If midweek sales hold up, 70-year-old Tom Jones is on course to becoming the oldest man to top the British album charts. Jones previously held the record as a mere stripling of 59, when his contemporary pop duets set Reloaded went to number one in 1999. But he was superseded by then 68-year-old Bob Dylan last year with Together Through Life. Now Jones is poised to take the crown back, with an album or raw rocking gospel music, Praise And Blame.The old guys are but spring chickens (well, autumn chickens, maybe) compared to Dame Vera Lynn, who got to number one last year aged 92, although that was with a compilation album recorded in her prime. Age used to be one of the battlegrounds of pop culture. Now, one has to almost wax nostalgic to think back to a time when fans debated whether this or that artist was too old to rock and roll. Do you remember when critics liked to poke fun at veteran rockers, referring to the Glimmer twins Mick Jagger and Keith Richards as the Zimmerframe Twins? It turned out that rock was not really a flashpoint for youthful rebellion but just another form of music. And music is for life. And life is long. I have to admit, when I was an 18-year-old punk, I never imagined I would be a middle-aged rock critic. But the charts are still full of people who are older than me, and it is we middle-aged consumers who are keeping the music industry afloat. More than half of all CDs are bought by people over thirty, less than a fifth by people under twenty. Mind you, the young are still consuming just as much music, its just that they are not paying for it. Legal downloads are still dwarfed by the illegal. The international trade body IFPI has estimated that 95 per cent of music downloads worldwide are illegal. And there are figures bandied about the American music business (of which, I must admit, I am a little sceptical) claiming over 70 per cent of Americans under 20 years old have never paid for a piece of music. The generation gap is no longer about the music, it’s about the technology used to consume it. Well, we all know the music industry is in trouble. But in the meantime, it may be up to the oldies to keep us rocking. The thing about Jones’ continuing success is that he genuinely deserves it. He has made a great record, raw and alive with a love of music, shot through with emotional veracity and vital performances. People are talking about this as a religious album, and, indeed, the vice-president of his own record company notoriously dismissed it as “hymns” but actually this is the record of a sinner, engaging with God, the Devil and his own fears of mortality and redemption. And it’s not like it has come out of nowhere. To some Jones will always be the hip swinging Las Vegas belter, but his latterday career as a recording artist stands up with any more artistically admired veteran’s. Jones has shown the artistic courage to go new places, and try new things. Reload put him back in the charts with witty, contemporary pop. Mr Jones, his 2002 hip hop collaboration with (future Haitian presidential candidate) Wyclef Jean, was a brave and bold work, and is much better than it sounds on paper. And his 2008 album 24 Hours may have missed the top thirty but it dug deep in terms of songs and emotion, with a couple of tracks the equal of anything he has ever recorded. The Hitter is the stand out. It’s a remorseful but relentless brooding seven minute epic about a fighter who just doesn’t know when to go down. It could be the story of Jones’ life. He’s enjoyed great popularity and long spells in the wilderness. But it’s no accident that he is back at the top of the charts. Where most veterans are content to coast on their reputations and back catalogues, the big prize goes to those, like Dylan and Jones, who are still out there, giving it everything they’ve got.
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