Yesterday it was Sylvia Anderson; today it’s the turn of Paul Daniels and Cliff Michelmore; last week it was George Martin and Keith Emerson. As far as famous names go, the one area of the economy currently experiencing a boom is undertaking. The Grim Reaper has seemingly never had it so good. A year only midway through its third month has seen a remarkably sweeping clear-out of characters from the entertainment firmament on a scale unseen since the mid-to-late 80s, when it felt as though every day saw the curtain come down on careers that had begun during the golden age of Hollywood. The 30s, 40s and 50s have been comprehensively covered and now the shadow of the scythe has fallen on the 60s and 70s.
What we have to remember, however, is that these two iconic decades are now forty and fifty years distant from the here and now, just as the 20s and 30s were when Charlie Chaplin and Groucho Marx died within a few months of each other in 1977. The silent era felt a long way away then because it looked very much like a different world, almost another century; but perhaps that was largely because those of us born in the post-war years had no first-hand memory of it. Then again, many aspects of the 60s and 70s still have a ring of present tense to them; look at any up-and-coming rock band (if there are any) and you will recognise the same sullen expressions, floppy hair and shoulder-shrugging sang-froid as emanating from the blueprint patented by the Stones in 1964. Then again, any contemporary musician worth their weight in gold discs still has one foot in the age when music meant more than a ringtone. And if you’re that way inclined, look at young women on the move along the high-street; the length of the hair and the shortness of the hemline hark back to the decades in which their parents were children.
Any regular viewer of documentaries who has been recording their broadcast off-air since the 80s will experience an acute awareness of the passing years when coming across one taped twenty or thirty years ago; the interviewees often seem well-preserved well into their forties when appearing as talking heads – a slight smattering of grey hairs, but jowls not yet sagging; it’s only catching sight of them as they were a couple of decades back and then comparing them to their present day selves that the ageing process really hits home. Sixties and seventies are the ages of man when time really begins to have fun with the face; but we have to remember that we too have aged during the same span. Perhaps their ageing acts as a trigger for reluctant realisations of our own.
The generation that grew up with the silver screen as the source of heroes and heroines will have undergone the same sensations when their adolescent icons began dropping like flies as the generation raised on a diet of television and pop are currently experiencing now that theirs are following suit. Although cancer and other incurable conditions have a lot to answer for, most of the giants still revered are approaching an age when natural causes will also begin to play a part. Moreover, there’s the dismal fact to contend with that few comparable successors have emerged to serve as compensation in recent years; it’s not much comfort to think we may have lost Bowie but we’ve still got Bieber.
Possibly what makes the latest crop of cultural cremations especially difficult to deal with is that the majority belong to the baby-boomer generation and therefore made their mark at a moment when thirty suddenly became a cut-off point. Previously, entertainers like Sinatra or Judy Garland reached a peak as performers when they were way past thirty; indeed, the former arguably made all of his finest recordings when he was in his forties. By contrast, there are few artists that appeared in the 60s or 70s who did much of any real value beyond thirty; all their best work was done when they were remarkably young. Ringo Starr was the eldest member of The Beatles when ‘Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ was released, and he was just 27 at the time. Youth was the raison d’être of their era. Pete Townshend famously wrote he hoped he’d die before he got old, but he wrote that from the perspective of a twenty-year-old for whom there was only the present, and he’s had to deal with the ageing process every time Roger Daltrey sings that bloody line ever since – even with his earplugs in.
In a way, the emphasis on youth and the writing-off of what comes next has condemned that group of performers to the unenviable task of attempting to live up to their younger selves for the rest of their performing lives, something their predecessors didn’t have to worry about; Sinatra’s only concession to the passing of the years was his toupee. Whenever Keith Richards is interviewed, nobody wants to know about some new Stones album; they want to hear him talk about Brian Jones or the 1967 Redlands bust or Altamont. The band’s creative spark was condensed into a period of roughly seven or eight years, which must be a curious situation to be in – always perceived by the public as the embodiment of eternal youthful rebellion when you’re now older than Noel Coward was back when you were at the peak of your powers.
2016 has already seen the loss of Pierre Boulez, Ed Stewart, David Bowie, Alan Rickman, Glenn Frey, Paul Kantner, Jacques Rivett, Frank Finlay, Terry Wogan, Harper Lee, Tony Warren, George Martin, Keith Emerson, Peter Maxwell Davies, Asa Briggs, Sylvia Anderson, Cliff Michelmore, Paul Daniels and Frank Sinatra Jr, to name just a few. Some were as old as 90, but none were under 65. Such is life – and death. And, to paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, the latter and taxes are the only certainties the world has to deal with.
© The Editor
David Bowie is dead. Still doesn’t sound right, does it? Standing at the crossing this morning, waiting for the red man to be superseded by the green man, a student girl in her late teens stood on the other side of the road, bright scarlet hair; and there, in an instant, barely a minute after locking the front door, I see the influence of David Bowie as one of Ziggy’s grandchildren faced me across the traffic. She may or may not know, I thought, but without him she wouldn’t be there.
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