Rock and Roll Gets Old

Apparently, it’s not just me who is getting old. Yet hopefully I’m doing it more gracefully than this.

Ladies and Gentlemen, check out what's become of Mr. Eddie Van Halen.

Yikes. When I first saw this picture online this week, my initial thought was “Who is that – an enchanted toothless wicked witch, who somehow escaped from the mystical forests of GumYourFoodLand?” You half expect the caption to be “I’ll get you, my little pretties – and your dental floss, too!”

They always said that a life of debauchery would wreak havoc on you – who knew it’d end up this bad? Poor Edward has gone from Panama to Hell in one straight 3-chord shot.

I’ve been a VH fan for over 20 years now, and I very honestly didn’t recognize Eddie in this picture. If the lunatic in this photo had come up to me on the street, I probably would have put a quarter in his tin cup instead of asking him to play “Eruption”. Wouldn’t you?

Eddie is only 51 years old – just 10 years older than me. God, I hope I don’t slide that much in just a decade. Of course, I guess it probably goes without saying that I’ve lived my life a little “cleaner” than Sir Edward has. I mean, compared side to side, my entire life’s worth of hedonism and sin could probably fit into a long commercial break for Eddie.

But is this really what a lifetime of sex, drugs, and rock and roll will do to a person? I mean, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards aren’t anything like…okay, bad example. Um… Axel Rose? No, still won’t work. How about Ozzy? Nope. Lou Reed? Iggy Pop? David Lee Roth? Puh-leeze, puh-leeze, and double puh-leeze with a cherry on top.

Okay, I give up. Maybe this is what too much partying and not enough begging for forgiveness does to a person. Yet as Neil Young once sang, “it’s better to burn out than it is to fade away”, so maybe it all works out in the end. A long, painful, publicly shunned, self-mutilated, incredibly wrinkled end.

Still, it was fun while it lasted. I suppose.

As for me, I’ll keep my nose clean (and my hair washed and combed), and hope to God that I don’t sink into this poorly-aging quagmire from listening to their music for all these years. In the meantime, maybe I’ll send Eddie a tube of Polident to autograph. Or use. His choice.