Wit & Attitude Quote by Nik Kershaw

Kershaw’s line lands like a shrug with a raised eyebrow: he’s not condemning reunion tours or nostalgia circuits, he’s puncturing the two pieties that usually surround them. One is the rockist fantasy that “authentic” musicians should age out gracefully, like they’re supposed to retire into tasteful obscurity once the hits stop charting. The other is the sanitized PR story that these comebacks are purely “for the fans,” driven by artistic necessity. He names the motives everyone knows are there: pleasure and cash.

The phrasing matters. “Hell of a lot of bloody fun” is an unglamorous kind of endorsement, the sound of a working musician refusing to be embarrassed by joy. It’s also defensive in a smart way: “People are allowed” frames the whole debate as a petty cultural permission slip that middle-aged performers are expected to request. By specifying “after the age of 40,” he targets the ageism baked into pop culture, where the same audience that demands eternal youth also buys VIP packages to relive theirs.

Then he adds the kicker: “a lot of them do need the money.” Not “want,” not “deserve,” but “need,” which quietly drags the mythology of rock-star wealth back to earth. Royalties shrink, labels change hands, streaming pays fractions, and the costs of touring rise. Kershaw’s subtext is a small act of class solidarity: don’t moralize the hustle. If a band reforms, it’s not automatically a cash-grab; it’s often a paycheck - and a night where the job doesn’t feel like one.