Aging Musician Quotes

Once you hit 40, being in a band - a committee voting constantly on what you're going to be doing next month - it's more of a challenge. And when you have a kid as well.

I'd never want to be Gene Simmons, an old man who puts on makeup to entertain kids, like a clown going to work.

Look what venison does to a goofy guitar player from Detroit? I'm going to be 54 this year and if I had any more energy I'd scare you.

Dave was great in Van Halen. No question about it. He was one of the best at being Mr. Rock Star. But it's sickening to see a guy still trying to be that with a wig on 20 years later.

In the old days gigging was everything. The whole of life was about gigs. Everything was about waiting for the gig and then doing the gig and going nuts and then afterwards the party and all the stuff that goes with it. And then that party continues through your twenties and thirties. I'm now 51, and it's still very much in my blood, but I'm really hard pushed... the gig is the party for me now.

I didn't end up some sad, tragic guy singing in a lounge somewhere. I never went out and took big money for nostalgia and became like an oldies act.

I'm not so much a rock star, d'ya know what I mean? I play Irish music. There's really no age when you stop playing Irish music. Even if I retired from playing onstage, I'd still be singing in pubs.

I don't live my life on the road. I'm getting on a bit and there's a lot of other things in my life. Our lovely children and their lives. It's more of a part-time business these days.

You find yourself approaching middle age, playing another scuzzy rock club.

On Keith Richards: He's like a monkey with arthritis.

Well, once you've resigned yourself to the fact that you are the more mature pop performer and you're past the age you ever thought you would do it, you might as well do it as long as you can. As long as I can still lift a microphone, then I'll do it, you know.

Age isn't a barrier to playing the bass, and I've definitely improved over the years, although maybe I'm not as flash as I once was. But looking back, I can't imagine a life without a guitar.

Touring is a young man's game, but after 30 years of it, I want to stay home.

Who wants to be a 40-year-old rock and roller? You cannot live in the past.

I said to myself a long time ago that I didn't want to be that hanging-on-for-too-long, aging-rock-musician guy, and that's why I sort of got away from music.

If the average jazz artist uses his head and at the outset of his career realizes he won't play as well at fifty as he does at twenty-five, he won't be in a line-up outside the Salvation Army when he's fifty.