In his latest book, Music, Style, and Aging: Growing Old Disgracefully?, Andy Bennett reinforces his status as one of the foremost scholars of age, music and culture. He has, over the years, provided a sophisticated sociological interrogation of the ways in which youth connect in and through music scenes, demonstrating the nuanced distinctions of these processes within different music genres or in differing geo-cultural locales (Bennett Reference Bennett2000; Bennett and Kahn-Harris Reference Bennett and Kahn-Harris2004; Bennett and Peterson Reference Bennett and Peterson2004). In this new tome, Bennett extends his focus on aging toward middle-aged popular music fans, expanding on a series of journal entries on the topic that he has published in the past decade.

Bennett's project ‘constitutes an attempt to deal precisely with the question of how people move on from youth and affectively grow older with popular music’ (p. 2), suggesting that, ‘for all the anecdotal evidence that aging popular music fans continue to take their music, and themselves, very seriously, little attempt has been made, in academic writing or elsewhere, to engage with the pleasures of the aging popular music audience’ (p. 14). This is only partly true, however, as there is a growing body of research indicating interest in the ways in which aging subjects express their ongoing enthusiasm for multiple facets of popular culture, including music (such as the special issue of Popular Music on Music, Dance and Ageing; Forman and Fairley Reference Forman and Fairley2012).

This body of work presents exciting new challenges to the orthodoxy that popular music is, first and foremost, the domain of youth (a point convincingly raised by Hesmondhalgh (Reference Hesmondhalgh2005)). As Rupa Huq writes, ‘although pop has proved to be durable and influential in contemporary society, half a century of pop history means that the past figures more prominently in pop than ever before and that youth can no longer have an exclusive claim on pop music’ (Huq Reference Huq2006, p. 42). Indeed, much of this emergent work within popular music and age studies is actually conducted by middle-aged scholars – many of whom are members of the ‘baby boom’ generation – who openly acknowledge that their newfound research interests are informed by their own reflexive perspectives on age and aging.

Structured into two sections, Music, Style and Aging first presents a theoretical overview of the key socio-political forces and age-oriented issues under interrogation, developing a historical and theoretical framework. This is accompanied in the second section by four case studies, each of which addresses a specific dimension of culture and aging: style; age, leisure and labour; generational differences and dissonance; and music, age and politics. This organisation works well, allowing Bennett to first establish the context and theoretical terrain through which he advances his arguments and then to move with more focused detail into the themes raised via his ethnographic interviews and field observations.

As one would anticipate, Bennett is attuned to the historical components of the topic as he outlines not only the ways in which age and aging are perceived and experienced in the early 21st century but also the gradual transformations in age consciousness across time (principally in the United States, England, Europe and Australia since roughly WWII). Such temporality is important, especially once we encounter the utterances of Bennett's engaging informants, who articulate their shifting perceptions about age, music, style and politics, relating key moments in their own lives that influenced their age identities.

Bennett properly accepts that age, like other facets of identity, is a social construct and is, thus, prone to diverse representations (including pernicious stereotypes) that communicate multiple meanings and values. Several of the case studies and informants' comments address what might be defined as defensive aging, reflecting an apparent desire to resist the media's decline narratives and the powerfully corrosive public representations of, for example, middle-aged rock fans or other aging audience members. In other instances there are expressions of joyful and unrepentant aging as well as more serious reflections on how political orientations, ideologies and critical cultural stances first formulated in youth have persisted into middle age. Bennett puts his source material to good use and his informants' words are employed judiciously but never capriciously.

Bennett emphasises the core concepts, ‘lifestyle projects’ and ‘affective scenes’. Building on the work of David Chaney (Reference Chaney1996), he describes the lifestyle project as an evolving and enduring process that can be charted throughout one's life course, suggesting not only that individuals are always a work in progress, but that music, style and politics are important elements in the constitution of the aging self. According to Bennett, ‘Embedded in memory and embodied through reflection on their relation to individual biography, popular music can thus become an important source of life-mapping for aging popular music fans’ (p. 48). While music may not constitute the sole foundation underlying our subjective identities, it is frequently an immeasurable, if subdued influence on who we are and how we wish to communicate our ‘selves’ to others. Music fluctuates in its role and importance according to social circumstances, something of which Bennett is cognisant, understanding that music is nested within a panoply of entwined factors. He carefully teases out the ways in which, for example, political attitudes, sartorial style, labour and professional status, parental status, and gender are merged with what one listens to under what conditions and what meanings are derived from the listening experience.

