It’s one of the most deliciously ironic lines ever sung by a certain now-wizened rock star: “What a drag it is getting old.”
The Rolling Stones, who gave us that lyric in “Mother’s Little Helper,” might now beg to differ from their own youthful it still approximates our general outlook on the elderly. From Botox to longevity diets to cryogenic research, our culture is frantic to stave off the arrival of old age.
Except for the senior-citizen singers in “Young at Heart,” out in theaters now, who are making a convincing case for life beginning at 80. Their world-traveling chorus, also called Young at Heart, covers rock songs by everyone from the Clash to Coldplay to Sonic Youth, putting a distinctly different spin on tunes like “Should I Stay or Should I Go,” “Golden Years” and “I Wanna Be Sedated.”
In one of the documentary’s several music videos, 81-year-old Fred Knittle dons a white tux along with his oxygen tank and sways down a disco-lit bowling alley, singing the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive.”
But Knittle, whose singing voice bears a startling resemblance to Johnny Cash’s, admits neither he nor many of the other members signed up out of any particular enthusiasm for the genre.
“We had all told our kids, ‘Turn it down or turn it off,'” says the jovial Knittle, whose taste runs to romantic ballads from the ’40s and ’50s. “We didn’t like that music. It’s dischordant and loud. But then Bob [Cilman, the group’s director] introduces it, and we make the song something meaningful to us.”
In addition to his disco turn, Knittle performs a heart-wrenching rendition of Coldplay’s “Fix You.” “When I heard the original, sung by Chris Martin, I didn’t understand it,” he says. “It was very high-pitched. I could never get up that high, not unless my shorts are very loose.”
The song was originally supposed to be performed as a duet with his friend Bob Salvini, who died only days before the concert.
“What Bob and I had discussed, before he died, was to set up a live video link from his hospital bed, so he could still sing it in a duet,” says the film’s director, Stephen Walker. “He was going to sing on a big screen behind Fred. That would have been an amazing moment.”
But Salvini’s devotion to the group, literally until the day he died, is a testament to the group’s power of invigoration. Which leads one to wonder, are these particularly hardy types who, in their 80s and 90s, sign up for the chorus, or is it something about the music itself?
“If you do something long enough, you get better at it,” Cilman points out. He’s technically speaking about singing, but he could easily be talking about the group’s outlook on life. These are people who really know you’re only as old as you feel. And when you’re howling James Brown lyrics at the top of your lungs, how old can that really be?
“Take somebody like Joe,” says Walker, speaking about one of the other central singers in the film. “Here’s somebody who went through six bouts of chemotherapy. His doctors basically said he should have been dead. And he still continued to go on tour, he almost never missed a show. The collective spirit of these people going out on stage and singing is what’s partly keeping them alive, in the deepest sense of the word.”
Walker, a veteran BBC documentarian, spent seven weeks in the Massachusetts town of Northampton, filming rehearsals and concerts. One of the film’s most affecting scenes takes place at a local prison, where the singers perform in the yard for a group of initially skeptical inmates.
By the time the chorus breaks into Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young,” an astonishing change comes over the tough-looking audience. The men are beaming, choked up, and, finally, wildly applauding.
“I was filming the prisoners myself with a hand-held camera,” says Walker, “and I remember seeing their faces and saying to myself, ‘God, hold, hold, hold,’ and holding my breath, because what happened there really was magical.”
Inevitably, death plays a large role, both in the film and in the ever-changing makeup of the chorus. Cilman’s seen 70 members die since he began in 1983, and he says it’s still usually harder for him than it is for his singers.
“They’re really used to dealing with it. When you get to 90, everybody you know has died,” he says. “So when it happens, it’s the chorus members who are the most resilient.”
Eileen Hall, a 92-year-old singer in the group, says as much in the film: “You do go on, because you realize everybody has to go in the end. We all do. You’ve got to keep going.”
“But,” Cilman adds, “God, what a way to go. These people are on such a fantastic ride at the end of their lives.”