These Classic Rock Songs are So Ready to Retire
Some younger candidates stand ready to take their place
This piece contains what may be considered ageist humor. However, it was written by someone who has already experienced some of the indignities of advancing age, so try not to get your granny panties in a wad.
The Classic Rock Retirement Committee is charged with helping the hardest working, elderly classic rock songs make a seamless transition to full retirement. The following songs have notified the committee that they’re utterly exhausted and ready to finally be allowed to kick back and relax for a change. They’ve had enough of constantly being expected to shore up FM rock radio, grocery store PA systems, beer-bar cover bands, and decade-specific Spotify playlists.
We are not here to tag these songs as “overrated” or criticize them in any way. In fact, some of these songs were so great that we’ve suggested two songs to replace them.
We’re simply here to help. The committee has done the legwork to tap similarly satisfying songs that are willing to pick up the slack. It’s time we let these warhorses finally sun themselves in the pasture, or sit on the porch swing sipping lemonade and mulling over a crossword puzzle.
Let’s take a look at how these absolute classics are faring these days, their plans for their golden years, and who who we’ve shortlisted to step up in their absence.
Iron Man
Black Sabbath: Paranoid (1970, Warner Bros.)
This hardworking elemental entity has been the longstanding king of fuzzy garage sludge metal. Its vocal line follows the guitar line. Or does the guitar line follow the vocal line? Chicken or Egg? Only Tony Iommi knows for sure.
Iron Man now prefers wrinkle-free polyester slacks with a comfy elastic waistband. His hearing aid is a bother so he turns up the TV volume to watch Judge Judy, because he’s always cared about justice. He’s looking forward to puttering around in his tomato garden in his retirement, and seeing if he can get rid of that nasty oil stain on his garage floor once and for all.
Taking over the sludge metal helm for Iron Man is a song with a self-referential title evoking Black Sabbath’s “Black Sabbath.”
Fuzz’s Fourth Dream — Fuzz: This Time I Got a Reason" (2012, Trouble In Mind)
Stairway to Heaven
Led Zeppelin: IV (1971, Atlantic)
She’s an exquisite thing, commanding, intense, and bombastic — yet she’s always maintained an air of mystery. But it’s been a long 50 years and she finds herself daydreaming about taking the grandkids on a Disney Cruise. She no longer has the patience she once did for constantly spinning on classic rock radio. She’d rather work on her macramé skills and bake fruitcakes to give to the neighbors during the holidays. She’s afraid to drive at night, even with those big glasses with the yellow lenses that are supposed to help her see the road.
Two powerful songs have volunteered to fill in the newly vacant slot for a slow-building, epic rocker with drop-dead gorgeous vocals, wicked guitar work, and heart-hammering drums.
Dondonte — My Morning Jacket: Z (2005, ATO)
Marina — Sleepy Sun: Fever (2010, ATP Recordings)
Hotel California
The Eagles: Hotel California (1976, Asylum)
Love or hate the posh but inescapable desert hotel, you can’t deny that this fellow had serious staying power. Kudos to him for maturely refraining from stomping off in a huff after getting publicly dissed in a crappy L.A. taxi cab by a drunken hipster who goes by The Dude.
These days, Hotel California just wants you to get off his lawn — which he proudly still cuts with a reel mower. If you don’t beat it, he’s calling the cops on his Jitterbug phone. He’d also like to remind you that you’re much too old to trick-or-treat. Oh, those are your kids? Sorry. Have a minibox of Whoppers. He can’t eat them anyway; they wreak havoc with his blood sugar.
He tells us he’s only too happy to turn the reins over to this heartfelt number.
Ace of Cups Hung Low Band — Hiss Golden Messenger: Heart Like a Levee (2016, Merge)
Comfortably Numb
Pink Floyd: The Wall (1979, Columbia)
Hellooo, hellooo, hellooo/Is there anybody in there? Comfortably Numb is unfortunately neither these days, not with that slipped lumbar disc, sciatica, and the lift in her shoe that her chiropractor insists on. She’s hoping you’ll grab the Ben-Gay for her, and while you’re up, could you please bring over her knitting basket and raise the thermostat by 3 degrees? No, just 3, she doesn’t want to touch off another hot flash. Thanks, you’re a doll.
There will never be another song quite like Comfortably Numb because David Gilmour is a magical, eternal dreamboat. The Committee will always have an aching crush on him and fantasize about a time machine that could pick her up when she’s a young woman in the mid-’80s and deliver her to David as a young man in the early ’70s and … ahem, The Committee begs forgiveness for the inappropriate digression.
Moving on, we have two numbers that will happily fill the vacancy in the meandering, dreamy blues space that Comfortably Numb has occupied these past four decades.
