File under: Rock Danny Baker's Great Album Showdown

Good evening, cats and kittens, and thank you for joining me

and what is a preposterous, scientifically specious,

but I hope, tremendously enjoyable adventure into sound. Look at this.

This plastic waffle, this hot biscuit, this platter.

It's an LP, of course.

One of the most wonderful creations in the history of art.

LPs didn't last very long - 30-odd years - and yet, while they were

with us, they harnessed the noises that shook the world.

Tonight, we will celebrate the rock incarnation of the LP.

I will be joined by three equally-foolhardy enthusiasts,

to kick out the jams and wind up with a selection of albums

guaranteed to enrich all our lives.

Again.

Oh, we're rolling.

Hey, cats and kittens. Welcome to my world.

And for viewers under the age of, I don't know, 80,

these beautiful artefacts are what are known as LPs, the long player.

Fragile, fantastic discs of vinyl,

containing a set of songs by a single artist.

Later usurped by the soulless CD,

and these days probably only understood by kids

as a curious landlocked series of MP3 files that can't be shuffled.

Tonight, in order to distil the essence of the rock LP, I'm joined

by a writer, critic and all-round hip-waxing worrier, Kate Mossman.

Kate.

Over there is the man who produced the Smiths, New Order

and Blur, Stephen Street.

-Evening, Stephen.

-Evening.

And right here, a chap who, despite it all,

still sees even the best motorcar as merely an elaborate way to

deliver Deep Purple on the move, Jeremy Clarkson.

Coming back to Kate, just as an introduction as bona fides,

what was the first album you bought with your own actual money?

I'm afraid to say it was a greatest hits.

-That's OK.

-So, yeah. I'm not snobby about the greatest hits,

because they're an introduction, even though you associate them

with the glovebox of the car.

You seem to be putting off who it was.

Yeah, it was Paul McCartney, and it was called All The Best.

Nothing wrong with that.

It was the nice man from the Frog Chorus,

so it was all his Wings stuff and all his '80s stuff.

Nothing wrong with that. Stephen?

For me, the first album I spent my own pocket money on

was Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars.

-Really?

-Yeah, yeah.

I was absolutely captivated by Bowie,

with the Starman single, that Top Of The Pops appearance.

-I think everyone remembers that.

-Absolutely.

And that was the only single from that album,

but I went out and spent my pocket money on that album, and I loved it.

In fact, it's with me today.

OK. Jeremy, first album you bought with your own money?

It's here.

-Come on!

-Who's Next.

What are you, 25?

People are going to think that I'm lying, that this wasn't...

Was it '71 or '73?

'71.

'71. I was 11.

All right.

But just to prove I'm not just inventing a cool album,

the first single I bought

was Tony Christie, I Did What I Did For Maria,

so that shows that I'm not lying. I'll own up to that.

This was the very first album

and I still think it's one of the very best.

Well, mine was The Pious Bird Of Good Omen, Fleetwood Mac.

-Wow.

-Because my sister's boyfriend introduced me to all of that.

Was that Peter Green?

Of course, Peter Green. There's another Fleetwood Mac, is there?!

Listen, we're going to ditch the digital tonight,

and embrace the analogue.

Later, we'll be celebrating the golden age, by selecting

a dozen rock albums, of a certain vintage, that enriched our lives,

and hopefully yours, too,

and they will be mounted with pride over here, on the Wall of Sound.

It's OK, Phil Spector's in prison. He can't touch us.

And we begin our album odyssey with the question,

"All right, what is rock?"

MUSIC: "Sweet Child Of Mine" by Guns 'n' Roses

If ever sound was made for 12 inches of hard-spinning black vinyl,

it was rock.

Rock albums are the boldest, the noisiest,

and the most bizarre in music.

For over 50 years, the rock LP has been evolving, offending,

inspiring,

and, yeah, occasionally embarrassing.

MUSIC: "Rock Around The Clock" by Bill Haley And The Comets

The birth of the rock 'n' roll era, the 1950s, was all

about the single, and most albums merely captured the band's set.

But by the late 1960s, with the advent of multi-track recording,

bands began to realise the full potential of studio albums.

Albums gave artists the chance to write their own songs,

to experiment, to luxuriate and mature.

The Beatles, naturally, pioneered the rock concept album,

tracks that added up to more than the sum of their parts.

The Who pushed the boundaries, with the dubious joys of the rock opera.

By 1969, so revered was the album that a new band called

Led Zeppelin actually thought releasing a single was beneath them.

MUSIC: "Twist And Shout" by The Beatles

# Well, shake it up baby, now. #

Consider this. At the beginning of the 1960s,

the Beatles knocked out ten songs in a day for their debut album.

By the end of the decade, the druggie,

psychedelic Fab Four were taking six months to experiment,

to craft and produce their final Abbey Road recordings.

Here's Ringo.

We have a special man who sits here and goes like this.

And the guitar turns into a piano, or something, you know.

And then, you may say, "Why don't you use the piano?"

"Cos the piano sounds like a guitar."

The rock album had come of age,

and it was about to enter its golden era.

In the 1970s, we witnessed the invention of glam rock,

country rock, soft rock...

# Strange voice on the telephone... #

..heavy rock...

# Fun, fun, fun on the autobahn...

..krautrock, punk rock...

# Listen to the silence... #

..indie rock - all in less than a decade.

And there's a direct connection to the rock LP.

MUSIC: "Pretty Vacant" by Sex Pistols

# We're so pretty, oh, so pretty... #

Running around 25 minutes on each side,

it gave us a chance to go deeper than the 3½-minute puppy hits

that dominated the airwaves,

to spend quality long-play time together.

Ladies and gentlemen, let us examine and celebrate the era

when the LP rocked and ruled the world

at 33.3 revolutions per minute.

And continues to do so. But we'll deal with that later.

When you were buying albums, what were you looking for?

What did you want from an album, Jeremy?

Back then, I wasn't very musical,

so I liked lyrics and I liked melody.

A good melody was what I looked for, but, actually,

back when I was buying a lot of albums, it's like...

Today, kids talk about football teams.

They all argue about football teams constantly.

We were exactly the same with bands.

So, I would buy everything by The Who, because I supported The Who,

and Led Zep and the Stones - no, no, no!

-Really?

-No, absolutely. There's no WAY I would have a Led Zep album.

-That is extraordinary.

-No WAY I would have a Stones album.

It was all Bowie and Roxy. At school, there'd be people

in the Roxy camp, "Ferry is much cooler than Bowie."

"No, no, Bowie's much cooler."

I never had that. I liked everything.

The only thing I get with you, once I bought an album by an artist,

and sometimes they weren't very good. I would not admit that,

not even to myself. I would think...

