All Things Must Pass
This site celebrates the giants of a generation of musicians that is now, slowly but surely, leaving us. The focus might appear morbid, even mawkish - it is not meant to be.
Rather, it celebrates the longevity and continuing creativity of a generation of musicians who never dreamed they could make life-long careers in the then-new rock 'n roll. (The Beatles famously had plans for life after fame, including Ringo opening a chain of hair salons.) But, it turns out, they could and many did. We hope to show that the 27 Club has a much smaller membership than you would think, and certainly much smaller than the 80-And-Still-Going-Club.
March has brought us seven new members of the 80ASG club.
Tom Constanten (19 March). Most famous for his time playing keyboards with the Grateful Dead, where he looked like a fish out of water. Comprehensively musically educated, his roots in jazz, minimalism, serialism etc. seemed to make him a strange bedfellow for the Dead's music, with its own roots in blues, bluegrass, folk and country. Nevertheless, he's still playing in Dead spin-offs and tribute acts.
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John Sebastian (17 March). Founder of the Lovin' Spoonful. A scion of the Greenwich Village folk-blues scene of the early 1960s, where he played with The Mugwumps, whose split gave us not only the Spoonful, but also The Mamas and the Papas.
Ric Rothwell (11 March). Drummer with the Mindbenders (originally Wayne Fontana & the Mindbenders).
Carole Bayer Sager (8 March). A singer-songwriter, who famously composed "A Groovy Kind of Love" while still a student, and later married Burt Bacharach.
Mick Wilson, Mick of Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich (4 March). There were two other "Micks" later, but Michael Wilson was the original Mick, and the drummer in the classic line-up.
Roger Daltry of The Who (1 March). The best live band ever. No doubt the "Hope I die before I get old" lyric will be mentioned ad nauseam in the context of this remarkable birthday, but it, and all the Who's early material, has stood the test of time.
Mike d'Abo of Manfred Mann (1 March). He was the vocalist in the second major line-up of this very successful, and very long-lived, band.
December and January saw a slew of new members of the 80ASG club.
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Dickey Betts of the Allman Brothers Band on 12 December. Recently inactive (he was very ill in 2018), his career outside the ABB was much longer than his time in it, but that's what we all remember him for, and especially the collaboration with Duane Allman that brought us one of the best live albums ever. Dickey even named his son Duane, after his former bandmate.
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Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones on 18 December. Well, they're still going strong, and even produced a cracking new album last year. Don't bet against him making 90.
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Jacqui McShee of Pentangle on 25 December. The first band I ever saw, and still one of the best I have ever seen. Jacqui is still going strong with her Pentangle off-shoot (she plays the Barnoldswick Arts Centre later this year).
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Pete Sinfield, lyricist, mainly for King Crimson, which he co-founded, but also, later, for many pop acts, including Bucks Fizz, on 27 December. In the Court of the Crimson King is his masterpiece. Now a poet.
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Mike McGear of Scaffold on 7 January. Overshadowed by a famous brother, but found fame as a member of Scaffold, one of the longest-lived groups ever (all now over 80).
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Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin on 9 January. Founder, and leader, of a band with the credible claim to be the best ever.
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Nick Mason of Pink Floyd on 27 January. The ever-present heart of PF, now revisiting their earlier material with his Saucerful of Secrets super-group.
Some sad news recently of four departures, Steve Harley, who was Cockney Rebel; Ian Amey, Tich of Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich; Wayne Kramer of the MC-5; and Toni Stern, Carole King's co-writer. Brief tributes to all, and to other recent losses from across the world of music, are on our Farewell page.
To celebrate rock's 80 year olds, and other feats of longevity, please visit our Analyses of these living legends.
Best place to start is probably with the Bands pages. We've grouped the bands into five categories, dependent on the survival rate of the membership. We're only focusing, initially, on major line-ups, although our database aims to track all recording line-ups. We're much less interested at this stage (although not uninterested) in touring line-ups.
An "On this day..." feature is on our Celebrations page.
Please note - the site is still (yes, still) undergoing a major refresh, during which old, outdated material will still be available for a while - please bear with us while we clean everything up, including proper attribution of all the photos we have used
Photo credits
The Who, Jim Summaria, (Wikipedia:Contact us/Photo submission), licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en
The Small Faces, Billboard , now in public domain
The Beatles, unknown photographer, public domain
Tom Constanten, photo belongs to the Grateful Dead
John Sebastian, extracted from photo taken by Jim Summaria in 1974 and used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license
Ric Rothwell, contributed by Duckman367 and used under CC-BY-SA
Carole Bayer Sager, taken by Angela George in 2013, and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license
Mick Wilson, extracted from DDDBMT taken by Ben Merk (Anefo), made available under made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication
Roger Daltry, davidwbaker, under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en
Mike d'Abo, Ron Kroon (ANEFO), used under CC 1.0
Page last updated 22 March 2024