I'm old. My music is old. I'm not supposed to be in the spotlight anymore. I'm apart of history books now, things children, teenagers, and adults read for homework for their classes. The younger generation must step forward and face the adoration of the crowd, not me. My time is over. My moment is gone. I have no regrets. 

I've lived a good life. I've lived a life others would dream of, a life I too once dreamed until that life became my life. My, how I sound morbid... as if I'm dying. That's far from the case. But when you're as old as me, when you have lived the life I have and seen those you thought would never leave actually go... you learn to appreciate every day as if it is your last. It's apart of life to learn about death. And while I am not dying, I know one day I will, and I acknowledge that fact. I appreciate that I'm still here, that I'm even still relevant. 

I stare at the empty music club. Tonight we will be playing here, me and these young fellows I'm playing with now. There will be fans gathered around, mostly young faces, rocking out and shouting and doing whatever they do. But once in awhile I will find the same old wrinkled visages that remind me of my own and I will acknowledge them with smiles and waves. I love this younger generation, I do. They appreciate the old, they appreciate me, and they don't forget. It's like they're touching history they wish they could've been apart of, and while that amuses me, it also saddens me. I'm history now. I'm literally apart of history. 

But generally, I'm amused. It truly amuses me that this younger generation doesn't want the old generation to die. When I was their age, I felt the same way. I'd be damned if I let my heroes, the heroes of my childhood be forgotten. I wanted to make them feel appreciated and loved. Now I know how my heroes must've felt they were my age. This is how they must've felt seeing the younger generation be influenced by them and become bigger than they ever hoped; yet we still acknowledged them every chance we got. It's funny. Now the tables have turned. Now I am them. I am my heroes. I look into a circle I thought I was already excluded from the second my skin wrinkled on my face and my veins showed on my arms, and the circle is welcoming me still with unwrinkled, wide open arms and smooth smiling faces. They still love me. I'm apart of history, and they still love me. It's strange and relieving, beautiful and weird at the same time.

I walk to my keyboard, running my hands over its smooth surface. There's no one here in the club. The techies have finished preparing for tonight. We already performed our soundcheck half an hour ago. Josh already ran off to grab dinner and I think Dave went with him. I distinctly remember Josh grumbling about something or another, but it was something about being a rockstar and fans always after him. Dave laughed then. "It's apart of our job description," he said. And I remember laughing too, because he's right. I've been in this job of rocking and rolling for my entire life. Fans are apart of the lifestyle, and I wouldn't change it for anything. 

It's been fun being a rock star. Even that term is a bit strange. A star illuminates, gathers people around, gains everyone's attention. A star blinds and gives life. A star leads. A rockstar does all of that, except he does it with a chip on his shoulder, a smirk on his face, a bottle of booze in one hand and a joint in the other. Rockstars are the real piped pipers that take us to the stairway to whatever we call heaven. Yes, I was one of them. Rob, Jimmy and Bonzo were the louder rockstars, while I was the quiet one. They illuminated the most, gathered everyone's attention the most, and for Bonzo, he burned out. 

I sit at my keyboard and smile. When I close my eyes I can imagine that he's there, watching me from behind the drums as he always did. 

I do wonder how he would've looked old. I imagine he would have grown out that belly of his, grown out his hair and beard even longer, yet still be able to drum better than any of these young folk. 

I do wish he could've made it to his forties. I think I would've liked seeing laugh lines around his beaming smile as he patted my back and teased me over something stupid I did. That would've been nice. But nothing in life ever works out as planned. Still, an old man can dream.

People still ask me how I felt finding Bonzo dead. Considering we were together at the time, of course it hurt. But it's funny. Thinking about him doesn't hurt anymore. I forget when it stopped hurting, but it's nice now to imagine him, recall a memory or two, or even talk about him, and not have this inconsolable pain inside me. 

Though, I wonder what amuses me more. The fact that I no longer feel any sadness when I think of Bonzo, or the fact that yet another drummer is following me around like a puppy dog begging for a bone. 

"Hey! You ready for tonight John?" I look over my shoulder and smile. With the way Dave looks, he does remind me of a young Bonzo. The beard, the hair, even the smile. Even the way he sits down behind the drums and looks at me eagerly reminds me of Bonzo. 

"Oh just about." I turn back to the keyboard and feel deja vu washing over me. I... know this. I definitely know this.

"You wanna jam or something to warm up?" Dave asks behind me. "It'll do us some good! Get in the groove, get ready, get in the pocket, stuff like that..."

