Fujirockers: The official fansite of the Fuji Rock Festival

In recent years, music legends have become an ever more important component of Fuji Rock. The festival may have been built around top acts of the day like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Bjork and the Chemical Brothers, but this year there will also be at least eight headlining musicians over the age of 60. The festival has always had retro moments, but in the last two years – perhaps made apparent by the jaw-dropping return of 70s rock icon John Fogerty – the historical programming has seemed ever more pronounced.

This year, the oldest musician is 80-year-old Jamaican ska pioneer Ernest Ranglin, who played with Prince Buster, the Skatalites, Jimmy Cliff and Bob Marley and helped invent the “scratching” sound of ska guitar. Buddy Guy, 76, is an American blues guitarist who helped define the sound of Chicago blues (read preview). The Kinks stopped playing in 1996, but lead singer Ray Davies (actually, since he’s been knighted, it’s “Sir” Ray Davies) continues to write new material even as he performs Kinks classics, as he did at Glastonbury 2010, when he played Lola, You Really Got Me, Sunny Afternoon, All of the Day and All of the Night as well as a few tunes of his post-1985 solo career (see the entire set list). Two icons of Japanese pop will play: Tokiko Kato is Japan’s Joan Baez (2011 review), and Yosui Inoue, who became a legend in the 1970s and has seven #1 albums in Japan.

Here is a quick list of headlining musicians and band leaders over 60 years old who will perform this year.

Ernest Ranglin, Jamaican ska musician, b. 1932
Buddy Guy, American blues musician, b. 1936
Elvin Bishop, American blues guitarist, b. 1942
Tokiko Kato, Japanese singer, b. 1943
Ray Davies, the Kinks, lead singer, b. 1944
Frederick “Toots” Hibbert, Toots and the Maytals, b. 1945
Yōsui Inoue, Japanese pop singer, b. 1948
Lynval Golding, the Specials, guitar and vocals, b. 1951

To this list, we could possibly also add DJ Scratchy (Barry Myers), the touring DJ for the Clash whose career began in 1976, but we don’t actually know how old he is (see interview). There are also legacy acts, like Seun Kuti (the son of Fela Kuti) who plays with Africa80 (preview) and Dumstaphunk, a band created by Ivan Neville (son of Aaron Neville of the Neville Brothers). Jah Wobble (formerly of Public Image Limited) is certainly a figure who was part of music history (the 80s), but he’s only 54, so we’ll stop the list there.

If all of these musicians have something in common, it’s that they belong to the era of electric music that followed World War II. Their styles are as diverse as blues, rock, ska and Japanese pop, but these styles all influenced the rock and roll of the 1960s and 1970s. And those classic templates have now diversified to become the incredible eclectic collection of music played by the 200+ bands, DJs and singers at Fuji Rock 2012. We know all too well that old rockers cannot live for ever, but while they’re still around, it’s great to see that Fuji Rock is not letting them fade away.

PHOTO: KEVIN WINTER, COURTESY OF FUJI ROCK