Our experiences seeing older bands (The Guess Who, David Bowie, Hall and Oates, Duran Duran, The Fixx, Platinum Blonde, etc.) have all been great. Daryl Hall jammed out on a few of the more difficult notes, but otherwise he was fantastic.
We didn’t manage to see these bands on the first go-round, and it was great to (finally) see them (especially Duran Duran - the heartthrobs of my teenage years!).
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street boys still put on a great show, even as the band starts dying off…
To be fair, Dave was never much of a singer to begin with…
Gordon Lightfoot still puts on a helluva a show. He looks like warmed over death…but he can still keep an audience spellbound. The guy is an IRON MAN.
[Typical plug from me]
Alice Cooper, at 65, puts on a better, more energetic show than most people / bands in their twenties. I’d put him up against the younger set any day.
Genesis still sounded great a full 40 years after they started in 1967. Granted, there have been some line-up changes, but Banks, Collins and Rutherford were doing it for better than 30 years.
I saw Paul Simon a year or so ago. He was pretty spry for a 70 yr old guy! And it sounded great.
Before reading your post, I thought he was in fact dead. Sorry, Gordon.
Not only that, he puts on a much better show than he was doing in the late 70s. We even have proof on video, in the form of The Strange Case of Alice Cooper.
ETA: I’ve been to a number of “has been” shows where they could run circles around their 20 year younger selves.
I don’t know much about this Carol King of which you speak, although somebody by that name wrote every new song in the universe for several years, and is rumored to have been the namesake of the Neil Sedaka song. But surely that lady is dead by now. Then again, Kathy Young is holding it together surprisingly well.
Most of the music I listen to goes back at least 50 years, so I’m seeing an advanced stage in the aging of my favorite musicians. I have in fact seen some deteriorate within the lifespan of YouTube. What has it been, a decade now? That Kathy Young clip was posted 7 years ago. She may have had to start surviving on unicorn blood by now, for all I know.
I liked Mike Love and the California Beach Club. This was in the late 90s. In that same concert, I listened to America and they haven’t changed from the 70s.
Nothing beats a young singing voice. That’s why I used to like watching Glee. The only thing that seems to improve as one reaches his/her 70s is instrument playing.
A singer in his/her late teens to early 20s backed up by veteran musicians way past 45. That’s my basic formula for a good group.
I saw the Kingston Trio still touring in the early 80’s.
All-time saddest:
In the 30’s there was an enormously popular black male group called “The Ink Spots”.
Small town (pop: 20,000), southern IN. 1966, pole-barn “Discount Furniture” “Grand Opening”.
Yep. Looked to be one original, and he was not in good shape.
Beach Boys make them look absolutely vibrant.
This is so true. Watch many videos of his concerts pre mid-eighties and it can be painful. Now, don’t get me wrong, 70s Alice was one my favorite incarnations of his. But the “new and improved” Alice of later years rocks everyone’s socks off.
He had a stroke in 2004…
This has become somewhat of an anti-pitting, hasn’t it? 
Here’s another vote for Alice Cooper improving with age. I’ve also seen Burton Cummings (from the Guess Who) in recent years and he still sounds absolutely great.
The great reggae band Toots and the Maytals were still touring as of five years ago (at the time, Toots Hibbert was 66). I saw a video of their concert, and they looked great. Toots at 66 was as energetic and soulful as you’d expect from someone half his age.
I don’t know why, but they seem to have aged better than a lot of rock/pop musicians. I know they’re evangelical Christians, so maybe they have a healthier lifestyle, but I’m not really sure.
Wow, Toots was still touring till May of last year (at 70), and is still cool.
"In May 2013 he received a head injury after being hit by a thrown bottle during a performance at the River Rock Festival in Richmond, forcing him to cancel several months of live shows.[6]
The bottle was thrown by William C Lewis. Lewis was facing a charge of malicious wounding but plead guilty to lesser charges. Despite Toots pleading in a letter to the judge, “He is a young man, and I have heard what happens to young men in jail. My own pain and suffering would be increased substantially knowing that this young man would face that prospect.”, the judge gave Lewis a six month sentence.”
I don’t wish to see my old favourites performing live after all these years. We’ve had our time. Invariably they have all gotten fleshy, puffy and ashen. It makes me painfully aware of the passage of time and I do not like to be reminded of its pittiless march.
I had an interesting experience last summer when I attended “Yestival” outside of Philly. Yes (Squire, Howe, and White, with Geoff Downes and Jon Davison) was the headliner. The openers were Musical Box, Renaissance, Carl Palmer, and more.
For those not familiar, Musical Box performs the music of 1970s Genesis, but calling them a tribute band doesn’t truly describe what they do. They recreate the original concert, even to the point of having the same sets, props, and between-song banter.
It was interesting seeing/hearing a recreation of some of the music I love followed by a current version of the some of the music I love (played mostly by the people who wrote it). I enjoyed both bands very much, but the recreation may have been slightly better than the current version.
(Part of the reason for my feeling may be that Musical Box seemed to cut their set short and Yes might have played too long. The ad for the concert said that Yes were playing 2 albums: Close To The Edge and The Yes Album. But then they threw in the entire Going For The One album just for good measure, putting their set at well over 3 hours.)
I went to see Rush twice recently, the Snakes and Arrows tour and the Clockwork Angels tour. Snakes and Arrows was pretty good, but they slowed it down a little and Geddy sang a bit lower. Not much, just a bit. Not so for the Clockwork Angels concert. Best show I’ve ever seen.