Pop music
Generation problems
Marcus Berkmann
You probably have to be of a certain age to enjoy Classic Albums (BBC 1, Mon- days). You probably have to be of a certain age (50), of a certain cast of mind (old hippy), possibly even of a certain nationali- ty (American). If you are all three, these may well be classic albums. It's only if you're fortunate enough not to be that the problems start.
The six albums chosen for this series are Electric Ladyland by Jimi Hendrix, Grace- land by Paul Simon, Anthem To Beauty by the Grateful Dead, Songs In The Key Of Life by Stevie Wonder, The Band by (you guessed it) The Band, and Rumours by Fleetwood Mac. Each has been profiled with the love and care customarily lavished on the BBC's more trainspottery rock pro- grammes. Everyone still alive has been interviewed, rare film has been unearthed, and authoritative-looking men with beards are on hand to tell us how important it all was. You can't fault the assiduousness of the research, or the slickness of the pro- duction values. What you can fault is the choice of such dull records in the first place.
Of Jimi Hendrix it may fairly be said that we know as much of him as we will ever need to know, and probably a whole lot more. Paul Simon's Graceland is probably Old Wiggy's best work, but whether an album so self-conscious and self-congratu- latory deserves the status of 'classic' is at best debatable. The Grateful Dead are probably more famous in the United King- dom for their exploding keyboard players than for any of their albums. The Band suf- fered from a fairly comprehensive charisma shortage back in 1967; time hasn't been kind to them. Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, which is clearly the populist selection here, seems merely lightweight. The one cast- iron, no-arguments, top-drawer classic is the Stevie Wonder, and even that may not be his best album.
Time Out magazine blamed the show's executive producer, who labours under the burden of being 50 years old. Shocked that anyone so elderly should be placed in charge of such a project, two furious young writers chose their own six classic albums, all very recent and most just obscure enough to make them feel terribly clever for choosing them. Radiohead's The Bends and Beck's Odelay may yet be seen as clas- sics, but the choice of Blur's Modern Life Is Rubbish seems perverse when it was Park- life, released a year later, which everyone bought and listened to. Manic Street Preachers' The Holy Bible, described by the Time Out boys as 'a work of terrible beau- ty', is already beginning to crowd out sec- ond-hand record shops: 80 per cent of those who own it will cringe when it's brought out at a dinner party in five years time. And as for Til Shiloh by Buju Banton and Enter The 36 Chambers by the Wu- Tang Clan, no, I haven't heard of them either — which is almost certainly the point.
When I fell in love with pop music in the mid-1970s, parents disapproved as a matter of course and Capital Radio proudly called its evening show Your Mother Wouldn't Like It. Pop remains the great generation gap music, but now there is a whole net- work of generation gaps between age groups who love their own music and think everything else is rubbish. A 50-year-old produces a television series called Classic Albums; 25-year-olds on Time Out sneer at it; a 37-year-old like me sneers at them all. Across the country 16-year-olds are despis- ing the tastes of 13-year-olds, who think they have one up on the nine-year-olds. And everyone has his own list of six Classic Albums, which everyone else thinks is at least deeply flawed, if not fundamentally misconceived. My own six? Don't even ask . . .
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