The memory of thirty years ago comes to me and my lips twitch into a smile. We were in some rock hall in Britain. My hands weren't wrinkled then. I was young and Bonzo was alive. So alive. He asked for a jam then. And what did I tell him? Oh, yes.

"Well, I'm not sure we should," I say now, as I said then. I laugh, like I did thirty years ago. "Though if you think you can keep the beat, then do try to keep up."

"I definitely can, definitely," Dave says, and it's a different reaction than Bonzo said then. Back then, he said, "Oh get off your high horse and just jam, ya wanker." My fingers rest on the keyboard as I think of him. Even when he was teasing me, Bonzo was full of affection.

I start playing what I feel. Beautiful melodies come out of me, sad and melancholic, almost nostalgic. It's different from then. Bonzo and I jammed on blues. Now I'm making my own blues and Dave is right there in time, in cue. 

I speed up and Dave is there. I slow down and Dave is there. He's right in the pocket with me and I know he's not going to let go. It's his message to me: test me all you want, I'm not going to stop, you won't make me. 

I get the subtle hint when he tries to challenge me, changing the beat to his accord, changing the tempo, changing the signature. You're not going to make me stop wanting you, he's saying. No matter who you are, what your age is or anything. Now try to keep up with me. I laugh and continue playing. It's lovely how music can say what words can't, when people are too afraid to voice what they truly want to say. 

I can feel his eyes on me like Bonzo used to do. He's following me like a hawk, listening for the changes in time signature, the changes in the beat. But he's just not tuned into the music. He's tuned into me. I know he's looking at me, seeing me, really watching me. And it doesn't unnerve me. I've been watched before. It's nothing new to this old man.

I've not been foolish to his glorified admiration of me these past weeks. I've seen the way he watches me. I've noticed how he follows me. He's been waiting for this opportunity, and now he's challenged me. Now he wants an answer. 

I slow the tempo down again, slow it, slow, slower still, until I stop to change the effects on the keyboard to my liking. This is the answer I can give him. He's a smart boy. He'll know. 

I start the song, the song where I feel safest, the song with the most meaning and memories attached. No Quarter is my home, and Dave knows the tune. It feels almost empty without Robert singing there at that empty mic, without Jimmy playing along on his guitar, but I don't need to have them there to hear the song in my mind. 

We play the song, we jam, then at my keyboard solo, we talk with our instruments. I let him know with my fingers, with my notes, what my answer is. I play my solo flawlessly, like I haven't in years. I don't think. I feel. I feel the music and I transfer it to the speakers, to him, to the club. 

He tries to talk back to me. He tries to change my mind. He pounds, he smashes, he crashes. He changes the song on me more than once, but I always go back to the same beat. I always go back to No Quarter. And then, he gets the hint. He gets the answer. I'm not going to change for him. I'm too old to change, too old to go down the same road and make the same mistakes, if not worse ones than before. Maybe if he was older, or if I was younger, I'd be going into this head first, blinders on, no questions asked. But I'm not. I can't. And I refuse to. It's best for both of us. I'm going to stay where it's safe, and he can either play along, or he can stop playing all together.

I'm the one who ends the jam with the last quivering, water-sounding notes on my keyboard. I don't have to turn around to see what Dave looks like. I can hear it in the way he sighs, the way he throws his sticks onto the ground, the way he jumps out from his kit with a skid of the chair. I don't need to look. These ears still hear well enough. 

"I guess it's a lost cause," Dave says. 

"Not lost. Just misguided." I slowly close my keyboard and rest my wrinkled palms on its smooth top. I can see my reflection in the club lights, on its black surface. I smile my wrinkled smile. "It's best not to go further."

"Sure." He clicks his tongue, scratches his beard. I know it's his beard. Bonzo did the same when he was agitated. "Maybe I was just being... stupid. I dunno. I'm sorry. I know it was stupid of me but I just... I dunno John. It just happened."

"It's okay." I stand up and look at the club lights, the empty room. It's going to be a good show. I smile wide at the prospect of a great crowd, and the devious thought that crossed my mind. "I appreciate the compliment though."

"Compliment?"

I finally look over my shoulder and grin at his dumbfounded face. "It's not everyday a sixty-year-old can make a forty-year-old want to jump his bones like a fifteen-year-old boy."

His jaw drops and I bark a huge laugh. I can hear him stuttering as I leave and head on backstage. Whether Dave knows it or not, it is a nice compliment. Yes, I am in the history books of this younger generation and maybe my time is over, but I guess this old man isn't so old after all.