Time Waits For No Band

The Reunion Tour Comes For Us All

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I always found those Billy Joel residences at MSG so embarrassing. Dads in dad jeans arriving in luxury boxes and getting revved up as the Piano Man tickled the ivories like he did back in the 80s. The prices were high (we were scandalized at $200 tickets back then) and the whole endeavor was an exercise in Boomer nostalgia. Brutal.

And yet here I am getting extremely excited for the latest Cure album (which is excellent) and falling headlong into their recent shows from London (conveniently streaming on BBC). It’s all fun and games until the announcer points out that The Cure has been together for four decades. Good grief.

I already went through this once when the Cure embarked on what felt like their last tour. It was the end of a beloved era and I dutifully went to a few shows and tried not to get emotional. But then there was a tour after that. These are ambitious shows, three hours, and the band still sounds great. Though you might not want to see an high definition video of your musical heroes as they approach the age of seventy, but that’s where we are.

The crowd wears old concert shirts or is dutifully dressed in black. After the show they ease up the stairs, not as limber as they once were, and back into their town cars. It was a similar scene on the recent Depeche Mode tour—which was also excellent and followed a tour I suspected was their last.

Of course, most people think their beloved band still sounds great as they reach their golden years. Or at least they pretend they do. And even if they don’t that’s alright. It’s not just about what’s on stage, it’s about what they’re feeling—a connection to the band’s history and to their own youth. The band was young and we were once young too.

But now the band is old and we’re getting old too. And it’s not as sad as it has to be. Musicians don’t need to pretend they’re in their twenties when they’ve qualified for social security. I loved later career Leonard Cohen, Magnetic Fields, Brian Eno and Yo La Tengo. These artists evolved and so did their arrangements. Sometimes they perform sitting down. Which is fine because the audience probably wants to sit down too.

But some bands only know one way to rock. Mick Jagger is going to do his thing, Bob Dylan will do his and I guess now Oasis will do theirs. In general I prefer a band that continues to perform straight through. The reunion can feel half-baked and overpriced. One of the more brutal shows I’ve seen was the Ride reunion. There were my favorite band I never saw live so when they got back together my excitement overwhelmed my better judgment—a healthy skepticism is best in these situations. The show at Terminal 5 (eternally vile venue!) was…not ideal. The members still openly loathed each other, the songs sounded mediocre and you left under a cloud.

There’s nothing wrong with a band signing off. Most bands should end early. The Smiths did it right. So did the Police. The Beatles too (the craziest thing I’ve ever heard is that George Harrison was twenty seven years old when they broke up). I’m glad Talking Heads never got back together. They’ve moved on though the inter-band animus remains and it would feel odd if they were standing beside each other in Radio City Music Hall trying to pretend otherwise.

Many artists get better as they get older—writers, composers, painters. But rock doesn’t traffic in well-earned wisdom. Most bands form in their late teens or early twenties and their concerns are youthful. There are the exceptions—bands that generally evolve and don’t just try to recreate the old scene. You should have seen us in the club, everybody knew each other, rent was nothing, we did it all for the right reasons and tickets cost $5. Not any more.

The most elemental connection you have to a band happens when you’re young. That feeling is probably best remembered. And yet we can’t help ourselves. Whether it’s recovered goths, post-grad college rockers or anybody else aging out of the demographic, sometimes you want to pretend time has reversed and the past has caught up with us. Sometimes I want that feeling too, even if it only lasts until the show ends and the lights come back on.

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