a ‘shot’ in the other, a hard-on that would never let you go home before midnight and a grin like a wired mental guru…

Well, good news, you might not have hit the rocks yet – you might actually still be on a roll.

Yes, we lost Elvis, Jim, Jimmy, John, Janis, Keith, Freddie, Harrison and Harry, Tom and Mamma, Ronnie, Kurt and now Taylor Hawkins, the man of the long bong phooey.

But look who is still on the road – the bath chair bands, the rickety rockers, the grateful to be dead soon, the dark stars flying blind over cataract town.

Floppy Phil Collins has stood up to more than half a century of rock’n’roll rigours and has finally given it all up because of his body and his much-publicised broken heart.

But look who is left – those who will kick Phil’s plastic glow-in-the-dark crown under his wheelchair and keep on going down Danger Road, keeping a sanitised lid on the old box of cheap tricks.

Of course, that last statement doesn’t include the ubiquitous 80 year old Bob Dylan … back on the road as soon as Covid allowed it.

The thing with Bob is that his act hasn’t grown old with him – far from it!

He has revealed a new voice with range, timbre and power. He sounds like he is singing just for you as the under-stage lighting throws Mephistophelian shadows across his joker-grinning countenance.

Bob knows he has arrived at the shadow kingdom but is playing like he is at the rotating glass doors to Heaven and Hell.

And Sir Rod Stewart is touring in the winter, at the age of 77.

Die-no Rod he is being called.

Then there is the granite-faced Roger Daltrey, touring in June and July, at 78. And, let’s face it, there is no reason to ask – after 60 years – WHO he is!

Diana Ross is due to sing at Glastonbury in June.

But I don’t get why that singing tortoise Sir Paul McCartney is headlining Glastonbury. He’s 80!

It is my personal opinion but Paul should have been mullered by a kin tyre for ruining the Beatles.

Billy Ocean, played in Bath recently – no! Not in the bath! In Bath! He’s 72 (I wonder if they supplied him with a bath chair?)

Robert Plant aged 73, began his new tour in Bexhill. Alice Cooper is touring in May, at 74. Debbie Harry is touring with Blondie at 76.

And Sir Tom Jones is having one more cup of coffee before he goes off on a major tour in June, at 81.

#tomjones #robertplant #billyocean #debbieharry #bobdylan #dianaross #rodstewart #rogerdaltrey