In the current Thread about Roy Orbison we find this description of Roy’s later years:
I agree with how strongly his talent held up to the very end.
I also agree that he was “fat and pushing 60”. Although, I would have said “fat and well beyond 60”.
The All-Star Hail! Hail! Rock ’ Roll celebration for Chuck Berry’s 60th birthday celebrated a great performer, but there’s an underlying sense that the celebrants were celebrating that he was still alive at all.
Elvis Presley was about 60 when he died at age 42. Scary to think how he’d have appeared if he actually lived to 60.
For Comparison:
Susanna Hoffs and Bono: about the same age today that Orbison was when he died. So are Ice-T, Joan Jett, and Morrissey.
All of them are way younger as they start their 50s than their predecessors.
I think it was extremely tasteless of you to promise a Del Shannon video and then link to an ‘Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer’ skit.
Seriously, tho, I think Del got ahold of some bad plastic surgery.
Also, IIRC, Chuck Berry looked like crap, or worse, in early 70s.
You inspired me to look up some “Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer” videos, a great character that I hadn’t thought of in years.
Couldn’t find any! The internet has no “Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer” videos! That is sad and wrong!
I remember seeing Jerry Lee Lewis at Brendan Byrne arena in September 1984 with several other oldies acts (Chuck Berry was the main act, along with Duane Eddy and Junior Walker who kept getting booed by the New Jersey crowd everytime he said how ya doing doing New York). I said I was gonna see The Killer just in case he died quickly and shortly after the concert he had some kind of emergency surgery. For a while there, I thought my flippant remark would be accurate. But 27 years later, he is still around!!
There are occasionally comments that out of all of Berry’s great songs, that it’s a shame that a puerile one like “My Ding-a-ling” is his only number one. While this is true, it is fun to have about 15,000 other people chant the lyrics in concert.
Oh, for sure, Jerry Lee Lewis at age 75 looks good for a 75 year old. And it’s ok for him to look old now because he is old now . . .
. . . but Jerry Lee Lewis at age 49 looked to be about 60. Those who survived past their 50s eventually cleaned up a bit, but in the 80s these stars of the 50s were way older than they should have been.
People, in general, are living longer and age doesn’t seem to catch up to a lot of us as quickly as it once did. I’m the same age as Carol O’Connor was at the height of All In The Family.
Probably every one of the 50s rockers had had measles, mumps, chickenpox, German measles; most, if not all had inadequate dental care, and never saw a dermatologist in their teens (not that dermatology care in the fifties was all that great).
Plus, smoking and exposure to 2° smoke was everywhere, and no one used sunscreen. And it wouldn’t surprise me how much speed was used.
In that respect and given the life he led, it’s funny how good Johnny Cash looked up until a few years before he died. Half of the shock of his video “Hurt” was seeing how old he looked suddenly.
I have always said that I would have paid to be in the crowd when they shot Cab Calloway doing Minne the Moocher for Blues Brothers. One of my favorite songs by one of my favorite performers.
Although I was in heaven when the whole 25th ANNIVERSARY ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME CONCERT was available on demand on HBO documentaries. I must have watched it a hundred times, pretty much any time I wanted something on and there was no other program we were interested in.
