How to Be an Aged Rock Star

When his manager stole most of his wealth, Cohen was forced to go back out on the road at the age of seventy-three. The result was the beginning of a triumphant last chapter in his storied career. While rockers in the 1960s often proclaimed that they couldn’t imagine themselves continuing into their fifties or sixties, many have continued well beyond that. The Rolling Stones, of whom the youngest remaining member is seventy-four, just completed a well-received tour of the United States. But the Stones and most other older performers do not present themselves as old. Mick Jagger continues to prance around the stage with almost as much energy as he exhibited in his twenties. Cohen, on the contrary, performed on these late tours honestly and gracefully as a septuagenarian. Some of this is consistent with the persona he has displayed since the 1960s, for example dressing in the style of the previous generation. But the new Cohen was not just conservatively dressed. He directly confronted the limitations of age in his stage patter, and his songs, which had always taken account of death, now took on a new resonance, as it was apparent that the singer’s days were numbered. Where other old rockers seem to assume that they deserve the audience’s adoration, Cohen was humble and grateful for the renewed interest in his work. This chapter explores what it means for a rock star to present himself as an old man, a persona that challenges some of the fundamental assumptions about what a rock star is.