Golden music age fading into the night

The 1960s - when music broke through the restrain barriers.
The 1960s were distinctive in many ways - but is the music starting to die? | Photo: SeanShot (iStock)

By Shane Rodgers

Few would argue that the 1960s was a genuine turning point decade. It was when the term teenager really entered the language, and music broke through the restraint barriers.

For those of us born during that era, the music is indelibly engraved on our psyche, a life soundtrack that links our memories to every milestone of growing up and trying to understand life.

I have always taken the comfort of 1960s music acts for granted, because they have always been there.

Only recently, through those countless social media posts that record people aging and dying, have I realised a disturbing fact – the greats of that amazing decade are steadily fading away.

Fans of 90-year-old Frankie Valli, of the Four Seasons, expressed genuine concern at the singer’s apparent frailty when video of his latest performance went viral a couple of weeks ago.

The remaining Beatles – Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr – are still touring, but they are in their eighties, and they cannot handle that pace forever.

A final Beatles track, glued together from history, half done tracks, an old tape recorder and artificial intelligence, became a number one hit this year. Not because it was a classic number one song. But because it marked one last gasp of something musically astonishing.

The Rolling Stones also still exist but there will not be many more world tours.

We are down to one living Monkee (Micky Dolenz), the Beach Boys are now Beach Older Men and The Who are only two.

We have just one Bee Gee (Barry Gibb) and 83-year-old Dionne Warwick has pointedly called her 2025 tour “One Last Time”.

Bob Dylan still tours but it is not the same. Versions of the Temptations (with Otis Williams as the only original member in the group) and only Duke Fakir remains of the original Four Tops in the touring lineup.

Deep Purple are becoming more like light mauve. Peter Noone is still touring a version of Herman’s Hermits, thanks largely to the fact that he was still in school when the group made it big in the sixties. There is another version as well, but it only has the original drummer.

Eighty-two-year-old Gary Puckett (and the Union Gap) are touring next year.

From there the sixties stage is somewhat bare.

On the flipside, the club scene is awash with 60s tribute acts. There are tribute Elvises, Beatles, Stones, Bee Gees, Simon and Garfunkels, Beach Boys and Sinatras, to name a few.

I’m never really sure if the sixties are special as the birth of a particular type of music and pop culture, or if they are just special to me because the music implanted on my soul as a toddler.

It is so long ago now. These acts are celebrating their 60th anniversaries! Yet somehow the 1960s still feel fresh and alive.

Don McLean sang about the day the music died, in reference to the 1960s plane crash that killed Richie Valens, Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper.

Hopefully it will be a very long way into the future before the music of that amazing era really dies.