The tell-tale phrase for... "What's the album like?"

I'd go, "Oh, I've only heard some of it. There are some good tracks on it!"

You may remember Fanx Ta-Ra by Sad Cafe?

One of my favourite albums. Really, I'm very fond of it.

Sad Cafe had a bit of a slithery slope down to My-Oh-My, and so on, but... "Superb! Superb!"

Once you had nailed your flag to a particular band,

you HAD to be loyal to them and, for me,

I wasn't of the generation that listened to music communally -

we didn't sit around and do that. I was from the tape generation,

but I bought vinyl in a car-boot sale in Norwich in the mid-'90s,

and I would listen to it on my dad's player,

and it felt like this private experience. People would come in,

"Oh, God, what do they think of what I'm listening to? What if it's terrible?"

But you were saying, Stephen,

about the clubbable thing of it,

and this idea that it was generic and everyone had it. It wasn't.

It was, kind of, underground, certainly, even by the time Bowie came along.

People think he was a massive star and on television all the time.

-It wasn't.

-No, he struggled a long time to get to where he was

but the good thing that happened, for me,

when I got into Bowie in '72, when Ziggy Stardust came out,

was there was this back catalogue that was there to dip into.

Hunky Dory, which was only out six or nine months previously...

-It had been deleted, in fact.

-Yeah.

And suddenly, you had this wealth of material to throw yourself into,

and it was amazing. Like you said, melody is important.

I think people sometimes get very snobby about "pop music"

and, actually, my end of the rock that I love

is the more pop influence, like Bowie and Bolan and Roxy.

So, for me as a young teenager, that was something for me to really throw myself into.

Did you make any missteps? Did Chicory Tip do it for you?

Well, I did like the Sweet.

I thought that Ballroom Blitz was a fantastic single,

-and I loved all the glam rock - Glitter, the Sweet...

-It was hard, though.

Bowie was the only... and Roxy...but the albums...

-Very few albums sprang out of glam, other than what you mentioned.

-Exactly.

And obviously, Bowie was very prolific at that time,

so he was, for me, on a pedestal up there somewhere.

Isn't it extraordinary being able to read biographies where you find out

these people didn't know what they were doing?

I thought everybody knew what they were doing.

Didn't know what single to put out, had to be told by somebody else.

Bowie also had a good lieutenant. Mick Ronson was an incredible guitar player.

What's your favourite Bowie album?

Well, to be honest with you,

Hunky Dory most probably is my favourite Bowie album.

That, actually, I think, along with Who's Next,

is the only album ever recorded where I like every single track.

There was always the turkey.

We are going to try and focus and celebrate and be unapologetic about

what we're calling a golden era, because it just might've been.

Nobody looks back to Charlie Parker and says, "That silly, old-fashioned stuff."

-There may have been, certainly in rock music, a golden era...

-'73.

-'71.

You'd be surprised. If you look at what '71 released...

But let's not go there for a second.

But the idea that you were loyal to these things,

what you wanted out of them, and yet, Bowie, if you went back,

it comes as a great shock to me, The Laughing Gnome and all of that.

The same with Elton John. You listen back to Elton's earliest albums, they're wonderful,

but they don't necessarily stand the test of time.

They sound quite dated, but you love the fact that he was doing those romances about America...

-They're my favourite albums.

-Yeah.

But Elton, of course... I used to work in the same record shop as him, just after it,

and he used to ask for the afternoons off to go and record those cover version albums.

And there was a great version of Elton John singing Young, Gifted And Black. Young? Yes, you are.

-Gifted? Yes, you are. I don't know about the black thing.

-Was that in Wandsworth?

-Yes.

That's interesting, white guys singing,

because, really, that's what rock is. It's white people - not exclusively -

but white people trying to play black R&B, kind of, soul music.

I wouldn't have that. I don't hear that.

Well, the Who, the Stones...

-What they did, though...

-May I draw your attention to this? Supertramp.

Would you stop giving your albums out?

Again, unapologetically, and of course, we'll be dealing with other genres,

but I think rock music may be purely a muscular white thing. I know it's a broad church,

and we'll deal with that, but Deep Purple haven't got a black bone in their body.

-But hang on a minute, did it not start...?

-It's their take on a bluesy riff.

It was the blues started it, then white guys were singing black music

and selling it back to the Americans, is how it began,

but it developed and by the mid-'70s, it had become entirely white.

If you listen to Genesis or ELP, there isn't a black thing in there.

Here's my first selection, and it's this.

We're Only In It For The Money by the Mothers of Invention.

Zappa's a hard sell sometimes, but this is not a hard sell.

This is, literally, a work of genius.

It was him biting the hand that fed him.

It's anti-hippie, anti-authority, pro-Frank Zappa.

It was one of the most inventive things you'll ever hear

and leaves any mixed tape or remix mash-up in the dirt.

One of the great works of art, from all of rock.

We're Only In It For The Money.

Now, ideally, the album was all about quality rather than quantity

because on an album, there'd be, what, ten tracks or so? Sometimes just one long one,

unless you were impatient old Napalm Death. Then, there'd be about 40,

but how did this concept unfold? As usual, we look to the Quo.

A lot of fun, that. In fact, you can buy that in the shops.

-Actually, it's Status Quo.

-Pipe down, Bruno.

Your chart fun is for the kids.

Us REAL music lovers knew that, to truly know a band,

to get intimate with Joan Jett,

to feel Morrissey's existential pain,

to bathe in Beefheart's demented genius,

then you had to let them lead you onto the sonic journey of the album.

So, how do rock acts orchestrate an album?

Was track one ALWAYS a fanfare to kick things off? How did they sequence all those songs?

Firstly, solid old analogue had two sides.

Springsteen famously began each side of Born To Run

with an uplifting, optimistic song of escape

and ended each side with a downbeat sad ode to defeat.

So important was the pause to flick the album that some artists couldn't let it go.

Halfway through early CD versions of his album, Full Moon Fever,

Tom Petty actually makes this point.

Hello, CD listeners.

We've come to the point in this album where those listening on cassette or records

will have to stand up, or sit down, and turn over the record.

In fairness to those listeners, we'll now take a few seconds before we begin side two.

Thank you. Here's side two.

On modern listening devices,

it's all too easy to skip a track with a bored click.

But LPs demanded more reverence - to stick with it.

To take the needle from the record was virtually sacrilege

and, inevitably, that meant we sat through some really terrible music.

"One for the album" was always a dubious accolade,

but that's how we studied now-revered classics

like Led Zeppelin's Kashmir, or Pink Floyd's Shine On You Crazy Diamond.

