Men Of A Certain Age by Kate Mossman – Book Review

Men Of A Certain Age by Kate Mossman

Published by: Nine Eight Books

Release date: 3rd April 2025

Music journalist Kate Mossman has compiled a selection of interviews with ageing male rock stars and uses them to analyse her obsession with ageing male rock stars.

Does the world need another book about middle-aged male rock stars? Kate Mossman asks the question herself: the answer being that she needed to write it. “The older male rock star,” she writes, “isn’t just my specialist subject – it’s my obsession.”

So you get two books in one: nineteen long-form interviews with rock stars (originally from The Word and the New Statesman), framed by fragments of memoir that try to make sense of this obsession.

It’s an inconclusive exploration, but the personal stories are just as interesting as the interviews. The obsession started with a teenage love of the then-unfashionable Queen during the “joyless” and “ironic” 1990s. (Interviewing Roger Taylor years later in his Cornwall home, she already knew which house it was.)

Then there’s another obsession – America, which she visits 38 times in 11 years. On one occasion, in 2007, it was to see the (also then-unfashionable) Glen Campbell. Mossman writes her first published piece of music journalism about the experience and begins a new career. Her first magazine job is at The Word, where she is the only woman but fits right in due to her “middle-aged man’s taste”.

Despite this, what you get from the interviews is a female perspective on the subject. Mossman’s contemporary Jude Rogers wrote in her book The Sound of Being Human about the way female interviewers can approach the job differently. And Mossman also notices a different dynamic when she meets the stars she is to write about. (Like Rogers, too, sharing music with her father is a strong theme in the book.)

Sixties throwback Kevin Ayers is “activated into confessional mode” because she is young and female. She relates to Bruce Hornsby as “a sort of cosmic father figure”. She makes use of “father-daughter energy” when talking to Tom Jones. Some musicians, she feels, are relieved to have someone different to talk to in this male-dominated world.

The book is interesting for its insights into the work of a music writer: the desire to connect with the interviewee along with an awareness of the distance between you; the professional need to describe someone as you find them, balanced with the knowledge of their vulnerability; the recognition that some people are so famous that you will never get past the showbusiness persona.

The interviews themselves are also insightful – detailed and well-researched with exemplary storytelling. There are questions about what happens to the ageing rocker who can’t hit the high notes any more or needs a hip operation. There are concerns about brand and legacy, and the presence of death. There are some rock businessmen, and there are some very odd people.

Because rock is more than middle-aged these days, the interviewees span at least two generations, from 60s guitar heroes (Jeff Beck) to 80s pop stars (Depeche Mode). Plus some you might have not heard of: Trans-Siberian Orchestra, anyone?

And the final interview is, strangely, not a musician but a muse: Cary Raditz, the man that Joni Mitchell’s song Carey was written about. This chapter hints at an end to Mossman’s obsession… perhaps.

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Men Of A Certain Age is available at all good bookstores.

Words by Penny Kiley. You can read her Louder than War reviews at her author profile, and her archive music journalism on Substack.