From McCartney to Dylan and the Stones, this portrait of rock longevity mixes fascinating detail with rash claims – but is never less than entertaining
In July 1985, David Hepworth was one of the anchors for the BBC’s coverage of Live Aid. Nearly 40 years on, he suggests that the day wasn’t just a huge charity event, but the start of a sea change in rock history. Rather than diehard music fans, it attracted an audience of “regular people”. The show’s biggest successes were largely not the “new pop” groups who’d come to prominence in punk’s aftermath, but those more experienced artists whom punk had supposedly rendered irrelevant: who’d take Spandau Ballet bullishly debuting a previously unheard track from their forthcoming album over Queen or Elton John rolling out the hits?
Here, Hepworth suggests, lurked the seeds of what he calls Rock’s Third Act, in which the belief that music is strictly a young person’s game has been subverted. It started in Live Aid’s wake, and continues to this day: vast crowds still turn out to see Paul McCartney and Bob Dylan playing live in their 80s and the Rolling Stones show no sign of quitting, 62 years into their career.
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