I think this is possibly the biggest factor in why someone might seem like they don’t play like they might have during their “peak”.
Especially for full time musicians. I’ve heard many say they don’t have time to practice as such, only to play!
Very much agree (ex-violinist here too).
I think its more of a live thing as his studio chops are still bang on in my opinion. I wonder if its road fatigue or more of a stamina issue. Plus his back-catalogue is hefty in terms of output and song length.
Deffo has to have an impact. 100% agree
One guy I’m pretty confident still practices a lot is MAB, and he’s pushing 70. I think although his playing is still elite level, he’s not as clean as he used to be looking at videos like this one when the faster alternate picked lines come in. That’s not a knock to him either, his paying is still top notch, just not where it seemed to be 20+ years ago.
His technique has changed subtly as he got older - it’s much more elbow-driven now than it used to be. Now, did the technique change out of necessity, or did the old technique require more maintenance, which he no longer wanted to put in? Who knows…
He’s said on livestreams that he uses a lot of economy picking now…
Wherever that’s changed the elbow mechanic , I have no idea!
Is the implicit question here whether you can continue to play well as you get older? In general the evidence suggests that you can, for just about as long as you want. When you have a technique where the motions are already learned and you use it regularly, it will last just about as long as you like. Jorge Strunz and Albert Lee were both 60+ when we interviewed them. Mike was 50 in the first interview and 60 in the second. They all sounded essentially perfect to their recorded selves.
Mike in the live “No Boundaries” clip posted above is still playing extremely well. The entire segment from about 2 minutes until the descending scale line at 2:40 is about as well played as you would want anyone to play it. Keep in mind also that the arpeggios from 2:19 to 2:24 aren’t typical sweeping — the descending side is actually alternate picking. For the curious, here’s what is actually going on:
All the “sloppy Yngwie” clips I’ve watched in the past few years seemed more like impatience than physical degradation. He plays at warp 11 all the time, and fills every gap whether or not there’s time for a fill. There are elements in all these performances which are mechanically perfect and sound just like recorded Yngwie. I don’t think you can really draw any conclusions about aging from what he sounds like in these clips.
The Petrucci elbow thing might just be a choice, albeit not one he probably needed to make:
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I could be imagining it but the No Boundaries sounded a bit messy around 40s and 1:30 - not extremely so but those runs stuck out to me. The overall performance is good enough that it’s really hard to say there’s any definite decline in playing ability, and mentally I’m probably comparing it to studio recordings while this is a more raw take.
Barring some arthritis, neural issues or injury that prevents a player from making the same motions they used to, I would be surprised if there were much age related decline.
Another data point, didn’t Segovia keep performing well into old age?
There is really no question really in my initial post. It’s just an observation and a point of discussion. As we’re all guitarists and we’re all subject to aging, so I think it’s an interesting topic.
There is no question that older players can still play well. Even the players I cited as examples of diminished abilities still play well. It’s just that maintaining high levels of technique becomes more difficult with age, for a plethora of reasons, as other posters have pointed out.
One thing I’ve thought about is how we’re using the guitar in a way it wasn’t initially meant to be used. I think it was designed as a simple accompaniment instrument, not a solo instrument that blazing fast passages are played on. That’s why guitar players struggle with technique more than players of any other instrument; we’re basically fighting the guitar and forcing it to do things it wasn’t meant to do. This can have health consequences if one doesn’t take care.
I agree that generally, it’s very hard to attribute technical decline to age over other factors.
Regarding Eric Johnson specifically, I think there’s more to it than just aging.
If you watch earlier footage of his playing, for example his playing in the mid '70s with the Electromagnets, or in the early '80s at the beginning of his solo career, he was already an excellent guitar player with a distinctive style. However, his technique and style continued to develop.
From the late '80s to the mid '90s, Eric was an absolutely terrifying guitar monster. His mechanics were totally refined, with any rough edges from his earlier period having been polished. The degree of synergy between Eric’s mechanics and his vocabularly at the time was astonishing, and he pushed the capabilities of his mechanics to the extremes.
I don’t believe it’s actually possible to play Eric’s lines any better than he played them. He was as close to perfect as it’s possible to be.
It’s also well known that during this period, Eric was becoming increasingly neurotic and obsessive over the smallest details. He not only felt that his vintage Fuzz Face sounded better when it was held closed with a rubber band instead of screws, he even marked a “T” on his rubber bands to indicate which side he wanted on top. His obsessive perfectionism resulted in several recording projects being delayed or scrapped, to the detriment of his career.
He became increasingly anxious and began suffering from severe tinnitus (which are closely correlated), and was unsure if he would be able to continue his musical career at all. He has been very open about the stress he felt during that period. Also, somebody very close to Eric was murdered at the time, which was obviously deeply traumatic.
Eric has discussed the process of getting away from that perfectionism and anxiety and learning to love the processes of playing guitar and making music in interviews. There has been a very clear shift in his music and his guitar playing beginning with the Bloom album. It seems his relationship with the guitar and with music is much healthier now, and he has been much more productive in recent years.
He has also discussed trying to get away from the pentatonic pyrotechnics and find new melodic and harmonic directions. His playing on the Eclectic album with Mike Stern and on the Up Close album offer good examples.
Perhaps some of the decline in his technique is due to aging, but I suspect that it’s mostly the result of trying to get away from his perfectionist tendencies and trying to move in different musical directions.
