The old guard have become the cutting edge

The most startling trend in popular music isn't coming from its young. It's brought to you by rock's old guard - artists in their 50s who, after years of creative slumber, have once again shaken their muses awake, crafting music with a spit and vigor not tapped since the peak of their youth.

In the last year, we've seen dramatic comebacks for: Bob Dylan, 56, who released an album, "Time Out of Mind," hailed by critics as his most rigorous music since 1975's "Blood on the Tracks." Two weeks ago, the LP earned Dylan his first-ever Album of The Year Grammy nomination.

David Bowie, 51, issued his best-received and most forward-looking LP in 17 years with the recent "Earthling."

Fleetwood Mac (whose members all passed the half-century mark this year), shook off a decade-long decline to regroup - and top the charts - with the live album "The Dance."

Paul McCartney, 55, earned critical kudos and an Album of the Year Grammy nomination for his latest, "Flaming Pie."

John Fogerty, 52, ended an 11-year vanishing act in May, resurfacing with a gold album, "Blue Moon Swamp," and a lauded concert tour. In addition, the last two years have seen celebrated relaunchings for:

Patti Smith, 51, who sat out most of the '80s while rearing her kids in Detroit, only to return to New York in '96 to create the esteemed "Gone Again" and the new "Peace & Noise."

Eric Clapton, 52, who only got the nerve to record the blues album he was born to play, "From the Cradle," as he approached 50.

Joni Mitchell, 54, who earned her first Grammys and her best reviews in 20 years for "Turbulent Indigo."

On the concert scene, the most profitable ($89 million) tour of the year was launched by the well-wrinkled Rolling Stones, and that's not counting the band's three dates this week at Madison Square Garden - their first shows at the hall in 17 years. The week also brings us a string of sold-out dates for Dylan and Van Morrison, 52, at The Theater (continuing Jan. 18, 20, 21).

At the same time, more older fans have been returning to record stores. According to a survey by the Recording Industry Association of America, consumers between the ages of 40 and 44 increased from 4.8% to 9.1% in the last decade. Buyers over 45 leapt from 10.7% to 15.1% in that time. And rock music's market share rose among the 35-plus age group from 18.7% to 25.2%, giving older rockers a far greater market to draw from.

All of which begs the big question: Can this renaissance for old rockers be a coincidence, or is there something about the boomer generation - both its stars and its audience - finally reaching its 50s that helped rekindle its fire?

"This is the generation that didn't think it would ever get old," explains Jim Henke, chief curator of The Rock 'n' Roll Hall Of Fame (which last week inducted Fleetwood Mac to its ranks). "Suddenly they've realized that they are getting old, and that has had a clear and dramatic effect on their work."

For one thing, "it gave them a wider range of things to write about," offers Bill Flanagan, executive producer of the older-skewing VH1 programs like "Legends" and "Songwriters." "Artists like Dylan and James Taylor [50], on his new album, 'Hourglass,' are taking advantage of the kinds of issues that could only come with middle age."

David Bowie couldn't agree more. "I've found that the thing that separates me most from the younger musicians around me is that my frame of reference is much longer. I enjoy that and I've taken advantage of it."

The stars' broader perspective isn't without some painful consequences. Many middle-aged rockers have been tackling the hardest issues of aging: loss of youth and fear of death. In "Time Out of Mind," Dylan uses the search for an elusive lover as a metaphor for the life that's slipping through his hands. James Taylor's "Hourglass" deals with the loss of his father, brother and best friend, while the last two albums from Patti Smith have ruminated on the death of her husband, bandmates and several role models.

"Instead of avoiding the hard issues, they're directly confronting their anxieties in their art," Flanagan says.

Ironically, those anxieties might have arisen, in part, from the stars' living longer than they ever thought possible. People in their 20s - particularly those with the narcissistic mindset of artists - often can't imagine their lives continuing beyond the perfection of youth. Small wonder that this generation seemed to go into a funk in its late 30s and through most of its 40s - when its aging began. Now, in their 50s, they finally seem more ready to deal with, and confront, the full arc of life - to accept that they have longer careers - and more complex lives - than they previously counted on.

Other observers opine that the stars' creative rejuvenation may mean that they simply got bored with some of the trappings of success. "Many of these artists made lots of money at some point, and may have gotten kind of lazy for a while," Henke says. "Now they're coming out of that, needing to be challenged."

