I've posted elsewhere about a Dutch supergroup formed in 2016 by George Kooymans of Golden Earring, who was 68 then. The other members of Vreemde Kostgangers (literally means Strange Lodgers, colloquially means All Sorts) were 70-year-old Boudewijn de Groot, who'd been famous as a folk singer doing protest songs in the '60s and '70s (sort of the Dutch equivalent of Bob Dylan) and Henny Vrienten, 68, who'd been with the ska/reggae band Doe Maar in the 1980s.
They didn't get together and record and give concerts because they needed the money, and they all had music careers outside the trio, but they loved music, loved playing together, were doing this for the sheer joy of creating and performing music.
They were giving concerts through at least March of 2020, shortly after Covid hit.
Sadly, it didn't last. Boudewijn decided in 2020 that the touring was becoming too stressful for him. He'd done a lot less performing, live performances, than the other two, and he'd been a solo artist, so maybe being part of a group that was really in demand was too much for him. But then the other two, who'd seemed perfectly healthy and youthful, became ill -- George with ALS, and Henny with what some reports said was cancer, which he died of a few months ago.
But much younger artists have had their careers ended suddenly by serious illnesses, too.
These guys were still making very good music and having a great time doing so, into their '70s.
Below is video of a performance in 2018, when Henny, the youngest, was a few months away from his 70th birthday.
And below that is a 2016 documentary of this Dutch supergroup starting to work together, a documentary made for Dutch TV. Skip the first 7-1/2 minutes, which are all commercials, unless you're really curious about Dutch commercials. At 8-1/2 minutes you'll see current video of the guys driving, interspersed with video of them at the height of their fame, decades earlier. (One of the articles on VK that I ran across a while back was a columnist for a Dutch women's magazine, for women over 40, recommending the documentary, but getting stuck the first couple of paragraphs on how she'd had a crush on George Kooymans as a teen, even though she hadn't particularly liked Golden Earring's music then; the first of those paragraphs had ended "My God, that boy was beautiful!" which made me laugh out loud. That article is at https://www.nouveau.nl/blogs/marion-florusse-cultuur-0/tag/3973/4058?ref=https%3A//www.google.com/&authId=e66845e7-2f20-41d1-9ef1-dcc715d00cfc .)
I'm sure part of this trio's popularity had to do with nostalgia, but they were also fine musicians and singers, and still very creative.
I think all musicians should be encouraged to keep working as musicians as long as possible I believe it's good for them.
= new reply since forum marked as read