Elderly Classic Rock Musicians Don't Like Music Video Games

from the hey-kids,-get-off-my-lawn! dept

I guess once you get old, all that "new stuff" is suddenly "bad" -- even if you used to be a rebellious rocker. With the recent launch of "The Beatles" version of Rockband, it seems that all sorts of other classic rock musicians have had to step up and talk about how awful such video games are. Bill Wyman from the Rolling Stones, Nick Mason from Pink Floyd, and Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin have all come out as being against these games for one reason or another:

"It encourages kids not to learn, that's the trouble.... It makes less and less people dedicated to really get down and learn an instrument. I think is a pity so I'm not really keen on that kind of stuff." -- Bill Wyman, The Rolling Stones

"It irritates me having watched my kids do it - if they spent as much time practising the guitar as learning how to press the buttons they'd be damn good by now." -- Nick Mason, Pink Floyd

After first saying there was no way that Led Zeppelin would ever put out a similar version of Rock Band: "Obviously, there have been overtures made to Led Zeppelin, but if you start with the first track on the first album, 'Good Times Bad Times,' and you think of the drum part that John Bonham did there, how many drummers in the world can actually play that, let alone dabble on a Christmas morning?" -- Jimmy Page, Led Zeppelin

This sort of strikes me as the old rockers' equivalent of "hey you kids, get off my lawn." I'm sure when these guys were first growing up, learning their instruments and playing with their guitars and drums, that elderly musicians from a bygone era were complaining that what they were doing wasn't music and wasn't the sort of things kids should be mixed up in, because it didn't encourage them to play a symphony or something. Time to get with the times.

Filed Under: bill wyman, jimmy page, musicians, nick mason, rock band, video games