Stone Age Attitudes II

So what would be an alternative?

First, abandon the usual format and agenda. Do we really need the voice over supplying a definitive coherent narrative? No. Do we really need archive footage which is sourced from over-used archives and/or already available via DVD? No. Do we really benefit from the insights of 'those who were there' when the kinds of question they are responding to are either idiotically simple or inviting the worst kind of elderly rocker nostalgia? No.

Then, adopt a different approach. Rather than see the music simply in terms of the end product or unthinkingly reproduce the star-as-genius-wild man-drop out-acid casualty, enquire into the conditions within which the music was produced. Such things as the economic-cultural-educational circumstances surrounding the young Waters/Barrett/Bowie etc.

Thus, the role of 1950s grammar school education and subsequent Architectural studies for Waters produced the bile concerning schools (The Wall) and the sense of rock music as a 'built' object (the Concept Album in other words). Thus, Barrett's post-war Cambridge days mixing modest suburban privilege with London escapism and Art college glamour. The cups of tea, children's fiction (Alice, Wind in the Willows), boredom, picnics, aunties, old pedal bicycles injected with Carnaby Street fashion, strange chemicals, girls with flowers in their eyes. A little bit later, Peter Gabriel's indebtedness to Charter House English classes for his lyrical borrowings.

Wouldn't it also be refreshing to hear from EMI's accountants? What were the deals struck? How were the profits carved up? How did touring relate to album sales? And wasn't the second Wall concert tour directly related to the Floyd's investments plummeting? Not a word on this aspect of the development of the music.

And then take the idea a step further and involve everyone - you and me or the 'them' as Waters would see us in 'Dark Side of the Moon'. These faceless faces gazing up out of the gloom swooning at The Stars. These zeroes who shelled out their pocket money and salaries to attend the concerts and buy the albums and fatten their heros' bank balances into 7-zero figures and more. What untold histories surround these groups and albums? How many girls fell for boys who looked like Bowie as a vicarious way of living the songs? How many people lived through a group's music - the 'our song' syndrome, the anticipation of the next album, the sense of solidarity with other fans, the bootleg trading and cassette swapping, the haircuts, the moustaches, the shirts, the in-jokes and rumouring and lyric decipherings?

And finally, why not enquire into the technological conditions for the music? Thinking back to my own Floyd-obsessed days (circa 1977-1980 or whenever The Wall appeared and I realised they'd lost the plot) wasn't it my uncle's B&O hi-fi system which made those opening minutes of 'Wish You Were Here' so revelatory? Surely the development of Prog Rock owes so much to the availability and affordability of 'decent' (that was the buzz-word) systems - amps and speakers that could push out enough bass, a stylus that was sensitive enough to the twinkly bits. Listening through a Dixons headphone (singular) on my Audiotronics Cassette Radio to cassettes my cousin made me just didn't provide the same experience.

There's more besides: a bedroom of your own (to adapt Virginia Woolf's phrase), a sense of parental disapproval ("what is that appalling din? You call that music?"), unfulfilled desires which found their peculiar echo and consolation in ever-building guitar solos until "that note" (accompanied by a shake of the wrist and wincing expression).

Needless to say, I am available on a consultancy basis if anyone at the BBC is reading ...