the peak year of a musician

 

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.

in the 60's, Zappa was doing extremely experimental things with the original Mothers' lineups. in '69 Zappa began fully realizing his interest in melding jazz and rock (waaayyy before most jazz-rock classic bands and artists even thought about it, except maybe Miles Davis) and recorded Hot Rats, one of his most popular and celebrated works. pretty much from there he did a lot of jazz-rock/fusion mixed with rock, classical, and funk. in 72 he recorded Waka/Jawaka and The Grand Wazoo, which are fusion classics and praised on this site. As a guitarist he was developing into a monster and his improvs were so unique. He then formed the next installment of the Mothers which had great guys like George Duke, Napoleon Murphy Brock and Ruth Underwood (who went back as far as some of the early Mothers' albums like Uncle Meat) the albums that came out between 72 and 75/76 are among his freshest and exquisite albums he ever released, some being some of the greatest jazz-rock albums (and he came from the rock/avant-guarde side of music)

 

(Roger Waters - bassguitar - always a lowpoint)

Bill Bruford.........now

 

 

Without doing any particular research, it would make sense that maybe left-brain (or whichever side is the creative one) to physical activity connectors respond more quickly when young - but without right-brain (or the logical centre), it's going to dry up pretty quickly once the limits have been reached.

 

If you train the logical centre to think rationally and learn the rules, then, once you've nailed the hand/brain co-ordination bit, it only gets better as the rules begin to sink in.

 

At least, that's my take on it - I'm older than 20, and did a lot of studying from age 4 upwards - although mainly not on the guitar - and my guitar playing has definitely not reached its peak, as I find I'm still learning new things all the time because my creative drive is probably stronger than it was back then, and I'm driven to try new things all the time.

 

It certainly holds true when you consider Grappelli, with his rigourous training - and Holdsworth also received training from his father - so there's evidence to suggest that my theory holds some water - and when you consider that Mozart was trained by his father at the age of 4, and was both writing and performing well before he hit double figures, this side of the equation seems proven.

 

It's the other side that's more interesting - untrained rock musicians who remain at their prime.

 

I can't think of many...

Bryan Ferry (hmm, rare mentioned here) - first half of '80's - creativity: Avalon, Boys And Girls.