Phone-in

As I was on my way to bed last night, I turned on Radio Five Live to hear Tony Livesey hosting a phone-in about whether pop music was better in the 1970s than it is now.

I got a little thrill when I realized that this discussion was prompted by the forthcoming V&A exhibition My Generation: The Glory Years of British Rock. Mr Livesey, it appeared, was querying whether the subtitle was accurate: were those really the glory years?

Since it was me who wrote that subtitle, for the book which accompanies the exhibition, I was somewhat surprised to find that it was in any way controversial. The phrase 'glory years of British rock' (apart from echoing the subtitle of our previous book Halfway to Paradise: The Birth of British Rock) seemed to me a fairly straightforward factual description: the decade we cover with Harry Goodwin's photos (1964-74) was self-evidently the era when British pop music had its greatest influence on the world.

It wasn't intended as a value judgement. Though as it happens, and just for the record, the decade was also quite clearly the time when most of the best British rock was produced. It won't ever be that good again.