Hope I Get Old Before I Die
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  • Published: 17 February 2026
  • ISBN: 9781804991992
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 432
  • RRP: $26.99
Categories:

Hope I Get Old Before I Die

Why rock stars never retire

Formats & editions
Paperback
17 Feb 2026
EBook
5 Sep 2024
Audiobook
5 Sep 2024
Hardback
5 Oct 2024
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Showcasing the third act of the gods of rock, David Hepworth looks at how enduring icons like Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Pink Floyd remain on top in the ever-changing music game.

When Paul McCartney closed Live Aid in July 1985 we thought he was rock's Grand Old Man. He was forty-three years old.

As the forty years since have shown he - and many others of his generation - were just getting started.

This was the time when live performance took over from records. The big names of the 60s and 70s exploited the age of spectacle that Live Aid had ushered in to enjoy the longest lap of honour in the history of humanity, continuing to go strong long after everyone else had retired.

Hence this is a story without precedent, a story in which Elton John plays a royal funeral, Mick Jagger gets a knighthood, Bob Dylan picks up the Nobel Prize, the Beatles become, if anything, bigger than the Beatles and it's beginning to look as though all of the above will, thanks to the march of technology, be playing Las Vegas for ever.
  • Published: 17 February 2026
  • ISBN: 9781804991992
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 432
  • RRP: $26.99
Categories:

About the author

David Hepworth

David Hepworth has been writing, broadcasting and speaking about music and media since the seventies. He was involved in the launch and editing of magazines such as Smash Hits, Q, Mojo and The Word, among many others.

He was one of the presenters of the BBC rock music programme The Old Grey Whistle Test and one of the anchors of the corporation’s coverage of Live Aid in 1985. He has won the Editor of the Year and Writer of the Year awards from the Professional Publishers Association and the Mark Boxer award from the British Society of Magazine Editors.

He lives in London, dividing his time between writing for a variety of newspaper and magazines, speaking at events, broadcasting work, podcasting at www.wordpodcast.co.uk and blogging at www.whatsheonaboutnow.blogspot.co.uk.

He says Chuck Berry’s ‘You Never Can Tell’ is the best record ever made. ‘This is not an opinion,’ he says. ‘It’s a matter of fact.’

portrait photo of David Hepworth

Also by David Hepworth

Abbey Road
Rock & Roll A Level
A Fabulous Creation
Nothing is Real
Uncommon People
1971 - Never a Dull Moment
Overpaid, Oversexed and Over There
See all

Praise for Hope I Get Old Before I Die

Fascinating stuff with great anecdotes

Sun

Hepworth is a genuinely great writer, with a winning turn of phrase

Guardian

Reads like a series of rich, fast-paced and immensely funny short stories

The Oldie

Offers solid insights into the compulsions and drives that keep bands reforming

Sunday Times

Another triumph... Part whizz-bang storytelling, part social history, part forensic examination of an understudied phenomenon, the book is destined to become the go-to text on a subject we never thought we'd have to survey

Literary Review