You had to earn your rock stripes to go down the vinyl mines and bring back a nugget.

When you invested your scarce cash on that carefully-chosen album,

you can be sure you were going to listen to it all the way through,

from the initial hiss of anticipation

to the rhythmic ffft, ffft of the run-out groove.

The odd thing is, there are a handful of albums

where you don't have to skip a track,

and the idea that, even though you make cases for them,

that you played them all the way through, there's very few albums you can. Ziggy Stardust is probably one.

But in your producing capacities, how do you sequence an album?

Do you let the band dictate it, or do you say, "No, no. That is starting track"?

Going back a few years, it used to be sometimes I would have quite a big influence on it with the band.

We'd discuss it while we were making the record and think, "This'd be a great track to start off with."

-Is it always a hit?

-Not always. Sometimes you want that call to arms, as it were - the first track.

I'm thinking, Headmaster Ritual for The Smiths on Meat Is Murder.

It seemed to us, while we were making that record,

that that was the one to kick off the album with.

I'm a great believer in bringing things down at the end.

I just saw in that little clip about Springsteen,

likes to bring everything down. There's quite a few albums I worked on where the last track on the album

-is more the mellow, kind of, cooling down...

-Rock 'n' Roll Suicide.

You've taken everyone for the journey and you're just bringing them down and out at the end.

So I still, to this day, tend to do that on a lot of records.

Do you try to encourage people not to shoot their bolt by putting

the best track at the beginning? Usually, nowadays,

you get a CD and you put it on and you think, "Oh, that is as good as it's going to get,"

maybe listen to the first three songs.

There's loads of albums I never got round to side two. I didn't want to be disappointed.

Terrible thing to say! Side one of Moondance,

I didn't play side two until about 19...99!

I think the reward for... Oh, sorry.

No, I was thinking, with an album, the most important thing is...

What made it different then is, I would often put headphones on,

light a joss stick - you always had to do that - and sit and listen.

-Yeah, listen, that's the thing.

-Just listen. Nowadays, I've noticed

kids listen to music while doing something else.

No, no, shut up! And it's mostly rubbish. But I would sit...

Like Selling England By The Pound, you'd put it on and listen -

"Can you tell me where my country lies,

"cried the unicorn to his true love's eyes..." What do they MEAN?!

I know, you would agonise a little on that, perhaps.

But that was the difference, I think, with albums then, to now,

Albums - you listened.

And the reward for patience, as well,

and that on an album, you had the space for the entire band

to play out its brain, even if they couldn't write songs.

You would sometimes have songs by the drummer,

-who maybe wasn't that good.

-Boris The Spider...

And that was a great thing, because in a way,

you grew to love the psychology of the band, in all its patchiness,

even its failures. You felt protective over its failures.

And you had to listen to Smile Away on Ram, which I've always hated.

But I will still listen to it, when I listen to Ram, because it's there, you know.

And today, it is in the DNA of all of us.

I know if I am in someone's car and they are playing

a CD of an album I know, but they've put it together themselves,

if a certain track doesn't follow a certain track, I'll think, "Oh! The Earth just shook."

After a while, you cannot see an album by any other way

than it was arranged at the time.

And that's why when they started putting extra tracks on the CDs - no, that was the body of work,

it doesn't need all these extra things laid on top of it.

And I don't know whether, again, the pressure of a CD to fill up

that space, all right, they CAN put 80 minutes on - should they?

They shouldn't. I think that is a trap a lot of people fell into.

I mean, we know the optimum, kind of, time for an album normally

is about 40 minutes - 20 minutes each side.

The reason for that was when they were mastering the records, if they went much longer than that,

-then the bass end would be rolled off.

-Oh, is that right?

-Yeah.

-And so your record would end up sounding quieter and with less bass.

-Why would that happen?

Because it's literally the thickness of the groove,

the more bass you go, the deeper the cut. Oh, I see.

So there would be a time you'd say,

OK, if we go much further than this...

I remember, Costello did an album with ten tracks a side,

the Get Happy album, and it was really a thin-sounding record,

because to get that many tracks onto the record...

-Do you remember the K-Tel albums, the compilation albums?

-Yes, of course.

And they all sounded quieter and tinnier than the real album.

-Stretched thin.

-It's cos they were so condensed.

This is my favourite album of all time. I won't put it up on the wall,

because I'm saving this for another time.

This, Todd Rundgren's A Wizard, A True Star,

very much the spin-off of that album, similar album.

And he puts instructions on the inside of how loud you should

listen to it, because he tries to put on as much music as he can.

And an LP, you can get fetishistic about it.

Today, the assumption is they were always scratched,

but you really looked after them, as well, I always held it by the edges.

It wasn't just the album as well, but the equipment you played it on.

I now know, even though many, many years have gone by,

I had a Garrard 86SB turntable with a Shure MD75 turntable,

a Teleton amp and Marsden Hall speakers.

And then I upgraded to Akai. Because it was all... I had no idea

what I was talking about, I've not got an ear like you.

That idea of, you know, you had the weights at the back, I've never understood that.

-Is that the valve amplifiers?

-Yes, valve amplifiers, pre-amps,

I couldn't wait to get a record on, I didn't do the weight at the back,

I never had that little brush going along, cleaning the record.

-Did you ever stick a penny on the...

-Stick a penny on it, yes.

-To keep it in.

-With some turntables, you used to tune it so it was spinning at exactly 33 rpm.

-No!

There was a little red light on the actual turntable to make sure it was playing...

The first time The Snow Goose came out, I listened to that, by mistake, at 45 rpm.

And didn't know until I'd listened... These guys!

As an old rock critic myself, very famous story, the Melody Maker

were sent John Lennon's album on two acetates, one-sided.

The other side just had tone on. "Dooooooo!" They reviewed it.

They reviewed it, they said, "What John's doing here is very interesting, sonically."

So, yeah, I think like most great art,

not everyone knows entirely what they are doing.

But unlike the ghostly mp3 and the fickle, brittle CD,

the vinyl album experience was tactile,

visual, satisfying, almost fetishistic.

And we most definitely judged an LP by its cover.

The LP cover gave every group

a 12-and-a-quarter square inch blank canvas

onto which they could project their vision, their fantasies,

their budget.

To begin with, most rock album covers featured

a record company approved snap of the band.

Then, pop artist Peter Blake's Sgt Pepper album sleeve came out and...

Well, you know the rest.

Record shops became like art galleries.

Andy Warhol slapped a peelable banana

on the Velvet Underground's album.

Many found it suggestive!

Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon went minimal and mysterious.

Delia Smith baked the cake for the Rolling Stones album, Let It Bleed.

