NEVER CAN SAY GOODBYE
For stars, retirement is different
Frank Sinatra set the model for a show-business retirement, bowing out of public life at age 55 in 1970, only to shamelessly return three years later with an album and tour snappily branded Ol’ Blue Eyes Is Back. Stars of the arts seem to treat retirement more like a sabbatical from the limelight, or possibly just a buzzword to stir interest in their latest project, with the implicit threat that fans had better catch them before they are gone for good.
REMEMBER WOODSTOCK, MAN?
The shining lights of the Age of Aquarius seem to have the toughest time packing it in. The Who’s farewell tours now likely outnumber the triumphant, vital tours of their prime. Barbra Streisand, Billy Joel, George Michael and Kate Bush are among those superstars who have announced retirement only to return for sellout shows (albeit Bush kept it up longer than most, staying offstage for 25 years). Sinéad O’Connor has retired so many times she once admitted, “I need to retire from retirement.”
“Musicians don’t retire,” Louis Armstrong once said. “They stop when there’s no more music in them.”
Like The Who, Tina Turner apparently enjoyed her 1990 farewell tour so much she had a second one in 2000 and a third in 2008. At 73, the old soul diva has been quiet of late, but recently told Vogue she was “waiting for inspiration.” Who knows when the muse might call?
I’ M AN ARTIST, THEREFORE WHIMSICAL
It isn’t just the old fogeys who muse about calling it a day. Singer Lily Allen — then just 25 — retired in 2010 to be a stay-athome mom. Two years later she was back in the studio, admitting she had got “bored.” Jay-Z held a “retirement party” at Madison Square Gardens in 2003 at just 34, but was back in the studio within months of “the worst retirement in history,” admitting “something, when you love it, is always tugging at you.”
Then there is the “you won’t have me to kick around anymore” retirement. Petulant pop star Justin Bieber holds the record for the briefest — and most premature — retirement. With just an hour between tweets he announced in December 2013 he was giving it all up — an hour later, he changed his mind.
FADE TO BLACK
Actors seem particularly prone to the lure of early retirement, especially those whose careers have been defined by physical vigour and beauty. Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and Ryan Gosling are among the matinee idols much given to speculation about swapping acting for more cerebral roles behind the camera. Cary Grant, Sean Connery, Greta Garbo, Brigitte Bardot and, more recently, Hugh Grant all called a premature end to still-flourishing careers.
Clint Eastwood got much mileage from 2008’s Gran Torino, an elegiac film about an aging tough guy, which he announced would mark his retirement from acting. It afforded the superstar a particularly graceful exit from the screen. But then he spoiled it all by returning in 2012 with Trouble With the Curve, a performance greeted with a kind of communal, “Didn’t you say you were leaving?” Eastwood had clearly discovered one of the unspoken truths of retirement: It can be boring.
MY COLD DEAD HANDS
“I’ll never retire,” Tony Bennett has insisted, still crooning at 87. “What would I do? Watch the wall? I don’t get it. I dislike people that think they have to give up on life because of their age. That’s incorrect thinking. Never give up on life.”