Bez: not thinking about his pension plan. Photograph: Jo Hale/Getty
The news that Bez from the Happy Mondays has been declared bankrupt yet again, has sent a chill through me.
What happens to rockers when they get old if they haven't made a pile, bought a mansion and retired to a life of gilded leisure, offshore investments and golf? What are the provisions in place for the umbrella-less belters, rhythm sections and fretboard wizards when the hits have dried up and the rain clouds of middle age have burst upon them?
The more mean-spirited of you will no doubt say: "who cares? Stop prancing about and get a job like the rest of us". That is all very well, but what job is a professional maraca player, funny dancer and imbiber of more chemicals than a Russian reservoir qualified for? What new career path is open to a man who can shoot lightning bolts from a flaming Les Paul behind his head, or pound a drum kit to dust in front of 30,000 people? In Japan, somebody like Bez would be classified as a living monument and receive an annual grant to keep doing whatever it is he does. I imagine the Arts Council and Lottery Fund would take a bit of convincing to be so forthcoming.
Music hall artists have cosy twilight homes where they take turns in performing their vaudevillian routines for fellow inmates, while receiving regular visits from Roy Hudd. Ex-footballers from the sideburns and Old Spice era put on ties and blazers and do corporate meet and greets at the stadium on match days.
Having not had the talent or good luck to amass a working fortune, or the good sense to die at the age of 27, I am more than a little worried about my own future prospects. As far as I know, there is not a retirement home for those who served as canon fodder in the rock'n'roll wars, no sheltered accommodation with annual visits from Sir Paul McCartney or Sting; nothing but the wet fish counter at Tesco or the ignominy of begging for my old paper round back.
As rock'n'roll is still only about 52 years old, the real problem hasn't really kicked in yet, but it will. With the exception of just a few friends - one who managed to fulfil both childhood dreams by being a singer, then becoming a train driver - life after bands is pretty bleak. Like war-scarred veterans chucked back on to civvy street after a career in the army, too brutalised for polite society, help is needed.
Perhaps somewhere like Foulness Island in the Thames Estuary could be given over as a retirement colony for rockers and road crews. The MOD needn't necessarily abandon its weapons testing there either - many of the inhabitants would be almost deaf, or assume the explosions to be pyrotechnic stage displays and fall to their knees in air-guitar ecstasies.
Anyway, have a heart; there may be old rockers operating in your town. The next time you go out, spare a thought for the leathery faced pot-man at your local, with the badly died hair and paunch hanging over his too-tight jeans. Don't get huffy when the old girl at the petrol station takes your credit card and tries to chop out an imaginary line with it. These men and women are heroes.
