» Grow old disgracefully
Katie considers whether youthful excess may lead to middle-aged boredom
Call me old-fashioned, but I’ve always had a soft spot for rock stars who have mastered the fine art of growing old disgracefully.
Take Keith Richards for instance. He hasn’t had a coherent thought since 1974, has a habit of falling out of trees and probably believes he really is a pirate – but that doesn’t stop young pretenders like Russell Brand channelling Richards’ trademark style.
“Russell Brand – successfully channelling Keith Richards’ trademark style”
Keef’s old mucker Marianne Faithful also has this ageing thing sussed. Through sheer chutzpah she’s strung out a career as a celebrity smackhead well into her dotage. Now she’s shacked up with a lover half her age,shrugged off hepatitis C and plans to spend her final years playing court to various bright young things begging to follow in her footsteps.
In the light of these shining examples it’s nothing short of tragic that the Britpop stars of yesteryear are having such difficulty adjusting to the ageing process. Just witness the ongoing deterioration of Alex James from Blur. Once the coolest man on God’s earth and a self-styled prince of Soho sneeze ‘n’ squeeze – these days he languishes as a celebrity cheese manufacturer with three kids called (God help them) Geronimo, Artemis and Galileo.
Maybe it’s just me (or latent lactose intolerance) but his obsession with dairy products is starting to become unnerving. You can’t open a magazine or switch on the TV without finding Alex twittering on about how cheese festivals are the new Glastonbury and rural living is the new rock ‘n’ roll.
It’s all deathly boring and slightly smug. However ironically he embraces the ‘big house in the country’ lifestyle that his band used to satirise there’s a growing feeling that he’s starting to royally lose the plot.
What’s really disconcerting is that whatever satanic pact he made during the Britpop days has now obviously been left to lapse. While Alex may describe himself as ‘the second drunkest member of Blur’ he was always by far the best looking. When Blur were young, Alex had cheekbones that could lacerate girls’ hearts at a hundred paces and a floppy fringe that always seemed to point invitingly towards his crotch.
What I’m beginning to suspect is that during Blur’s heyday there was a portrait of Alex hanging in the attic, à la Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, that soaked up all the hard living while his body remained youthful. Unfortunately thanks to middle age and excessive cheese munching it’s the increasingly haggard picture that now stalks the country roads shooting pheasants and milking cows while his gorgeous alter ego is caught in that lonely loft, dreaming of nights at the Groucho and the possibility of a snog off Justine from Elastica.
Still, perhaps Alex’s fate should be a lesson to us all. To paraphrase William Blake, if the road of excess leads to a life of middle-aged cheese farming rather than the palace of wisdom, I might just choose to swap my triple vodkas for mineral water from here on out.