And Mick and the boys went a little bit further for their Sticky Fingers album cover,

which even had a real zip, beckoning the listener to relive some kind of intimate backstage experience.

Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention parodied Sgt Pepper.

But I, like others, was more mesmerised by the band's bonkers appearance,

wondering if I could sport a similar Californian hippy look as a British teenager.

You see, covers were so important. You studied and scrutinised them,

particularly the more obscure bands.

Because these renegade heads were never going to appear

on The Val Doonican Show and they didn't feature in Smash Hits.

MUSIC: "Hocus Pocus" by Focus

YODELLING

The album artwork, particularly the gatefold sleeve,

was a true gateway to their mindscape.

America...

is pregnant with promise and anticipation,

but is murdered by the hand of the inevitable.

Yeah, what he said. To be truthful, the album cover could go very wrong.

Common mistakes included the "trapped in time poodle" portrait,

the "band in a bad mood" genre,

sexist nonsense,

and sometimes, they were just out-and-out potty.

Let's face it, nobody really debates a CD sleeve these days.

And no hippy ever set out their Rizlas on a digital booklet.

The album cover, a programme in itself.

But let me just sum up the glory of it with one example.

Not a great album, this is the Welsh group, Man.

-Starts with a siren, as I recall, that one.

-Be Good To Yourself At Least Once a Day.

I would forgive this album anything,

because when you open it up, it goes...

-Look at that!

-Oh, wow.

-Look at that.

Now, that is not your CD. A map of Wales.

Is it an accurate map of Wales, or is it their own take on Wales?

Do you know, I don't know!

I was too impressed by that. They could have put Paris in there. I'm just happy it did that.

Kate, album covers, of course, no reflection of the music within, but it helped.

Well, it's a funny thing, because they were almost, like, talismanic or something.

The fact that you are listening to music at the same time,

it became almost a 3-D experience, looking at the picture.

Because you couldn't escape it, because you had the record on and

the whole thing, your senses were kind of magnified by one another.

The ones that got me, growing up, were the ones that scared me.

-Go on.

-Well, there was one cover of a Blood, Sweat and Tears album

-called The Child is Father of the Man.

-Yes, with the...

Which was like mini versions, Mini Me's!

Yes, they were little, tiny versions of the band.

They had a child and they would superimpose their own head.

That was horrific. There was another one, the Toe Fat album, which was just the big toe on a head.

Instead of a head, there was a big toe.

But the idea of the cover being, in itself, something.

It's that thing, and I'm sure you did it with Bowie,

it's reading everything, down to being printed by the McNeill Press of London.

That's exactly what I was going to talk about,

it's not just the front cover, it's the back cover.

And for me, it was reading all these lists of the studios

and the producers and the engineers and things,

and without even realising, I was soaking it all up, and I wanted to...

Later on, that is fortunately where I went into myself,

but it was reading this - "Who is this Tony Visconti guy?"

He's made some good records, you know. This kind of thing.

So when you have a 12-inch cover, not only does the art look good,

but also the credits are given a chance to shine.

And I always thought it was directly between me and the artist,

I didn't know about art directors or even record companies would've,

you know, sometimes the band would be the last to see the cover.

I actually thought, this is terrific,

something as iconic as the Ziggy Stardust cover, long before it became a shrine,

I thought, "Where is that? Why couldn't I have been walking down that road?"

I was looking at album covers the other day. Some of them are fantastic,

Wish You Were Here, I thought was fantastic, Quadrophenia, Tommy - The Who's version of it.

They are all works of art. I've often thought about getting album covers

and having an entire wall of the house decorated in album covers,

-because they're brilliant, some of them.

-Beautiful things.

There was a Clifford T Ward one, where it was him

at the piano and then a beautiful lady with very long, blonde hair, sitting at the piano stool.

-Then you turned it over and it was a lovely Afghan hound!

-Really?

Well, the first Black Sabbath album, which again, has now,

like all these things, become part of the scenery, with that odd, broken-down mill, looks like,

and a woman with a green face looking out from behind the trees,

nobody has ever found who that model is, nobody knows who she is. She was hired for the day

and you'd think she could probably earn a good touring circuit

behind the woman on the Black Sabbath cover. Nobody knows who that woman is.

Just, though, before we celebrate them too much, sometimes,

the titling of an album, for me, goes very, very wrong.

Van Der Graaf Generator may have a reason for calling their album

H To He Who Am The Only One, but that's a bad album title!

Stephen, does the title come last, or does it matter to the artist?

I think the title does matter quite a lot.

Obviously, I had the great fortune in working with The Smiths

and I know Morrissey put a lot of thought into what the album was going to be called.

And so, I think it is something that bands should take really seriously.

You don't want to put out a great album, great artwork and really mess up with the album title.

They sometimes change halfway through. Famously, the Beatles' Revolver

was called Abracadabra, right up until virtually it came out, then they changed it to Revolver.

-Wasn't Abbey Road called Everest or something?

-That's right.

They wanted to go to Everest to do a photo shoot, but then they couldn't be arsed!

And so they said, "Let's just go outside and call it Abbey Road."

It's true, that's why they did that.

I think the first Morrissey record I worked on, the first solo record,

which was called Viva Hate, in the end. I've got a feeling,

at one point, it was going to be called Education In Reverse.

And in fact, that is what is scratched in the...

You know there's the scratched message in the middle

of the pressing? I think that's "Education In Reverse".

Again, another great fetishistic angle,

looking even to what they wrote in the run-out grooves.

Famously, Led Zeppelin III, I think,

has got "Do What Thou Wilt", which is an Aleister Crowley quote,

and collectors these days all look to see if that is in there.

"A Porky Prime Cut" used to be on many, many of them.

But there was no aspect to the LP, from cover to label,

and let's be honest here, even the smell of them...

I've opened a few records... "There it is!

"That's probably his aftershave," or whatever. I used to smell albums, too.

And if people think this is a little creepy,

then they are missing the whole idea of the indulgence

and connection of the things, which the cover -

and let's face it, you can put them on your head and look like the Pope's mitre,

there was always that - the cover, and these ones around us,

randomly selected from a beautiful, beautiful era,

where that took a lot of patience and a lot of artwork.

And that's why I can't actually think of any really...

And I'm really sitting here thinking,

-I can't think of any bad album titles.

-There's one over there!

George Michael - Listen Without Prejudice, Volume 1. Seriously?

-I love that name.

-It's awful!

-I love the Volume 1, as well, because it's, sort of, so pompous.

If he had meant it to be preposterous, that's fine.

Album covers as well, I'm struggling really to think of ones

that you just think, "Oh, that was a bit dull."

