Silicon Insider: Why Old Rockers Sound Better Than Ever

and often better -- as the music of my generation, Rock's so-called golden age.

So why were the biggest tours of 2007 those of the Police, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, and the Eagles -- and that doesn't even count the Led Zeppelin reunion -- all of them eligible for AARP membership? Surely it isn't just Boomers filling those big halls to wallow in nostalgia. So why are people still showing up to see these guys, or stripping the Starbuck's rack of the new Paul McCartney album?

The obvious answer is that these bands are good. Really good. If Jimmy Page, Joe Walsh and Nils Lofgren were great guitarists in 1980, how good must they be after a quarter century more of practicing and gigging? And if Sir Paul, Brian Wilson and Don Henley can still (pretty much) hit those high notes, how much richer must their vocals be with decades more wisdom behind them?

That, I think, is where modern medicine comes in. Until just the last decade, most singers -- from Satch to Ella to Crosby to Clooney -- began to sound old by age 55. Elvis seemed ancient in his forties. Many had health problems, most had to change their style to match their growing physical limitations.

They sounded different -- short of breadth, limited in range, talking as much as singing -- and as time went on, that made them increasingly obsolete to all but true fans. But that no longer seems the case: if you don't manage to overdose or drink yourself to death at a young age, and take reasonable care of yourself in middle age, nowadays you can probably still be performing at a very high level of virtuosity well into your seventh decade -- and longer.

And what time has taken away from you -- like Brian Wilson's falsetto -- can now be restored on the computer; meanwhile you've gained all of the wisdom and experience of those years to add a depth to your music that would have been impossible as a callow youth.

A few years ago I interviewed John Lee Hooker. He was well into his 80s, but still sartorially resplendent in a sharkskin suit, sunglasses and homburg. Had he stayed in the Delta, or working in that Detroit automobile plant, he would have been a very decrepit old man. Instead, he handed me his newest CD, recorded with Carlos Santana. B.B. King, despite his diabetes and the need to perform while sitting down, is still robust at an age when Muddy Waters was long in the grave. Johnny Cash's last recordings are among his greatest. And who believes that Keith Richards would still be alive without modern science?