Runaway Houses City Clouds — Tame Impala: InnerSpeaker (2010, Modular)
Dragonfly — Dead Meadow: Dead Meadow (2000, Tolotta Records)
Another One Bites the Dust
Queen: The Game (1980, Elektra)
He really doesn’t care to admit it but he’s never quite gotten past the absolute trauma of getting stuck on the Billboard charts for 31 arduous weeks in 1980, including 15 weeks on the top ten and 5 on the top five. No one ever appreciated Another One Bites the Dust’s absolute exhaustion, the mountains of speeders he had to snort just to keep up with all the demands on his attention. They’ve never slowed down on dragging his driving, staccato beat out at baseball games and DJ’d wedding receptions, and spinning him endlessly on classic rock radio. He’s developed a bad case of vertigo and has to take steroids.
Another one Bites the Dust is much too polite to ask you to simply let him be. Secretly, he thinks your skirt is embarrassingly short and you’re going to totally regret that tattoo. He’ll be retiring to an upscale assisted-living condominium in Boca Raton where he’ll work on his golf game and flirt with the widows.
In a rather unusual move, he suggested these successors himself. We’re not sure we agree, but who are we to argue with an absolute chart monster?
Twenty Cell Revolt — Menomena: I am the Fun Blame Monster (2003, Barsuk)
Crown On The Ground — Sleigh Bells: Treats (2010, Mom + Pop N.E.E.T)
Smells Like Teen Spirit
Nirvana: Nevermind (1991, DGC)
This tune is so over your slavish worship of her. Honestly, she’s sick and tired of hearing about herself and where you were the first time you heard her and how she changed your life forever. No disrespect, but she would like to remind you she’s far from the only song Nirvana ever wrote.
Sure, of course, she understands she was great and held her own in a way that only an intense, iconic song that spawned an entire rock subgenre can. But she really just wants to hop on a senior tour bus to Branson Missouri and get a jump start on Christmas shopping for the triplets, which is what she calls her close-in-age grandchildren. She’s mulling over taking up swimming in the Senior Olympics and has been browsing swim caps at Wal-Mart so the chlorine doesn’t turn her blue hair green. Are tankini’s still in style? There is nothing worse than trying to claw your way out of a wet one-piece when you need to take a wazz.
You’ll have to excuse her but her daughter just showed up with the tweezers to help her pluck those goat hairs on her chin. It’s so hard to see them, even with bifocals and a magnifying mirror.
Her long-coveted low-fi grunge implosion spot will be managed by rock royalty: two of her older children who happen to be mid-career songs by the same artist:
Caesar — Ty Segall: Melted (2010, Goner Records)
Rusted Dust — Ty Segall: Lemons (2009, Goner Records)
Alive
Pearl Jam: Ten (1991, Epic)
I can’t remember anything to this very day, was, unfortunately, prescient. Alive stands, arms akimbo, in his plaid kitchen wondering exactly what he came in here for. Did he feed the dog yet? Will it hurt her if she eats twice this morning? Where did he leave the Fig Newtons? They don’t hurt when he chews them with his dentures in, and they help keep him regular. He was hoping to enjoy them with a glass of skim milk while sorting his medications into his pill case while taking in a few episodes of American Pickers. Now, why can’t he find the dang remote? Oh, it was in his hand the whole time.
He’s so looking forward to abandoning his classic rock playlist spot knowing it will be capably filled by a song that, while just 12 years his junior, is still waking up feeling good and limber.
One Big Holiday — My Morning Jacket: It Still Moves (2003, ATO)
Sadly, one song on our 2021 list is unable to retire at this time:
Every Rose has its Thorn
Poison: Open Up and Say… Ahh! (1988, Enigma)
This old girl desperately wants to retire but simply can’t. Alta, seeing her brothers Caeser and Rusted Dust taking over for Smells Like Teen Spirit, contacted the committee and generously volunteered to relieve Every Ro… let’s just call her “Rose,” of her longstanding duties in the power-ballad slot. Rose was unable to accept Alta’s offer.
It seems much of Rose’s 401k was misspent on spandex pants, sparkly scarves, AquaNet, and coke. There’s not much left in her plastic change wallet, especially after she splurged at CJ Banks on that boxy cardigan with the birdhouses on it, not to mention brand new white Reeboks and compression socks.
Rose really wishes she could get by on her pension but it’s not looking promising just yet. We’re thinking about setting up a GoFundMe on the old girl’s behalf.
Alta — Ty Segall: Freedom’s Goblin (2018, Drag City)
We know there are more out there
What overplayed classic rock songs do you feel have earned the right to finally retire? And what song or songs would you like to see step into their big shoes?