Led Zep had one which came in a brown paper bag.

In Through The Out Door. Of course, Led Zeppelin III had

a little wheel you could turn and the cover turned beneath it.

Wonderful covers, all of them, you cannot imagine them separate from those covers.

-Many are right shockers, too.

-My personal favourite is The Wailers' Catch a Fire, the lighter.

-What a beautiful cover that is.

-Big Zippo lighter.

-Fantastic.

And now they all fetch real top prices.

But rock, of course, never has just been about the music.

It's also about the attitude, of course it is.

The pose, the empowerment - in short, it's about you.

And if your Motorhead T-shirt freaks out your mum along the way,

well, bonus!

# People try to put us down

# Talking 'bout my generation... #

From its earliest days,

the rock album was all about sticking it to The Man...man!

By their very nature, these LPs were rebellious, rude, filthy, badly behaved.

Albums were an extended call to arms, some overtly political.

# All we are saying is give peace a chance. #

# School's out for summer... #

But most were just raw, wild, rock rebellion.

According to Mary Whitehouse, Alice Cooper's School's Out meant

that, "Millions of young people are now imbibing a philosophy

"of violence and anarchy." Yeah, that's the point, Mary.

Rock rebellion. Get it?

Your performances used to end up with you smashing all your equipment,

-you were smashing hotel rooms on every tour...

-All lies!

Not a word of truth.

Annoying the great and the good was a badge of honour.

And the decade of discontent was the 1970s.

It's probably hard for Generation X-Factor to believe,

but rock musicians didn't welcome the Queen's Jubilee

as an opportunity to stage some sycophantic concert.

# God save the Queen... #

Instead, they stuck two fingers up to the Palace. And politicians.

And the media. It was rock against the establishment.

Music felt more political.

# London calling to the far away towns... #

Every album was culturally calibrated.

To spot someone carrying a Clash album was to wink at a fellow spy,

a fellow societal saboteur, if you will. Don't talk to us about Queen!

For a very brief moment, the rock album really did seem to threaten

to take its revolutions from the turntable out onto the streets.

# No more heroes any more... #

Sometimes it's easier to lapse into albums that are corny,

but mean a lot to you, and we're trying to underpin some of it, you know, be deflective about it.

My second selection for the Wall Of Sound behind us,

Joni Mitchell's The Hissing of Summer Lawns.

If anyone thinks this whole rock 'n' roll experiment has been

pinheads larking around, we can give them this. Style, grace, genius.

That's the second one.

Jeremy, that whole package there was about the attitude of rock, the rebellion of it.

Despite your occasional outrages, you are looked at as, kind of, a pillar of the establishment.

-Where's that place, Chipping whatsit, you live?

-Chipping Norton.

Is it possible, were you ever a defiant, snotty youth?

I mean, I was at a public school,

I was away and everybody's parents were estate agents.

And I remember, vividly, and it shaped my whole life,

that and listening to Dark Side of the Moon, was,

I was reading Melody Maker and I was supposed to be listening to some dreary

lesson on economics, and there was a photograph, I can picture it now,

of Robert Plant stepping off a Led Zep-liveried plane.

I wasn't a Led Zep fan, but he was stepping off it, and coming down

the stairs behind him was all manner of rock 'n' roll flotsam and jetsam.

And I just remember thinking,

"What in the name of all that's holy has been going on on that plane?"

And how do I get to be on a plane like that?

And my life was given over to creating a life where

I could live like I assumed Robert Plant lived.

I just, again, it was the attitude of these guys...

Well, I had a problem with the hair, because it just grew out, until it was about out here

before gravity got hold of it and brought it down where I wanted it.

Then I would be told to get my hair cut and it was a nightmare. It would boing back up again.

But the attitude of rock 'n' roll then was enormously important.

The importance of what you're saying there,

and not that we are trying to convert people,

either you get it or you don't, and I don't envy those who don't.

But the idea that, at any time, music could have been a subculture rather than... You know,

we live in an age where Hawkwind are on the new Ford advert!

The idea that it was secret, that it meant that much and that this lifestyle wasn't aspirational,

it was mysterious and there was no other way in, other than by getting into the rock world.

I was never convinced by the idea of rebelling against your parents,

because I was from the generation whose parents had all the good music to begin with,

so there wasn't that sense of... And also, it always annoyed me, this idea that rock attitude was based

in smashing your instruments up, rather than playing them properly.

-I never got that.

-I don't understand that!

I mean, people hate John McLaughlin or whatever,

because he can play his guitar. Well, surely combining a violin and a doubleneck guitar and doing

things in 20/16 time is, sort of, revolutionary, in its own way.

-Doncaster man, wasn't he, John McLaughlin?

-I think so, yeah.

-Same as me.

John Parr, John McLaughlin and me - what a contribution Doncaster has made!

I must say, one of my finest writing moments was when they were

-all devotees of Sri Chinmoy, wasn't that the faith for a while?

-Shakti.

You know, Santana and McLaughlin and all the leading lights did a night at the Rainbow,

and the headline I gave it was, "A Clean Chinmoy Sweep".

Which, you know, all our yesterdays, at the NME.

Stephen, of course, you really still carry a torch for punk rock,

so obviously, music and lifestyle were like that for you, yeah?

Absolutely. I mean, obviously, with the initial thing of getting into the glam rock thing,

then I got into prog rock for a while. The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway was one of my albums

-that I was...

-That's a hard listen! That's a hard one, well done.

Got into that for a little bit, then the punk thing happened

-and basically, I just loved it. I threw myself into it, lock, stock and barrel.

-The Clash's first album.

-Cracking album.

-Brilliant.

-And Rattus Norvegicus, the first Stranglers album.

-I know it's not strictly "punk" perhaps...

-Yes, it is.

But I loved the attitude of it, and I thought Martin Rushent,

who produced that album and also produced the Buzzcocks, again,

another producer's name that I learned from reading album sleeves,

was a genius. And I just kind of... I remember not really going out

and kind of dyeing my hair and putting needles through my nose or anything like that,

but I just loved the idea of going to see gigs, going to the Marquee

and places like that. And, you know, just...

Recording this programme, we're just a spit from where the Roxy club was, just around the corner.

And for someone who was involved in punk rock,

for me, it was just getting involved in rock.

It was a way just to suddenly think, "I might be able to do this!

"It looks like this racket is going to actually... One day I might get to meet Frank Zappa!"

The idea that it was all political somehow is not true either.

And this nonsense year zero approach everyone has now adopted

and said punk was about this and punk was about that.

-At the time, it just felt terrific.

-It suited the moment.

