Don’t disagree necessarily with your points which are valid. However the other side of the coin is that music is all these people do. It’s their craft and their life. Mccartney and ringo still perform.
I always thought it was great how the beatles ended - having people begging for more. What I don’t understand is why these bands can’t keep the creative level going and keep going further instead of plateauing and deteriorating after they hit 30.
Jeff beck is an example of an act that just kept going and gets better with each year. But he seems to be an exception - with a few others.
McCartney and Ringo come out and perform at tributes for dead friends and one off stuff like that. And they all went out and did their own things. But the stones have no excuse. They all have to have had more money than god a long time ago. They went from having to have paramedics at their concerts for drug overdoses to having tjem on hand for their fans expiring of natural causes.
Not to be a smartass, but in all honesty, there are a couple things at work IMO. First is how many of us ever hit the top of our respective professions? I mean the TOP?
Now consider how many of the one or two possibly that have could sustain that level for decades? One? the other? Neither?
THEN add in the nebulousness of being creative pitted against the changing tastes of the audience. If you take 1000 fans of a band at 16, 800 will be into totally different music at 30...while the new kids may not like your thing at all.
IMO, it’s a miracle a band like AC/DC (who I love)can get any real longevity at all. Any band really in ‘popular music’ since that definition varies lately by the literal week thanks to Beatport and the like.
TLDR version...IT’s HARRRRRDDD!!!