Will Mega Concert Featuring Dylan, The Stones, The Who, Paul McCartney, Neil Young, And Pink Floyd Be The Final Nail In Rock ‘N’ Roll’s Coffin?

A mega concert rumored to feature an impressive line-up of yesterday’s men, including Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, The Who, Neil Young, and Pink Floyd, has been billed as the “greatest rock festival of all-time.”

The question remains: Will this baby boomer’s bash and pensioner’s party finally finish off the frail and wasted body of rock ‘n’ roll, which has been on life support for some time now?

Once upon a time, rock ‘n’ roll was a young man’s game. When the likes of Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Gene Vincent, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, and Buddy Holly all got together in the chemistry lab to cook up the teenage dream many moons ago, they put a sign on the door that read, “No admittance to boring old bastards.”

Of course, that’s all changed now, and the “boring old bastards” have not only stormed the lab, they’ve taken the raw and undiluted product Elvis and the boys pulled from the fire and rejigged, repackaged, reissued, and resold it to create a billion dollar empire, they can comfortably rule the roost from.

Of whom do we speak? Why the baby boomer rocker, of course. These children of the 1960s and 70s, with their wild and untamed visions, may have once bottled lightning and cooked up their own unique brand of the good stuff in the magic lab, but they’re now all out of juice and running on empty, yet still they keep ploughing their furrows like farmers with nowhere else to go.

The baby boomer’s boom just refuses to be silenced. Even though their faces are shot to hell, their clothes ill-fitting, their bellies bloated, their skin sagging, their eyes bloodshot, their timing erratic, and their sensibilities shattered, these boomers with their guitars, their worshipful hordes, their fat wallets, their ridiculous haircuts, and their constant reminiscing about their glorious heyday remain a diabolical force of nature, hell-bent on denying the youth of today a voice or opportunity to call their own unless the boomers are given carte blanche to stamp their big, flabby, flatulent footprint all over it.”

The Independent reports that “Forget Glastonbury, the greatest festival line-up in the history of rock music has just been announced.”

“The Who’s Roger Daltrey has confirmed that news of a huge California event from the organizers of Coachella is true, with his band set to perform alongside Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters on the third and final night.”

The Independent than asks, “Sounds epic right. Wait until you hear the other rumored headliners, all of whom are responsible for revolutionizing pop music in the Sixties and Seventies: it’s Bob Dylan and The Rolling Stones on the opening night, followed by Paul McCartney and Neil Young on the second.”

It then describes the baby boomer’s bash as a “festival of dreams,” but in reality, a bunch of worn-out old-timers, long past their prime and rocking out like punk never happened, is the sort of stuff nightmares are made of.

But then these damned boomers refuse to bow out gracefully and give the new kids on the block a fair crack of the whip.

The boomers are and were a curious breed. In their heyday, they popped their pills, tripped their trips, snorted their lines, and casually transmitted sexual diseases and negated all personal responsibility in the name of freedom. Yet when it was the turn of these hippies, radicals, and liberals to take the reins of power and lead the world, the first thing they told the youth to do was just say no to drugs, and if you didn’t, they’d lock you up in their massive prison-industrial complex.

There’s a baby boomer industry out there, and it’s big, bad, growing, and run by boomers for the benefit of other boomers. How often do your hear a boomer booming, “Young people today are pathetic, entitled brats, with no gumption, initiative or spine,” while at the same time fondly regarding themselves as the “special generation” with better books, clothes, music, and class of person than the muddled and botched no-hopers that litter their streets today.

The boomers enjoyed peak levels of income, affordable housing, wider opportunity, and better retirement packages than any generation before or since. And instead of passing the fruits of such benefits on in the altruistic manner they would have you believe once defined their generation, they sit upon them like a glutinous hen guarding its golden eggs. The boomers defining gesture is that they have made a religion out of consumerism.

And that’s the bottom line. It’s reported that should these baby boomer “titans” turn up to play, each act will be reportedly paid a massive $7 million for their sets.

Now that’s a lot of dollars by anyone’s standards. Whatever happened to making the world a better place?

[Photo by Steve Jennings/Getty Images]