Music, Bennett explains, is intensely felt and ultimately ‘highly personal’ (p. 44), yet while it can deeply impact one's character it also often provides the basis of forged bonds, aligning people within ‘collectively shared’ experiences (p. 62). Here, Bennett works through subculture and post-subculture theories, settling on the notions of ‘affective belonging’ (p. 52) and ‘affective scenes’ (pp. 60–63) that inflect musical orientations and cultural tastes, facilitating group cohesion among aging fans and, under certain circumstances as Bennett explains, across different age cohorts. As he notes, the love of music and the appreciation of artistry often lead to debates and even arguments about what one listens to and why, but these same affective responses to musicians and their recordings can bridge the divide between adult and youth fans or within the family structure, between parents and their children.

This analytical approach also opens up discussion about the social sites in which individuals converge to share musical experiences, with the analysis covering the distinctions between musical apprehension and cultural mores associated with festivals, nightclubs, the pub or music retail outlets. While the book's primary emphasis is on audiences and fans, there are welcome references to older practising musicians (such as a Ramones cover band or a working dance music DJ in his early fifties) as well as material encompassing expansive aspects of ‘musicking’ (Small Reference Small1998) among middle-aged record shop owners, club managers, dance party promoters or bar staff.

The chapter on ‘Toning Down the Mohawk’ is particularly interesting, with its focus on the dilution or subtraction of stylistic and attitudinal elements within one's cultural identity. The notion of ‘toning down’ is a powerful discourse that is nominated by Bennett's informants in several contexts as a means of explaining how they attenuate their affiliations with previous music scenes and youth cultures. In more theoretical terms, toning down offers a way of describing abbreviated affective intensities pertaining to one's investment in popular music, its accompanying scenes, and the social collectives affiliated with such scenes. Here, Bennett explores how social aging is a negotiated process that may be a response to one's own sense of his or her physical bearing, modifying activities or appearances ‘in ways that closely resonate with and adapt to the changing physical appearance of their aging body’ (p. 71); references to the unfortunate dilemma posed by male pattern baldness pop up several times among informants who once claimed status as a ‘punk’ or ‘hippie’ with their attendant coiffure.

The toning down process also corresponds with the raising of families or career responsibilities. In this instance, altering one's prior look or disposition may also be a factor of public acceptability and, thus, it reflects wider social opprobrium for what is commonly perceived as childish, irresponsible or just plain tactless behaviours when individuals insist on maintaining pronounced affiliations with the music, style or practices of their youth. Indeed, many of Bennett's informants admit that, for better or worse, they are influenced by the persistent social demands to act your age. Failure to ‘tone down’ the traces of one's youth can have consequences that they would rather not confront, even if it is something as minimally affecting as a child's embarrassment about dad's lingering punk style or mom's choice in rocker girl clothing. Yet toning down is a matter of fractions, and most aging music audiences cited in this text have not abandoned their music fandom, nor have they necessarily rerouted their core political and social convictions (beliefs that, in many cases, remain infused with anti-mainstream, anti-establishment sentiment and a healthy dose of unrepentant ‘fuck the system’ affront).

While the analysis is rich and probing throughout the book, the musical scope is relatively restricted and, despite framing the issues generally within the realm of ‘popular music’, the actual cases really only address rock, punk and dance music scenes. Moreover, the primary age designations that receive the most attention are those of the old, aging or ‘ex’ hippie or punk with an average age of 45–55 years. The research conclusions are probably not hampered by these factors, yet it would be interesting to see how, for example, country music audiences, hip-hop fans or jazz aficionados figure into the equation (including those who are considerably older than Bennett's subjects), since there is sufficient difference between these respective scenes and age cohorts to warrant closer attention. Still, it is also true that Bennett has done plenty here and the analytical leads he has developed will undoubtedly prove beneficial for future work on other musical genres, stylistic practices and audience groups. In fact, Bennett has already assisted in this very process, with Paul Hodkinson, in their edited book Ageing and Youth Cultures: Music, Style and Identity (2012) that spans a much wider range of music genres, scenes and contexts; the two books should consequently be considered in tandem.

Among the many lessons of Music, Aging and Style is the reminder that there is no single way of aging or of finessing the elaborate social rituals and norms associated with aging; although the Who proclaimed in 1965, ‘hope I die before I get old’, in 1986 They Might Be Giants declared ‘I hope I get old before I die’. Bennett never claims that aging is solely an idiosyncratic process, unique and distinct among each individual despite individualised age sensibilities within which personal experience is rendered meaningful. Instead, he painstakingly traces the cultural forces and attitudinal threads that link aging rockers, punks and dance music enthusiasts, suggesting that within the diversity there are several notable commonalities that tell us plenty about how music and style remain important to people as they move into middle age and beyond.