Can't get no satisfaction - from new songs

Here's a pop-trivia quiz for you.

Hum a track from the latest Paul McCartney album. Now name a Rolling Stones tune from the past five years. When's the next Pink Floyd disc coming out? (Clue: There isn't one.) What was the last Eric Clapton studio album called?

That's right: It's tough. The great old names of British rock haven't exactly been bursting with new material in recent years. There are still tours, of course, and plenty of live albums and "best-of" compilations.

But fresh tunes are thin on the ground. "There isn't much output nowadays, and when there is, it is not always brilliant," says Sheila Whiteley, author of "Too Much Too Young: Popular Music, Age, and Gender."

So have Britain's rock dinosaurs produced their last roar? Are they, to coin a well-worn phrase, too young to die but too old to rock 'n' roll? A strange coincidence last week might suggest not. Two elder statesmen of British dad rock, Sting and Elvis Costello, released albums of new material on the same day.

And yet these new albums encapsulated the problem for the old guard. Reviews were lukewarm. Some critics did find nice things to say about Sting's "Sacred Love" but Costello's "North" was dismissed as "total agony" by one reviewer. So if no one likes your new stuff and fans only want to hear the oldies, why bother recording new tracks?

"There is already this huge appetite for the back catalog, so it's hardly surprising they don't have the drive to compete with the young guns any more," says rock critic and author Neil McCormick.

"Rock music is a young medium," he adds. "When you look at the most creative period, it's before they're 28. An explosion of creativity goes on in the post-adolescent phase. It's hard for them to mine that same creativity later."

Recent discographies often owe more to the marketing man's talent for repackaging old material than to any new creative impulses.

If you hear a Rolling Stones tune on the radio, it's still more likely to be the classic "Jumpin' Jack Flash" than "Anybody Seen My Baby?" from 1997.

"What you seem to get is a celebration of past glories," says Ms. Whiteley, who is also chair of popular music studies at the University of Salford in Manchester. "The fans want a reconfirmation of their youth. It's the oldies that they associate the groups with, and they are the ones they want to hear."

Britain is much less forgiving than America, where "mature" acts like Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen have produced acclaimed albums recently. In Britain, Mr. McCormick says, ideas such as sound, subculture, and sonic invention are the driving force, making it difficult for yesterday's men to sound relevant.

But don't ever suggest that to the "aging rocker" himself. David Bowie insists that every new album is his best for decades. Bowie is one of the most prolific rock daddies, producing four albums in the past six years. His new recording "Reality," has received some glowing reviews, along with a few middle-of-the-road write-ups. Sir Elton John believes his 2002 record "Songs from the West Coast" was on par with his 1970s classics. As for the Rolling Stones, the entourage gets extremely touchy if you suggest that their creative juices may be drying up.

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