Aging & Wisdom Quote by Geoff Downes

There is a pragmatic kind of romance in how Geoff Downes collapses the supposed hierarchy between “old” and “new” work. The line reads like a press obligation, but the subtext is more pointed: for a legacy musician, the archive is not a museum wing, it’s active inventory. When he says they view “old material very much like…new material,” he’s quietly rejecting the rock-critical idea that authenticity only lives in forward motion. He’s also sidestepping the cynical alternative: that tours exist to cash in on nostalgia while the “new material” is the polite appetizer no one ordered.

The phrase “if this gives us a chance” is doing heavy lifting. It frames promotion not as desperate relevance-chasing but as opportunism in the neutral, business sense: conditions have aligned, so you act. Downes’s “then, yes” lands like a shrug and a vow at once, acknowledging the grind without apologizing for it. For artists with long catalogues, the public often treats earlier hits as public property and later releases as footnotes. His wording pushes back: the band’s relationship to its songs remains continuous even if the audience’s isn’t.

Context matters here because Downes comes from a world where bands are brands and touring is the real economy. The statement is less about artistic reinvention than about controlling narrative: don’t let “old vs. new” become a value judgment. Make it a single, ongoing body of work worth putting onstage right now.