Males Of A Sure Age by Kate Mossman
Revealed by: 9 Eight Books
Launch date: third April 2025
Music journalist Kate Mossman has compiled a collection of interviews with ageing male rock stars and makes use of them to analyse her obsession with ageing male rock stars.
Does the world want one other ebook about middle-aged male rock stars? Kate Mossman asks the query herself: the reply being that she wanted to write down it. “The older male rock star,” she writes, “isn’t simply my specialist topic – it’s my obsession.”
So that you get two books in a single: nineteen long-form interviews with rock stars (initially from The Phrase and the New Statesman), framed by fragments of memoir that attempt to make sense of this obsession.
It’s an inconclusive exploration, however the private tales are simply as fascinating because the interviews. The obsession began with a teenage love of the then-unfashionable Queen in the course of the “joyless” and “ironic” Nineties. (Interviewing Roger Taylor years later in his Cornwall residence, she already knew which home it was.)
Then there’s one other obsession – America, which she visits 38 instances in 11 years. On one event, in 2007, it was to see the (additionally then-unfashionable) Glen Campbell. Mossman writes her first revealed piece of music journalism in regards to the expertise and begins a brand new profession. Her first journal job is at The Phrase, the place she is the one girl however matches proper in as a consequence of her “middle-aged man’s style”.
Regardless of this, what you get from the interviews is a feminine perspective on the topic. Mossman’s up to date Jude Rogers wrote in her ebook The Sound of Being Human about the way in which feminine interviewers can method the job in a different way. And Mossman additionally notices a unique dynamic when she meets the celebrities she is to write down about. (Like Rogers, too, sharing music along with her father is a robust theme within the ebook.)
Sixties throwback Kevin Ayers is “activated into confessional mode” as a result of she is younger and feminine. She pertains to Bruce Hornsby as “a type of cosmic father determine”. She makes use of “father-daughter vitality” when speaking to Tom Jones. Some musicians, she feels, are relieved to have somebody totally different to speak to on this male-dominated world.
The ebook is fascinating for its insights into the work of a music author: the will to attach with the interviewee together with an consciousness of the gap between you; the skilled want to explain somebody as you discover them, balanced with the data of their vulnerability; the popularity that some individuals are so well-known that you’ll by no means get previous the showbusiness persona.
The interviews themselves are additionally insightful – detailed and well-researched with exemplary storytelling. There are questions on what occurs to the ageing rocker who can’t hit the excessive notes any extra or wants a hip operation. There are issues about model and legacy, and the presence of demise. There are some rock businessmen, and there are some very odd individuals.
As a result of rock is greater than middle-aged nowadays, the interviewees span at the least two generations, from 60s guitar heroes (Jeff Beck) to 80s pop stars (Depeche Mode). Plus some you may need not heard of: Trans-Siberian Orchestra, anybody?
And the ultimate interview is, surprisingly, not a musician however a muse: Cary Raditz, the person that Joni Mitchell’s track Carey was written about. This chapter hints at an finish to Mossman’s obsession… maybe.
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Males Of A Sure Age is offered in any respect good bookstores.
Phrases by Penny Kiley. You possibly can learn her Louder than Struggle evaluations at her writer profile, and her archive music journalism on Substack.
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