Men of a Certain Age: My Encounters with Rock Royalty

by Kate Mossman

Fascinating, funny and tender' ADAM BUXTON

'My favourite writer and interviewer' JUDE ROGERS

'If Kate Mossman's name is on it, then I want to read it' PETE PAPHIDES

From Jeff Beck to Ray Davies, Jon Bon Jovi to Kevin Ayers, Kate Mossman has long fostered an interest in male musicians of a certain age.

Why is it that when I meet them, I feel something ignite inside me? What is this strange connection - to feel so excited, yet so at ease? And how is it that in the presence of a wrinkly rock star twice my age, I sometimes feel like I'm meeting . . . me?

Featuring nineteen long-form profiles lovingly constructed for The Word magazine and the New Statesman, Men of a Certain Age chronicles the lives of some of the biggest rock stars of our time, including Brian May, Gene Simmons, Terence Trent D'Arby, Johnny Rotten and Nick Cave.

The book is a meditation on the powerful archetype of the ageing rock star, but it is also a personal story - of music and obsession, and of the deep unconscious projections at play in our relationships with the famous people who most capture our hearts. As Kate travels 5,000 miles to try and find Glen Campbell, and to the depths of the Cornish countryside for a rendezvous with Roger Taylor, will she finally unravel the roots of her obsession with the elder statesmen of rock?

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Memoir, Biography

352 pages, Hardcover

Expected publication January 6, 2026

Reviews

[Gavin Hogg · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the skills of a good music writer is to make you interested in artists you'd normally dismiss. I found myself, contrary to my natural instincts, reading about Kiss, Bruce Hornsby and Sting. Kate's a music fan who recognises her own eccentricities and passions and filters her interviews through them, wanting to know more about what makes these creative and magical people tick. It's fascinating to get the under the bonnet introduction before each interview, the circumstances leading up to the magazine feature and a few of the things she couldn't put in the original piece. Highly enjoyable and a lot of fun. Who knew that you could hurt your ankle by jumping up and down too strenuously to a Hornsby guitar riff, that the psychological effect when Kiss get changed into their gear still has a weird energy to it or that the Trans-Siberian Orchestra made over $50 million in less than 2 months in 2014?

[Barry · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm a sucker for this kind of thing. Kate has some canny observations and some lovely, evocative turns of phrase, without succumbing to rock journalist pretension.

[Garry Nixon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved these stories. It was such fun to sit with my iPhone, listening to the songs mentioned, remembering how good (or not so good) they are.

[Lara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book- made me laugh, was really interesting and had such a range of people in it. Thoroughly recommend.

[Mediaman · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well written but half of the musicians she interviewed are not "rock royalty" (at least in America) and she's not a true "journalist" as she keeps telling us. Instead Mossman is a self-admitted fan who is willing to go thousands of miles and walk lonely highways to meet up with a favorite artist. While some of this makes for interesting stories, they are incomplete, and half of the performers featured are so British that most Americans will never have heard of them.

Being from England she may not understand America well but it's fun to read the chapters about her United States travels. She's crazy to refuse to rent a car or hire a taxi/Uber. Instead she'll walk miles through rural Los Angeles, hitchhike, and take the latest possible trains waiting alone in the middle of the night. It would be scary to the average American but for her she acts like it's no big deal.

Mossman's first crush is on Glen Campbell. It's unclear why, beyond her hearing one of his songs on a compilation album in England, but she spends all her money to come to an American concert and meet him. I'm not sure he qualifies as "rock royalty"--I certainly loved his singing and he played backup on some big 1960s hits, but he's more mellow than what we'd define as rock.

Then she makes a big error--when writing about Campbell she says, "His cover versions--always covers, he wrote no songs--were so light and effortless compared to the originals." First of all, his songs weren't all "covers." And second, Campbell DID write songs, especially one major hit ("Turn Around, Look At Me," one of the great 1960s ballads by The Vogues). It would have been as simple as looking it up online.

So now we have a problem--how can readers trust anything she writes when she says "he wrote no songs." That's pretty definitive and proves a flaw in her research. Or maybe she's just too young to write about men of a certain age?

Then she writes something even worse: "Rock journalism is unique in that it's the only place where writers are also obsessive fans."

Wow. Well once you give up your objectivity, you're not a true journalist. But if you want to buy into the feature/advocacy model of writing, then her whole statement is incorrect. Sports writers for every type of athletics, food writers, columnists, and critics for art, theater, television and movies also can also be "obsessive fans." So she's simple wrong.

While it's nice to read a little about her story of getting interviews, there isn't enough of it. Instead there are full reprints of her articles about many of the artists, and of course almost half of them we can't relate to because they must have only been big in England.

So while the chapters about performers that hit it big in America are interesting, that leaves at least half of the book not worth reading. And none of it can be trusted due to her being an "obsessive fan." Those are the flaws of a woman "journalist" of a certain age.

[Keith Hamilton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Inconsequential stuff, too much blather about Kate Mossman (not very interesting), too little about the men of a certain age. A lot of old New Statesmen columns cobbled together does not a book make. Give me Charles Shaar Murray or Paul Morley, or even David Hepworth, who has made this sort of stuff his life's work, any day.

[Andrew Macfarlane · Rating 4 out of 5]

the first few chapters were not very inviting. I enjoyed the first with Brian May and Roger Taylor though didn't get much impression of them or how she, Kate Mossman, now feels about them, having met them. it is worth sticking with the book as it does get better the further in you rwad