David Hepworth

Simon Mayo's Books Of The Year

Simon Mayo and Matt Williams welcome music journalist David Hepworth to the studio.

His new book - Hope I Get Old Before I Die - looks at how enduring rock icons like Pink Floyd, Bruce Springsteen and many more have remained in the ever changing music game.

They discuss Mick Jagger, Elton John, Paul McCartney and many other rock icons, and just how and why they are still so relevant today.

The book is full of great anecdotes, which are endlessly quotable, and is a must read for any music fan.

We hope you enjoy the chat !

(here's a little more on the book)

When Paul McCartney closed Live Aid in July 1985 we thought he was rock's Grand Old Man. He was forty-three years old.

As the forty years since have shown he - and many others of his generation - were just getting started.

This was the time when live performance took over from records. The big names of the 60s and 70s exploited the age of spectacle that Live Aid had ushered in to enjoy the longest lap of honour in the history of humanity, continuing to go strong long after everyone else had retired.

Hence this is a story without precedent, a story in which 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 all of the above will, thanks to the march of technology, be playing Las Vegas for ever.

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