Those pictures we saw there of policemen with tall helmets,

hitting miners on the head. It all fitted, it was bang on.

And you know what? It's extraordinary to think,

given how the last three decades have panned out for music,

that between Woodstock and the Sex Pistols album is seven years.

And if you think about what happened in the meantime -

virtually everything. It's just seven years. It's '69 to '76.

And the absolute explosion of things being pulled from the air in that time,

and that's why you shouldn't shrink from saying there could have been a golden age,

just like there was in movies, as there can be in literature. That period, you say - "What?"

Punk wasn't a full stop. It was a natural progression of all these things.

-But look what we ended up... Sorry.

-It never stopped.

You had the glam, the prog, the punk, then it was, like,

the ska revival came out pretty quickly...

Soft rock, krautrock, you know.

And then the New Romantics thing, you know, you couldn't stand still.

They always say, the reason punks say they were bored is

because no great new musical genre had been forged within months,

-so no wonder they said that.

-Just hadn't been done before.

Yes, of course hip-hop and everything else, but that ferment,

that period between Woodstock and the Sex Pistols - huh?

It's really interesting that you moved from liking glam into punk,

because in my mind, those two things are sort of opposites, almost.

Do you know why? Did you just grow up, or..?

Bowie and Lou Reed were huge influences on...

I'd say they are not opposites, they're very much of a piece.

No, cos I did that, without even going through the Bowie thing.

I still DO love glam. And prog rock and so on,

and then really got into The Clash, most of all.

Actually, I liked the Pistols, too, but I really, really did like...

Because it was like somehow, when you were watching Orgreave,

or whatever strike was going on at the time,

Grunwick - with the photographic dispute,

and you can't really be listening to, you know, Camel.

So you really needed the Pistols on.

That in itself - and I'm not a great one for the sociological

side of music, because it's in your heart, and it's about you,

and it can be any time, anywhere, but, that said,

the depoliticising of music now,

the idea that we live in an age where groups would celebrate...

any amount of establishment things,

I do think the corporate dead hand has probably...

That's where I disagree with you. I really do believe that music is of the moment, of the time, and

you can't listen to certain songs in certain places at certain times.

-Well, you can, but...

-My son will listen to...

-It doesn't sound quite right.

Look at Nick Drake. Nick Drake didn't sell an album in his time.

You cannot get a bigger figurehead now than Nick Drake.

Anyway, in the iTunes era, there's almost no such thing as a rarity.

Things might take 15 seconds to download - might be a rarity, that!

But back in black-and-white, we spent months looking for the first Velvet Underground

album or something - anything - by Todd Rundgren.

Nothing said 'cool' like an import - those thicker sleeves,

the American way, and nothing was more satisfying than having

a spare copy of a limited release.

Back in the ancient analogue days, pre-internet and pre-MP3s,

unearthing a really rare rock album or the kudos of knowing

the details of some track three on a side two, gave you tremendous

hipster cachet.

MUSIC: "Paradise By The Dashboard Light" by Meatloaf

For example, despite selling 43 million copies worldwide,

the Meat Loaf and motorbike epic that is Bat Out Of Hell

is rightly scorned by the music press.

But study the sleeve notes and you'll see it was produced

by super-hip, genius maverick Todd Rundgren.

On the album Goodbye Cream, who was this L'Angelo Misterioso who played guitar?

Well, we found out that was George Harrison.

This trend for uncredited appearances on LPs led to

an infamous album in 1969, when Rolling Stone magazine

announced they'd heard exciting rumours of the ultimate

uncredited supergroup - a line-up that included Jagger, Lennon,

McCartney, and Bob Dylan, and they'd all recorded an album

under the name the Masked Marauders.

It turned out to be all balls,

but the rumour created such a lust for the actual LP, that the

magazine hired a skiffle band and released one, anyway.

It sold 100,000 copies to gullible groovers!

Then there are some crackpot albums that ARE by musical superstars,

which set out to undermine our expectations.

At his peak, Lou Reed released an album called Metal Machine Music,

four sides of unlistenable electronic feedback.

Rock LPs were always an odd old odyssey.

We embraced the exotic, the mysterious, the mad.

Though no matter how many times you played Stairway To Heaven

backwards, you never really could hear the secret messages.

For my let daylight in upon magic, if you will, the one thing I wanted to do with this programme was

once and for all, stop apologising for being nostalgic about it.

I think, in 100 years,

a lot of these albums are going to be performed,

and because of the death list line, "Hope I die before I get old",

which has hung like a pall over any real analysis,

beyond affection, for the stuff we're hearing now,

and some of them I knew were coming tonight, yeah - it's rosy-tinted, but it has worth.

Kate, do you agree that there is something that we wouldn't do

to movies, we wouldn't do to books,

and certainly wouldn't do it to jazz, that rock music, particularly

during that '70s period, might have created something magical.

Is there any worth in this stuff we're talking about tonight?

Well, that's why it's interesting,

this idea that it may have been the great era of the rock album,

but if you look... I remember Jimmy Webb saying,

"this is when it all started to go wrong was

when the album came into play",

because people who were industry songwriters like him,

who were pre-tooled to make these three-minute little wonders,

suddenly there were just loads of really,

really good bands who had got the space to play over an entire

album, and I think that's just a phenomenon. Looking back on it,

it's very much the case that this stuff

happened at a particular time and, for the last ten years in the music industry,

we've been nostalgic about it and that's going to continue.

It's probably going to get more positive...

It took a generation, as well, to be a palate cleanser,

and now certainly, my own son, and his friends,

they say "This stuff's great". Not all of it, obviously.

The idea that you defend every record that came out in the '70s - of course, it's preposterous.

And it was never a massively popular music, certainly on television and elsewhere.

-But when it's good, it's very, very good.

-It's interesting you said that it would be

performed in 100 years' time, because I agree with that.

The tribute bands we have now, you, kind of, laugh,

but I was - weirdly - in Fairbanks, Alaska, ages ago,

and I walked into a bar, walked straight up to order a beer,

and they were playing Wish You Were Here, Pink Floyd,

and it was... I turned round, and it was a band.

And they were, honestly, close - Pink Floyd. They were spot on.

It was completely Pink Floyd.

And you think, "Why would you not perform a work as good as that

"100 years down the line?" Why would you not? People don't say,

"I'm not going to go and listen to this Bach concerto, because it isn't actually Bach playing it."

I know, but there is something risible, apparently,

about that period and someone of our age

and intellect - no offence to our younger friends here! -

saying this stuff has worth, it's any good.

So if I'm coming to you, Stephen, with your producer's ideas,

do you miss the album, the discipline, the economy,

just the very idea that a group goes in

and makes this statement for its audience?

