There is something more cruel than seeing oneself getting old. It's seeing our idols getting old. Grand-fathers on stage like if a retirement home is having an evening party... White hair, wrinkles, emaciated or grossly fat bodies... This is so sad.
Of course, you will always find someone, above all these days, to find poetry in it and to lecture you about how wonderful it is to carry the years gone by on your face (and butt). But it won't be me.
I want to keep a pristine image. A pristine sound. I need the "all package".
From the start they are no ordinary people. Rock stars never die. So they can't age either. That's my silent logic. I'm a bit surprised to admit I'm shocked by the look of some bands I still admire. For some, their music hasn't changed. The quality of their playing and singing is there, intact. But the image...
It's the sick reflection of time going by. Magic moments fading, just like flowers. Soon the end of the movie. And you don't feel like going to bed. Not yet. Rewind, anyone? I wish I could. Do you?
I want to see Guns N' Roses in 1987, Suede in 1993, Depeche Mode in 2001. For ever.
I want my idols to keep on being supernatural creatures. I don't want them to be ordinary human beings. I want them timeless.
And the moments they gave me, I want them eternal, crystallized.
It's so much a part of me (and it's the happy part), and I can't see this fade away. I would beg time to not destroy us if there was a chance. Leave us alone, don't suffocate us. But with every breath...
I remember an interview with Paul Stanley 30 years ago in a French magazine, a question about death, and his killer reply: "It seems to me our energy is indestructible".
Striking words I'm still chewing on...