Ageism in music

“Hello” said the 74 year old tanned, shirtless man on the Baldoyle seafront walk. He was pushing his 1 year old granddaughter last weekend and I passed him while wheeling my own 4 month old daughter. “Is that your granddaughter? he said. “No, that’s definitely my daughter” I replied. “Oh sorry, it must have been the beard”, he said. ‘The Beard’?? Slowly it dawned on me that I am not really young. Now I’ve always been a bit of a Peter Pan, thinking and feeling like I’m way younger than I am. I inherit it partly from my late dad who was a professor of Biochemistry and played rugby for Ireland. When interviewed in a newspaper about how he manages to still play tip rugby 3 times a week at 70 years of age, he explained: “Everybody has 4 different ‘ages’ really. Their emotional, mental, physical and chronological age. The way I calculate my age is by adding these up and dividing by 4 and so I’m actually only 44!”

It did make me think about my appearance in this social media age and whether our image as working musicians really is important. Whether youthfulness is still as attractive an option as ever? I don’t like networking or selling myself too much when I’m out at gigs, so I find it hard to play ball and sell myself in that regard. It all feels so immodest. It seems like the Age Of Immodesty. Or Self Promotion. Or even Narcissism. But I am also playing that game.  I now have to try to keep a level of sustained public interest in what I can do as a drummer to mitigate the losses that age has created. I started this blog to help others gain insight into my life in case it is of interest or might even help some people, but I do it also to gain more recognition and shine a small light on my professional work. 

Nearly all of the people I have worked with in the last 10-15 years have been my contemporaries or peers. That means roughly 2/3 of the music industry are not considering employing me and one very possible reason is age.  So if anyone is reading or listening to this, and thinking of employing me, my actual age ( upon my dad’s mathematical equation) is only 33 and a turd! 

                           Dad ...  'Forever Young'