45 is the new 25

Some people have noticed lately that there's a trend among middle-aged men to dress and act like 25-year-olds. And my response to that is: Duh... Who the hell wants to think of themselves as being middle-aged? Who wants to go through life looking and acting like a walking Viagra commercial? What do middle-aged men have to look forward to anyway, except things as appealing as redundancy, erectile dysfunction and prostate exams?

Perhaps there's something more than fashion to this latest outbreak of juvenility. A few years back, a Harvard University researcher ran an experiment. She gathered some old folks from a nursing home and took them to an abandoned monastery. There she recreated (as best she could) the world of the early 1950s. The music, the TV shows, the clothes, the appliances, you name it, it was like a Happy Days theme park. In her observations she noticed that her subjects became more lively and engaged - and were generally healthier - while in this nostalgic environment. In other words, they were becoming younger. When the experiment was over and the oldsters returned to God's waiting room, the effects reversed themselves.

If that study was accurate, then the generation that came of age in the early-to-mid 70s should be doing cartwheels and back-flips. Aerosmith, Black Sabbath, UFO, Rush, Deep Purple, Status Quo, Whitesnake, Alice Cooper, Nazareth, The Rolling Stones, Iron Maiden, Scorpions, Van Halen, Judas Priest, AC/DC and The Who have all toured in recent years, and many of these acts are playing the same types of large venues they did 30 years ago.

Rock'n'roll has never been known for its retirement benefits package, and a reunion tour or two or five might act as a nice pension program for ageing rockers. The days of living off your CD reissue royalty checks are long gone. But the reason that many older bands are still packing them in is that most can still rock harder than those a third their age. Who would have thought The Rolling Stones and The Who would still be alive in 2006, never mind selling out stadiums? Say what you will about the Queen/Paul Rodgers alliance, just don't say that it didn't rock. So how is it that these people are still out there, and in many cases playing better than they did in their supposed heyday? The fact that many of them have Betty Ford'ed or Priory'ed their various chemical dependencies away has a lot to do with it, but the secret also lies in the music itself.

I like a lot of different types of music, but I am most passionate about loud guitar music. Call it hard rock, heavy metal, punk, hardcore... labels don't matter. There's something not only stimulating but also rejuvenating about crunching guitars and pounding drums. I can be depressed and run down, and a great hard rock song can not only lift my spirits but also actually change my physical state. The music gets the endorphins and the testosterone flowing.

It's no accident then that the powers that be have always worked so hard to put down unruly music. When not buggering slave boys, Plato found time to propose that music should be regulated by the state. In the Middle Ages the Church banned the tritone - which Wagner and Tony Iommi later took to the bank. And slave owners forbade the use of drums in the Colonial era. The sporadic witch hunts against rock'n'roll are simply the latest chapter of this age-old story. Those with power want it all for themselves, and have always known there's something very dangerous about powerful music.

It's like this: if you sit around and smoke fags and eat crap food all your life, your body is going to respond in kind; it's going to bloat and break down and eventually fall apart. Read 'Hello!' and religeously watch trash TV like Big Brother regularly and the same thing will happen to your brains. If you sit around and listen to nothing but the latest Eric Clapton or Steely Dan mewlings all day — or James Blunt or Dido, for that matter — your body is going to slow down and get kind of sluggish and the aging process will eventually accelerate. I'm not saying you should subsist solely on a diet of Slayer and Soundgarden, but what has differentiated the rock'n'roll generation from their parents is the inherent power of the music to keep you vital. So make time to jump about your flat in your underwear with loud music on for 20 minutes a day and you'll trim down, feel less stressed, and more people will want to have sex with you. It's true, I read it somewhere.

They told us when we were growing up that rock'n'roll was just a phase; we would grow out of it and listen to 'serious' music. We'd get sick of head-banging, action movies and video games and get serious about our entertainment. But to my mind, 'serious entertainment' is an oxymoron. In a world of outsourcing, downsizing, global warming and 9/11, I don't need any more 'serious'. When I flick on the TV I want to see some babe in a rubber catsuit mowing down werewolves and radioactive mutants. If I blow 50 quid going to see a band, they damn well better blow me away, not feckin' enlighten me!

Escapist fantasy? You bet! Because this increasingly God-forsaken world is nothing if not escape-worthy. This world is too fucked up not to rock'n'roll.