Ageing rock stars go on and on

ROCKERS ARE NO different from the rest of us: they, too, need to work for longer to maintain a decent standard of living in retirement. Previous generations could rely on record sales and royalties to fund their pensions, but digital disruption has largely closed off such revenues, so the performers have to get back on the road. That involves new financial risks. Rock stars have always been risky assets; one study suggests that they are 1.7 times as likely to die as others of the same age. Now that revenues from concerts have become so much more important, the potential losses to tour organisers have ballooned. That applies all the more if the performers are a bunch of 70-year-olds who may not always have treated their bodies as temples.

This is where financiers come in. Concert organisers and others who depend on mature rockers for their income are more likely to insure against the risk that their performers might not show up, says Jonathan Thomas, a Lloyd’s underwriter. He has seen this market for “non-appearance products” grow as musicians get older. Film studios take out similar cover for mature stars. Disney must have been relieved to have done so for Carrie Fisher, who died at the age of 60 last year before completing filming on all the “Star Wars” films she was contracted for, triggering a claim which could go up to $50m.

Rockers themselves are also taking out insurance against the most common ailments that could stop them from carrying on working. Aside from overdosing, typical career-ending injuries used to include electrocution (all that electrical equipment), but now are more likely to be osteoporosis and loss of hearing. The Rolling Stones’ lead guitarist, Keith Richards, who is 73, has insured his hands for $1.6m.

Underwriters are ready to accept their clients’ lifestyle and work hazards, arguing that where there is risk, there is reward—if the price is right. “It’s a badly misunderstood market, and one 70-year-old rocker is not like the other; there’s plenty of scope for savvy underwriting,” says one of them. And the insurers do take precautions. Exclusions for pre-existing conditions, especially those related to alcohol abuse or failing livers, are common.

Rockers of advanced years are also good for busting stereotypes about older workers. Their energy levels may be lower, but they often pace themselves more and look after themselves better than in their younger days; not so much sex and drugs, more tea and yoga. Sometimes such moderation is imposed by their insurers. The Stones “14 on Fire” tour contract is said to have contained exclusion clauses for a variety of dangerous pursuits. Besides, says the underwriter, by the age of 70 some of the riskier rockers have already been weeded out by the Grim Reaper.