Rock on, Grandpa!

By Sally Abrahms

A little more than a year ago, Eileen Hall was riding in the passenger seat of a car when it skidded on black ice and smashed into a pole in Chicopee, Mass. "The doctors said I wouldn't survive," says Hall. "'After all, she's 90,' they told my family." To which her son replied, "Well, not many 90-year-olds just came back from performing in Europe." Less than a year later, Hall was back on the road appearing in the concert halls of Belgium and the Netherlands with the Young@Heart Chorus, a 21-member Northampton, Mass., group in their 70s, 80s and 90s that performs rock-'n'-roll classics by such masters as the Clash, the Rolling Stones, Hendrix and Springsteen on a grueling touring schedule around the globe.

There are plenty of singing groups for the elderly. Most of them croon standards such as Down by the Old Mill Stream and Let Me Call You Sweetheart. But Young@Heart is a different cut altogether. This silver-haired troupe, ranging in age from 73 to 91 (average age: 80), plays to far younger audiences (think 18 to 50) that want to hear songs they love or grew up with--and see them performed. These performers are about a lot more than singing. They take music and put it together with dramatic costumes, scenery and dance movements, and are accompanied by at least five musicians (mostly decades younger). Young@Heart has even incorporated slides and video into its 80-min. shows. The "script" is the songs' lyrics rather than a typical theater narrative.

In the past seven years, these gyrating geriatrics have performed mostly in Europe but also in Australia, Canada and Hawaii, playing to sold-out houses. Not bad, considering that collectively their medical histories include pacemakers, heart attacks and hip replacements. They take three wheelchairs on tour for long walks between airport gates and for getting around town.

"We're an unlikely group to be entertaining," admits Brock Lynch, 80, a retired oncologist. "I've never said this to anyone before," Lynch confides with a grin, "but we're hip, we're hot and we're hams."

From the get-go, you will notice that these performers are like few others you would see onstage. Their shows are steeped in theatrics, humor and a touch of the bizarre. But it's not self-mocking--in other words, it's not cheap oldster jokes at their own expense. Their latest show, Road to Nowhere, for instance, is set inside a community center where the group pretends to be elderly workers, singing We've Got to Get Out of This Place by the Animals and Neil Young's Helpless, among other tunes. The message is clear: there are many still-working seniors who don't have the luxury of playing golf and watching their 401(k)s grow. Much of the humor that is a big part of their theatrical approach comes courtesy of Bob Cilman, 51, an accomplished artistic director and the group's founder. The performers' Road to Heaven is set in a surreal nursing home where, in the opening scene, chorus members wear prairie bonnets and cowboy hats. The repertoire includes Every Breath You Take by the Police, Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven and Bob Dylan's Forever Young. The audience's emotions are constantly shifting from tears to outright guffaws, which is in part what makes the experience so moving.

"I get such a high from this group," says Edward Rehar, 81. Rehar was at a laundry in Florence, Mass., when he went up the street to find a rest room and saw the group rehearsing. He ended up getting onstage, in spite of having a pacemaker and ailments that require him to take eight pills a day. "After we sing, it takes me an hour and a half to calm down." He adds, "It's better than drugs."

If the geriatric crooners weren't unorthodox enough--they have sung with break dancers and a gay men's chorus--consider their new sidekick, the Drunk Stuntmen, a real rock-'n'-roll band with members the ages of their grandchildren. The two Northampton groups share some songs in Road to Nowhere, which they performed in the Netherlands last fall and plan to take in October to London, where Young@Heart will do 12 shows.

"The crowds swarm around them like rock stars," marvels Steven Sanderson, 34, the Stuntmen's lead electric guitarist, who is extensively tattooed, sports a cowboy hat and wears shades indoors. Why would these grandparent types appeal to the 18-to-50-year-olds? "It's unlike anything else," Sanderson says. "The first time I heard them at a rehearsal, it brought me to tears. It was one of the most emotional things I've ever seen. What happens is that the words take on a whole new meaning when they sing the songs."

The chorus also turns on its ear the perception of what it means to grow old. Twenty-two years ago while working a lunch shift at a senior center, Cilman conceived the idea of having elders entertain, but it wasn't until a year later that he got a group together. Initially it did community performances, but in 1997 Cilman took the troupe to Holland for its first overseas appearance. These days Young@Heart confines itself to just a couple of local gigs, at which the performers get an equally exuberant reception.

The group usually does a song in the language of or by a musician from the country it is visiting, whether it's Take on Me by Norway's rock gods A Ha or Olivia Newton-John's Let's Get Physical in Australia.

For many in the group, it's a reawakening. Joe Benoit, 82, who has lymphoma, used to tell his children when they were growing up to "turn down that music." But "now I like it," he says. "Your outlook changes when you get older. You think, 'How much longer do I have to live? Why don't I just enjoy myself?'"

Training is key. Young@Heart isn't for the tone deaf or the wimpy. Members must audition, although some are making their stage debut, and they must be reasonably hearty to endure long rehearsals, even longer plane rides and, of course, the performances. For the show always goes on. As the group members sing in one of their most popular numbers, Forever Young, by the legendary Dylan, "Be courageous and be brave,/ And in my heart you'll always stay,/ Forever young, forever young, forever young." That's exactly what they intend to do.