Grilled chicken is moist, flavorful — Fred Knittle wears his belt up high. His nose is tethered to an oxygen tank, and on stage he's confined to a folding chair. From this unlikely perch, he's turning rock 'n' roll on its head.
Singing Coldplay's "Fix You," Knittle transforms the song into a powerful ballad about a grandfather's healing wisdom. It means something different coming from an 80-year-old retiree suffering from congestive heart failure. Knittle is a singer for the Young at Heart Chorus, whose members range from 73 to 92 years old.
Singing songs they shouldn't even know, at an age when they're expected to be sitting quietly somewhere, they subvert all accepted notions of old and young. Songs by bands like the Radiohead, OutKast and Nirvana take on a new dimension when performed by these 23 foot-stomping senior citizens. "Fix You" or the Clash's "Should I Stay or Should I Go" become about life and death.
Though little known in America, the Northampton-based Young at Heart has performed from Australia to London, serenaded the king and queen of Norway, been discussed on "The Daily Show," and been documented in an acclaimed film for British television. They're now recording an album tentatively titled "Rockin' At Heaven's Door." It may sound like a gimmick, but Young at Heart is no karaoke act.
They're a cover band for the ages. Inside a Young at Heart rehearsal in Northampton, Bob Cilman, 53, is pretending to throw his shoe at Jack Schnepp for missing his cue on Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing in the Dark." After a laugh, the shoe returns to Cilman's foot, but more lighthearted threats will surely follow.
Whipping his chorus into shape before their spring concert at Dartmouth College is hard work, and Cilman is a taskmaster who refuses to baby his elderly singers. "I hated Bob when I first came into the chorus," says ex-Marine Steve Martin, 79, whose youthful vigor is only hinted at by the convertible he drives. It took me a while to trust him.
" Young at Heart is the brainchild of Cilman, whose generous heart beats with a provocateur spirit. He directs the chorus through unique arrangements of music the singers spent their lives telling their kids and grandkids to "turn down!" He's been having his baby boomer revenge for 25 years.
"It's making these people sing stuff that they really didn't want to hear their kids listen to," says Cilman, grinning. Founded in 1982, the chorus grew out of a lunchtime sing-a-long at a meal site for the elderly run by Cilman. He was struck by a deadpan version of Manfred Mann's "Do Wah Diddy" sung by a woman in her late 80s.
We can explore this,'" remembers Cilman, who is director of the Northampton Arts Council. (The chorus is funded by the town of Northampton, the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.) In the past decade, the chorus has done 12 tours in Europe, Australia and Canada.
They took up residence at the Lyric Hammersmith in London for 10 days in 2005, and made Norwegian royalty cheer their version of a-ha's "Take On Me" in 2001. "I don't know how many more 15 minutes we'll have in our lifetime," jokes Martin. They perform with an expert band that includes William Arnold Jr.
, who played drums for Motown great Junior Walker. Being edgy — not cutesy — is a constant aim of the chorus, which also performs theatrical productions. Cilman has paired them with a gay men's chorus and a troupe of break dancers.
The chorus' touching name, he says, was "the last democratic decision the group made." Some in the group were apprehensive about a performance at the Hampshire County Jail. The prisoners first eyed the chorus derisively, laughing at their expense.
By the time the last lines of Bob Dylan's "Forever Young" were sung, the applause was overflowing; the tattooed, hardened criminals were a blubbery mess. "My future is static / It's already had it." The chorus has had a great deal of turnover, with few members left from the early '80s.
Cilman estimates he's attended more than 70 funerals through the years. "It's not as difficult as you'd think because you get to be with these people at a pretty great moment at the end of their life," he says. "You know that they had something really great going on right at the end.
" Joseph Mitchell, 75, never sang before he joined the chorus last year. "I'm a shy person, but they brought it out of me," says Mitchell. Louise Canady, who has been in the chorus for two years, was a trained opera singer whom Cilman relentlessly recruited.
"I was harassed," says Canady, whose version of U2's "One" could give Bono (or Mary J. Blige) a run for the money. Jeanne Hatch, an 80-year-old former drama teacher, began singing as just a 4- or 5-year-old, when she appeared on a radio variety show called "Kansas City Kitty's Review.
" With a hearty laugh, she explains that when Cilman announces "Take five" in rehearsal, "Man, there's a mad dash to the restroom." Most of the chorus members have full, active calendars with events ranging from grandchildren's visits to bicycle trips to harmonica groups called the Golden Age Harmonicats. "They say 60 is the new 40," says Hatch.
"Well, I say 80 is the new 60!" Stan Goldman, 77, has to occasionally sit down during performances because of arthritis in his left thigh. "Too many elderly folk lead such sedentary lives, that they just sit and sit and age and age," he says.
"My feeling is, if you don't keep moving, you're going to be a target for something." Most of the chorus members — like Goldman — listen to jazz, opera or classical, and have only a faint awareness of the music they sing. The songs are as foreign to the chorus as Wagner is to teenyboppers.
"'I swear that I don't have a gun' — I mean, what's the meaning of that?" Goldman gripes, quoting Nirvana. "I sometimes ponder the songs that are given to us.
I ponder the meaning and I come up with nothing. I figure I'll roll with the punches." Martin, in kind, rattles off a few of the lyrics he finds absurd.
It takes a minute before it's clear that he's singing "Pump It" by the Black Eyed Peas.
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