ABSTRACT
In the early 1970s, when I was a student at Warwick University, I took a first year course in sociology. About the same time, I discovered the magazine Let It Rock. For an avid reader of the New Musical Express (NME), Let It Rock was a revelation. It had the reviews and interviews that were the staple fare of the NME, but its attitude, its seriousness, was different. It was a bracing read. Towards the back, there was a singles column. It was quirky and opinionated. It argued for the virtues of songs that the earnest student reader might have dismissed as trivial pop. It was written by Simon Frith, by coincidence – or so I thought – the name of my sociology tutor. I could not imagine that the dispassionate, impartial expert on Marx and Weber, and the enthusiastic advocate of Slade and Tammy Wynette were the same person.