Lucky for them, they're doing so at a time when more outlets exist to push their latest music. The ever-growing number of triple-A (Adult Alternative Album) radio stations - like WFUV-FM, locally - supports serious and substantial artists of any age. Likewise, the video outlet VH1 has found more effective ways to promote older performers. When the network recently ran a segment of its new series "Behind The Music" on Billy Joel, the star's latest album jumped 39 places on the charts. After it ran a major interview with McCartney, the former Beatle's new album had a sensational debut in record stores, making it the hottest first week for a McCartney album in 27 years. VH1's new approach stands in marked contrast to the video world of 10 or 15 years ago which, as a then-new form, put supreme emphasis on taut faces and fresh physiques.

Many of the artists may have also cleared away some of the distracting elements of stardom and ego. "In the case of a band like Fleetwood Mac," explains WNEW classic-rock deejay Pat St. John, "they went through all that rock-star stuff and all the fights, and they're ready to concentrate on being musicians completely."

The result has freed the artists to bring their full, and increasing, life experience to the music. In the new version of Fleetwood Mac's "Landslide," Stevie Nicks sings the line "I'm getting older too" with a mixture of wisdom and loss that she never could have mustered when she first wrote the song at 28. In a big Mac hit like "Don't Stop" - with its refrain of "yesterday's gone" - the reconstituted band manages to sidestep nostalgia, delivering the song as an anthem for a new generation's entry into middle age.

"Some of these artists have only now grown into their music," says VH1's Flanagan. "As very young men, musicians like Eric Clapton and John Fogerty wrote and sang songs more appropriate to the older blues players they first admired [who themselves were in their 50s]. It actually makes more sense for Fogerty to sing what he sings about in his early 50s than it did in his 20s."

At the same time, some pop artists have used their fifth decade to strike out into new musical forms. Paul Simon and McCartney branched out into musical theater and classical music, respectively, while Joel, who turns 50 in two years, has announced he'll be downplaying pop in the next few years to create symphonic music.

It's telling that none of these artists has presented his new explorations as more "mature" or grown-up than his pop efforts. Maybe that has something to do with St. John's explanation: "Our parents said - and we believed - that we wouldn't like the same music we did when we were 18 when we reached 50. But in fact, we do."

Bob George of the Archive For Contemporary Music has a whimsical theory about this: "One of the genes we possess as humans is to like the music we went through puberty with for our whole lives." Maybe that helps explain why stations like WNEW tend to play far more of a classic artist's older material than his or her new work. But even that's beginning to evolve a bit due to the sheer strength of the older artists' latest creations.

At the same time, younger fans keep discovering the works of the older greats. Tours by Dylan and the nearly-as-old Allman Brothers regularly draw large numbers of the young. Likewise, The Stones drew as much as 20% of their crowd from the under-25 demographic at some shows. "I took my whole family to the Stones," says St. John. "My daughters, who are 17 and 12, loved it. The 12-year-old totally zoned in on Keith."

The rise of CDs and box sets in this decade also helped bring younger audiences to the music of the boomers' icons, and encouraged older ones to reconsider the idols of their youth.

In fact, classic rock's original fans may well be using the rediscovery of music as a way to ease its collective midlife crises. Typically, music fans temper their passion, and buying habits, after college. But the boomers seem to be getting some of that early ardor back these days, not only with album purchases but with attendance at concerts. Of the top ten tours of 1997, no less than eight were headlined by older-skewing artists, from Fleetwood Mac to Tina Turner. "Very few acts approach the arena or stadium level who are for kids," says Bob Grossweiner of Performance magazine, which tracks the concert business.

By attending shows like the Stones, older audiences aren't necessarily engaged in the impossible pursuit of staving off aging. Instead, they're finding another way to remind themselves that passion needn't leave them with the first wrinkle.

Since older audiences have held onto their stars - and younger crowds have come along for the ride - the result has shaken up our whole notion of the generation gap. While the young of the '60s and '70s broke entirely with the musical tastes of their parents, the boomers' offspring haven't waged anything so radical. Certainly, kids today cherish forms of music their parents and elders find abhorrent - especially rap, industrial rock, the new electronica and anything by Marilyn Manson. But those same kids also respect their parents' classic rock. Instead of pitting one musical form against the other, kids have embraced it all.

"The whole notion of the generation gap is an aberration of the '60s," says Flanagan. "Everybody of our age was waiting for the kids to come along and rebel against us. But the people in their 20s just don't care. It's not a big deal. They can think of Nirvana and Led Zeppelin in the same breath." Not only has the creative power of rock's elders connected the generations, it has also been challenging our long-held belief in a necessary connection between pop music and youth culture. "The silly old notion that rock is for teens has finally been shown for what it is," says Flanagan. As a result, current pop seems to be taking on the role popular music has held for the rest of the 100-year history of recorded music - outside of rock's heyday in the '60s and '70s - namely, as music belonging to the masses of any age.

Seen in that light, pop's great stars need no longer hold on to youth to stay relevant. They need do only what they're doing now: keep growing.