Do you miss the album yourself?

I'm not sure I miss it.

The key thing is that 40 minutes is a good optimum time for people

to focus and give their attention to listening to one artist,

so I think that, kind of, works well.

I also think, if you're a heavy touring band

and you're touring and you're on the touring, recording, kind of, circle

to come up with more than 40 minutes to an hour of good

material which would be cool for your next record is quite hard,

so I would imagine that that's kind another reason why albums

were the length they were.

The other thing I'd like to make clear is that throughout

the '70s, there was a huge advance in recording techniques.

Obviously, the studios got bigger,

there were more tracks available,

so bands were able to go and spend more time,

in multi-tracking and layering and so on,

and so what we also saw was not just great records being

made by artists, but some also great producers coming through,

and some really great engineers being able to shine.

The idea of an album, when I used to go and buy an album,

I never wanted... CDs came out, I didn't want them.

I was quite happy the way that music was being delivered.

And CDs just seemed to be a fait accompli. And without saying that was a slippery slope, that

connection was just broken there.

And it wasn't the idea that I'm of a generation that bought final, but I actually didn't request CDs.

We're finding it now with a lot of downloading information,

the way big stores and little stores are going out of business.

We didn't actually want this, but it's going to happen, anyway.

What I liked on the eight track, when you had to have...

because it had to be the same length - you had to be able to

divide it into four - you had to put the little tiny bit,

so you'd get these albums, very specifically you can date them

as to when eight tracks were around, because they were albums,

but this weird little one-and-a-half minute track on the end.

Aisle Of Plenty on Selling England is an example.

I only found out, and you probably know more about this,

Stephen, that some of the albums, like I've got by Yes

and Emerson Lake and Palmer, and things like that, they had

these filler tracks on that plainly are there,

and so noticeably there,

and even if they do a whole side of an album,

they're broken up into movement one, movement two, and it was only when I met a member of Yes, he said,

"that's cos we had to get paid for each of those tracks."

"You do one long track", he said, "So, if we put on a track,

"the drummer would, literally, do a little fill,

"and we'd call it something, that was an individual payment

"he had to get." And I don't know if I wanted to hear that.

I'd read so much into it by then.

That reminds me of a story about Bob Seger.

He'd hired the Muscle Shoals rhythm section to do one of his records

because he heard that it was 5,000 a side, and they meant a song,

and he thought it was a side of an album,

and they just, literally, parted ways halfway through.

"I can't afford to pay you for this!"

How do you tell someone, "That's no good for an album?"

I can't imagine anything.

And there are, as I say, even,

and I'm trying to bet without the Beatles tonight,

or that overwhelms everything, but you get an album like Revolver,

which is still absolutely staggering, the idea

that it was made, as we record this, that'll be 47 years ago...

-On four track.

-On four track. And you see, but then again, yes,

with the best will in the world, and I know kids love it, but it's

got Yellow Submarine halfway through side one, and you think, OK.

Have you ever had to say to a band, "I don't think that's very good."

There's been times when I've kind of hinted that way,

but I'm a big fan of tracks like Yellow Submarine

being on Revolver, because it gives it scope and depth.

It's like Frankly, Mr Shankly on The Queen Is Dead.

You're kind of... I think it's... It's, kind of, nice to have this,

kind of, breadth of material, kind of, spread throughout.

And how about - and sorry this is directed at yourself, but

something like Blur, who said, "We don't want to do them hits any more.

"We want to do intriguing, introspective stuff."

D'you have to just go along with these musicians' ideas?

Well, yes, to a degree, I do.

When we made the Blur album, you know, the fifth album,

there was a distinct, kind of, turning point of turning

away from the more pop end of their spectrum, as it were.

But actually it was a great, kind of, release,

especially for Demon, I think, as a songwriter.

-It can be a trap, of course.

-Yeah.

Well, some groups arrive fully-formed - and have you,

or certainly me, saying, "I don't know how they could have done that."

It's just come fully-formed out of somewhere else.

And so my third selection I'm going to do tonight is this

extraordinary piece of music, which has had to

weather its critics over the years,

but from 21st-Century Schizoid Man, which is as angular

a listen as you'd ever hear, to the wonderful

In The Court Of The Crimson King, itself, an observation by King Crimson.

And yep - that's Greg Lake's signature on the front there.

Vocalist for King Crimson, at that time. Bryan Ferry was nearly the vocalist, of course.

Of course, anyone watching this under the age of 11

is probably still wondering, "What is all the fuss about?"

There were 70,000 albums released last year,

so why should anyone care about all of this stuff?

"I mean, come off it, granddad! Get with the programme...jogramme!"

Well, kids. Let me tell you all about it.

No-one truly boasts about being a CD collector,

or solemnly alphabeticises their MP3 files.

But in the analogue era,

you'd run back into a burning squat to rescue

a bunch of albums, because LPs felt more intimate, more substantial.

Those 12 inches of vinyl promised a direct relationship with the band.

Indeed, one of the trends of the '70s was the rise of the live album.

Every self-respecting rock act had to have one.

Frampton Comes Alive was the best selling album of 1976.

The Grateful Dead released nine live albums and, I don't know,

maybe a million bootlegs!

The Who's Live At Leeds was so revered, there is now

a blue plaque as the venue, to commemorate its recording.

Live albums brought the full moshing

and mayhem of a concert to your sideboard music centre.

Band members became stars in their own right,

given space on albums for some really rotten solos and fanfares.

-Yeah, right!

-In youth clubs,

kids would actually argue over who was the world's bestest

lead guitarist - Eddie Van Halen,

slash, Jimmy Page,

slash...Slash!

I wouldn't even lift the needle from vinyl during the electric mandolin or flute solos!

The point is, LPs were from the analogue era,

before digital recording, and before autotune, and before sampling.

They were faithful recordings of the individual

and collective talents of the musicians and there was

a credible virtuosity locked into those microscopic vinyl grooves.

The creative high point of rock music synced with

the highpoint of the vinyl LP.

And that is no coincidence.

TRACK ENDS, AUDIENCE CHEERS

I might as well say that Rock of Ages by The Band

is the best live album, but we'll discuss that in a moment.

I think not!

In a second, in a second.

Kate, the legacy of the period we're talking about.

a generation has gone by when it's de rigeur to go

and get your parents' tastes. Is there a legacy from vinyl?

Will people actually see it for what it was and what it's worth?

I think the tendency,

particularly if you're trying to discover new music, one of the problems, I'm still

trying to get away from this, is that if something excites you, it tends to be

because it reminds you of something else that came out in the '70s. So, John Grant, for instance,

who is a great singer-songwriter - he sounds like early Elton John and the Carpenters,

so you've got these reference points. It's impossible to break away from those.

