Hope I Get Old Before I Die : Why rock stars never retire by David Hepworth

When Paul McCartney closed Live Aid in July 1985 at the grand old age of forty-three, we thought he was on the road to retirement. But as it turns out, he - and many others of his generation - were just getting started.

In the last four decades, the big names of the 60s and 70s have been exploiting the age of spectacle that Live Aid created to enjoy the longest lap of honour in the history of humanity, carrying on long after everyone else had given up. In this brave new world, Elton John plays a royal funeral, Mick Jagger gets a knighthood, Bob Dylan picks up the Nobel Prize, the Beatles become, if anything, bigger than the Beatles and it's beginning to look as though, thanks to technology, they will all be playing Las Vegas forever.