Seven bands you like with a worryingly geriatric fanbase

AEROSMITH cancelled a tour due to 75-year-old Steve Tyler’s vocal cord problems. Are you noticing bands and their fans are increasingly old – and you might be one of them?

Primal Scream

Screamadelica feels strangely recent, possibly because it was compulsory to like it in 1991. However Bobby Gillespie is 62 now, and even if you’re not that old yet you’re headed there sooner or later. In a few years old folk’s homes will probably be rocking out to Primal Scream, although you may have difficulty persuading the staff to put on Swastika Eyes.

Bananarama

Bananarama are in their early 60s now and still gigging, due to yet another mysterious timeslip between your youth and now. Fans seeing them live face the double kick in the teeth of being reminded that you and the rest of the audience are actually quite old, and also noticing that the band, Keren in particular, appear to have drunk the Elixir of Life. Also they’re playing in Dubai, so f**k that.

Pink Floyd

You’d expect them to be pretty old, but Roger Waters is f**king 80. Dave Gilmour is 77. Theoretically, their oldest fans who got into them with The Piper at the Gates of Dawn could be over 100. Still, you won’t be confronting your own mortality at a Floyd gig soon because Gilmour’s wife called Waters a ‘Putin apologist’, so there’s not much danger of them reforming, or even sending each other an insincere Christmas card.  

The Stone Roses

It only seems like yesterday you were enthusing about the Roses’ dance-influenced 60s retro, so it’s deeply disturbing to learn that they’re all 60 now (except young whippersnapper Reni, aged 59½). Actually the album probably only feels recent because they’ve done f**k all of note since, and that includes The Seahorses. The lesson to bands wanting immortality is clear: release one classic album, then get into bullshit Covid conspiracy theories.

The Jam/Paul Weller

The Jam sensibly split up when their creative arc ended, but lived on as Weller entering a more mature (ie. slightly boring) phase. He’s now 65 and even 20 years ago his gigs were full of blokes with advanced middle-aged spread bulging out of their Fred Perrys and parkas. After a certain age it’s probably best to ditch the fashions and just listen to All Mod Cons. And not be one of those bellends who does up their mobility scooter to look like Jimmy’s Vespa in Quadrophenia.

Guns N’ Roses

At 61 Axl Rose is actually quite comforting for ageing rock fans because he can wow Glastonbury while looking like a middle-aged dad who’s let himself go. That’s exactly what you look like, so therefore you are still rock and roll too. These days he’s probably really cut down on the heroin and Jack Daniels, so there’s no excuse for you not cutting down on the takeaways as well. Yes, Axl’s a great role model, apart from the ‘immigrants and faggots’ bit.

Abba

You’re probably a quasi-Abba fan by default, either remembering them from the late 70s as a kid or just because they’ve been played constantly ever since. They’re genuinely old now with Benny born in 1946 and Frida in 1945 – not a great year for her dad, or indeed the rest of the Wehrmacht. Abba fans have to be realistic and prepare for the worst – more of those crappy holograms.

My fingers were up there and it snapped shut on them like a trap, Kate explains

THE Princess of Wales has explained that her fingers were injured when an aperture closed on them without warning, causing a fracture.

Kate, who spent a day in a category C prison yesterday for driving offences, had two of the fingers of her right hand bandaged together after suffering the injury during her physically active domestic life.

She said: “I’d popped the fingers in there, like normal, and was about to ease in a third when I felt this particular opening tremble, as if it were on a hair trigger.

“Now granted it’s been through a lot lately, verging on abuse. Stretched past the usual limits and for longer periods, so I can’t be surprised if it’s become rather sensitive.

“But I didn’t heed the warnings, gave a little push and suddenly wham! It’s snapped shut like a clam on my fingers and I’m in agony.

“I had to prise it open with a couple of shoe horns to get them out, and I knew while I was washing them off it was a fracture. Still, it’ll heal soon enough and it’s taught me a lesson that from now on I should only use the proper tools.”

She added: “Gosh, I suppose I’ve ruined the phrase ‘trampolining injury’ for everyone now, haven’t I?”