The other thing that I suppose troubles me a bit about Spotify

and digital downloading, is that your listening habits are so different,

your idea of patience has changed so much,

that people will create 14-hour playlists,

to have on in the background while they are writing an article,

or having a dinner party or something like that.

And you just can't discover the hidden gems of an album in

the same way if you're only cherrypicking from lots of different ones.

And I think, in a way, that CDs won't have a revival.

There is something totemistic and mystical about the vinyl album,

that I think will last, and is, fortunately, being rediscovered,

to the point that something like - if I might just very quickly - something like that, Led Zepplin 1 -

turquoise writing, on eBay - £1,700 the last copy went for.

So there's worth in it, in all kinds of way.

And now to the bit I know you've all been waiting for.

It's purely and simply and obviously on personal taste,

there's enough music out there to satisfy everyone.

The three albums you want to put on the Wall of Sound behind me.

Starting with you, Kate.

Difficult choice. I would say, first one - Hot Rats, Zappa.

We already have a Zappa, but a genius

and more like a classical composer, than a rock star, really.

But had a sense of humour. That's why he gets through.

And I would say the opening track, Peaches En Regalia,

is as good an opening track as on any piece of work.

And impossible to whistle, because the tune is so crazy,

-you can't whistle it.

-Sounds like a wager to me! There is one. What about two?

Next one. This is a bit obscure. Coliseum.

Those Who Are About To Die Salute You, which I loved growing up.

There's not enough jazz-rock in the world, and this is joyous

and ebullient and brash and the drummer led the band, Jon Hiseman.

You could have given me a thousand guesses and a gun to my head - I would not

have put either you together with that or a woman together with that.

I know! But it's got these kind of mock-classical things.

It's got a version of Whiter Shade Of Pale, as well, which is lovely.

That's always a good thing, like prog rock, it should be bonkers.

It should be bonkers. And this one, very controversial, Queen.

Possibly the ugliest album cover in history - really horrible,

sprayed with baby oil.

I didn't choose Night At The Opera, because I think this is where -

Queen have been called "a singles band" before,

which is often a veiled insult.

But it takes a lot to be able to have four people who can all write songs.

That's the first album that they all started writing on.

I can tell, we could debate it, but it's not about that. It's not a bear pit.

And if you say so, and it's in your heart, that's all that matters.

That's what vinyl does.

Stephen, I've got an idea where you're going, but what have you got?

Well, it's a little bit more obvious for me,

but the first album I spent my own pocket money on. Ziggy Stardust.

It was life-changing for me,

and also very many musicians that I've had the good fortune

to work with over the years have all come back

and mentioned this period of Bowie and what an influence he was.

Again, it seems absurd in these days to talk about an LP that

could culturally change everything, and it did.

I think Ian McCulloch, from Echo and the Bunnymen,

another great singer, fantastic singer, I think he was like me,

blown away by Bowie and this record, and it's still being felt.

Still being felt. Second one?

Next one? It's London Calling, The Clash.

If there's a track more uplifting than the opening

bars of London Calling, the track itself, I'd love to hear it.

Because when you hear that stomp, and that bass line kick in...

Like in the Bond film, with the BA jets coming in to land and they play London Calling.

It got re-used again for the Olympics last year,

so obviously there's someone on that committee who feels the same way.

At the end of the opening track he starts singing, "I never felt more like singing the blues",

and they had to cut it, because they couldn't afford to pay for it.

-And the third one?

-Yeah, it's brilliant.

And the last one, again it comes from the same

glam period, but for me, this is Lou Reed at his most accessible.

Great storytelling, proto-punk, with Vicious, and storytelling,

with Walk On The Wild Side - New York sleaze and everything.

And Perfect Day - what a great song.

Even Susan Boyle couldn't ruin it - or could she?

And it's got Satellite of Love, a Bowie track in all, but...

# Bam, bam, bam! # His backing vocals are beautiful.

As a young man, listening to Lou Reed talking about the sleazier

-side of life in New York, it was quite an eye-opener.

-It was a shame what happened to him, though.

And now, speaking of grumpy old gits!

Jeremy, I think I know one you're going to bring out,

-but surprise me - what's your three?

-Rumours.

-OK.

-It's...

and particularly this one, actually, because this was a very

-important thing when we were all growing up, was to get...

-Oh!

See, we live in an age now where vinyl will come out in any

other colour, but the weird sight of seeing something that wasn't black.

No, Rumours, and particularly Songbird, the Christine McVie...

you know, the little simple piano thing.

An incredible song and an incredible album. That. I know it's a cliche...

The reason it's a cliche...

-The reason it's a cliche - it's just a great album.

-It is.

And the sequencing as well on Dark Side Of The Moon, it's just epic. I listen to that all the time.

Well done for not trying to be arch, or try something else.

I fluctuate with these three albums, as to which is my favourite

of all time, constantly, and, at the moment, my favourite is,

and has been for a long time, is Crime Of The Century,

and Hide In Your Shell is...

I honestly believe, and this is just me,

I believe that Hide In Your Shell is the finest piece of music ever

written by a group of human beings.

But nobody, I don't expect anyone...

there's no point writing to me, because you'll disagree.

No, and there's nothing more boring, because in the end we're all subservient.

-It's the track I listen to most.

-Tunesmithery, as they used to call it.

I listen to that track three times a week, every week, without fail.

I sometimes just put it on and it's got to be played loud, and it's epic.

And there was a group who virtually were dropped by their label,

till they said, "Let's sober up, let's make some hits".

Well, I've often shrunk from the phrase Baker's Dozen.

But this time, I'm not. I'm going to make it 13.

Because I think the greatest rock album ever made,

by the very definition of rock itself, cannot be bettered by this

absolute stupendous piece of work - Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti.

Something like In My Time Of Dying - if anyone ever said,

"Well, the Earth's going to end in 20 minutes, the Martians

"are going to take away rock music", you say, "There you are, mate.

"That's pretty much the heart and soul of it." And it is

an extraordinary, extraordinary finished piece of work,

-and a double album, too.

-And beautiful.

-And beautiful.

Another time, we'll go through these. And so we've come to our run-out groove.

I'm not sure what the last hour was about, but it felt terrific up here,

and I hope it touched a nerve for you, too, and basically we've been

having the same conversation for decades, so thank you, Kate.

-Thank you, Stephen.

-Thank you.

-Thank you, Jeremy.

-Loved it.

You have spoken and the ages have listened. Well, I know I have.

Until the next time, thanks for watching, and hey, man - rock on!

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