the peak year of a musician

andu wrote: This somehow reminds me of a brilliant verse that I can't get out of my head: "The memories of a man in his old age/Are the deeds of a man in his prime"...   I won't name some artists, but I'll throw this observation: doesn't it seem interesting to you how in rock music the creativity peak is at a much younger age than in other genres that are more academic? I mean, in classical music the older/more mature you get, the better your works are (of course taking account of the several notable exceptions); on the other side, in rock many musicians peak at 18-25 years and very rarely equal at the age of 40-50 years their deeds from their prime. I've been thinking about this for some time without finding a decent answer.

Maybe this is the case because after the age of 25 they start to found a family and don't have as much time as they had when they were younger.

Ian Anderson (in fact, the whole Jethro Tull): 1972 - 1977
Back then, his voice was in top-condition, he did the most excellent albums such as Thick as a Brick and Songs from the Wood. His flute-playing has always been great, but especially since the 70s it has been fantastic. The best year of Jethro Tull / Ian Anderson must be 1972, but 1977 was pretty damn good year for them as well, and so were all the years between 72 and 77.


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And this one is not-so-prog, but I'll mention it anyway:
Nicko McBrain: 1988
Of course I like his drumming before that year, but on the album "Seventh Son of a Seventh Son" - wow! One of the best drum-albums that I have ever heard. Just listen to "Infinite Dreams", damn I like that drumming! In the 90s Nicko didn't play THAT good drum-patterns, and especially on the album Virtual XI his drumming sounds very boring. Luckily he has always played well live even though he did some boring drum-patterns on few albums. And luckily his drumming on the latest IM-album, A Matter Of Life And Death, his drumming is almost as good as it was in the 80s!


Edited by Roskisdyykkari - May 15 2007 at 09:09

Rodger Waters, 1971. After this he seems to have stoped trying to improve his playing and prefered to spend his time re-writing the same songs about how he doesn't want the money that he had.

need to ask Ricochet how old he is, as he's just peaking (he won a piano contest at the weekend playing with Debussey).

Hey, Rico, how old are you now?

JOHN WETTON---1974    when he was the meanest bassist on earth

Hackett hasn't reinvented himself, just expanded his horizons.

Snow Dog wrote: Hackett hasn't reinvented himself, just expanded his horizons.

O.K., that's a better description of Bruford's development as well.

The older you get, the better you should get.  Of course, in the case of many rock musicians, they sometimes seem to reach a plateau and never get better, for all sorts of reasons, maybe from not practicing, or maybe from having a poor technique that can only get them so far.  But as you get older, you might run out of things to say, especially if you were pretty groundbreaking early on.

Daniel Gildenlow (songwriting), Petrucci (guitar) 90s and 00