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Physical decline is a fact of time and is unavoidable. It can be slowed or staved off, but never stopped. To steal a quote from Bronn in Game of Thrones “Nothing (screw)s you harder than time.”
Players like Eric Johnson, Yngwie etc. didn’t develop their technique for the sake of technique. They were solving a problem in order to hear what was in their heads. It was a means to an end.
EJ is 68, Yngwie is 59, Batio is 66, Morse is 68. Morse in particular has had hand issues for many, many years and changed his approach to compensate.
Whether they’ll admit it in public or not - they all know they’ve lost a step somewhere. Guaranteed each of them is/has and will be dealing with wear and tear on their bodies. Carpal tunnel, tendonitis, arthritis.
That’s not good or bad. It just is…and I’ll be at the show when EJ passes through Cleveland late in '23. 
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In martial arts, we say “time is undefeated.” Obviously, fighting another person is a much more physically demanding and takes a much heavier toll on the body than playing an instrument.
I know it’s not what you’re implying, but I think it’s hard to attribute Steve Morse’s issues with his particular technique as some people often do.
He has lived an active lifestyle and has been injured in other pursuits. Yngwie Malmsteen famously damaged his picking wrist in a car crash, and Steve Vai suffered a severe bacterial infection in his picking arm.
It’s also possible that every picking technique carries some risk of wear and tear, and Steve Morse has probably picked more notes than anybody else alive.
A little over two years ago I dislocated and tore my right shoulder. It feels fine now (I’m 33) and doesn’t impact my guitar playing at all, but how will it feel when I’m in my late sixties?
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Understood - but this is part of aging. The longer you live, the more stuff happens. Some of it good, some not. But it all adds up and you work with what you have.
Due to burns suffered in a fire, Django Reinhardt was left with just two good fingers on his left hand. The approach he took in relearning to play helped define an entire genre.
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I absolutely agree. I just think it’s important to seperate the idea of gradual decline due to the inevitable effects of aging versus decline due to specific injuries experienced over the course of our lives. One affects us all to some degree or another, and the other is unique to each of us. Many people will go their whole lives without experiencing the shoulder injury I had, for example.
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I’m not sure the average age of forum members here at CTC, but in other groups where I know there were a lot of guitarists in their “2nd half” whenever the topic of hand related overuse injuries came up there seemed to be many guitarists reporting of issues that have interfered their playing or even at times requiring an extended break from the guitar. It’s hard to isolate “pure decline” from even conditions that simply were more aggravated by other non-guitar activities (in my case, weightlifting in my 20s) but my only point is that it just seems incredibly common for SOMETHING to come up and play a role in physical abilities/hand health.
IIRC when I was doing occupational therapy , my OT said she did a clinic at Berklee College and surveyed students and when asked if they were playing through any sort of pain or discomfort something ridiculous like 80% said yes.
Maybe “avoidable but difficult to avoid” applies here.
edit to add: @Tom_Gilroy that account of Eric Johnson is super interesting. I’ve also had various tinnitus and neurological issues, + to be honest, anxiety, and they definitely can all connect and create a sort of “negative synergy.” Eric’s story has a happy ending but it’s also a little comforting to be reminded how the elite pros struggle with “normal human things” just like us normal humans.
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While I don’t disagree - the two are inextricably linked.
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I could barely play guitar for about two years due to tendon issues from typing my thesis. I couldn’t even comfortably hold a cup of coffee in my left hand for most of that time. I learned to play some slide, I couldn’t do much else.
Two years ago I dislocated and tore my right shoulder during BJJ. It didn’t really bother me while playing guitar, except that I couldn’t practice elbow driven picking movements. As you say, it’s almost inevitable that SOMETHING will happen on a long enough timescale.
I think learning that my heroes are human beings who have human struggles and human flaws and failings has been essential to me. It’s hard to believe that you can do the things that they can do it you see them as “special” or somehow fundamentally different to you.
The later chapters of Eric’s story are happy ones, and I’m delighted that he’s still making music and releasing more frequently. Venus Isle is still my absolute favourite album ever, but I’ve loved Eric’s more recent albums.
Some of my other favourite players haven’t had happy endings. Allan Holdsworth and Shawn Lane are both much more tragic stories, and both players active roles in creating their own misfortunes. They were people with their own struggles, flaws and failings, as all of us are.
on reflection whilst re-reading this thread, I think I’m more concerned about not reaching a high enough peak in the first place! I don’t really have much to diminish!! 
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I’d like to cast a vote for this sentiment! While I’m not that old (just turned 40) there is a very good possibility I’m past the halfway mark. Especially since I had my mid life crisis in my late 20’s lol!
All thanks to CtC, I’m (technically) better than I was in my 20’s, when I was practicing hours and hours per day. I’m excited to reach my peak I’ll worry about the decline when that happens.
C.f. the Terry Syrek interview. The stuff he says he did there, like “practicing” (quotes intentional) for 14 hours straight as a type of competition with his friends — it’s tragic that anyone thought this was a good idea. The venn diagram of personalities that elect to go to formal music school and personalities likely to overtrain for illogical reasons is probably a circle. I’m not sure who or what to blame. And Terry is a wonderful human and player, just to be clear.
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Hahahahahahaha! Well I did elect to “major in music” (at a normal 4 year degree type of college) but I took as much conservatory type stuff as I could jam into my schedule. And I always thought that “more is more” and definitely spent hundreds of hours on mindless exercises over the years. Small sample set with just me, but that venn diagram was spot on in my case.