I bought an album called Beatles Rock 'n' Roll music in 1980. December 1980. (Significant date). Listening to it, now (for the first time in years) I realise that it's done by session musicians. It's difficult to tell when you are playing a vinyl on the crappiest second hand multichanger mono with a stylus that needed changing probably before I was born. I hate it when record companies do this, and flog their dubious products in Woolworths to unsuspecting pre-teens. But there you go.
The other side of the tape is Paul McCartney's Pipes of Peace. I bought this with Christmas money in O-Level year (1983/4). At the time I really loved it. Now, I realise that every track, except perhaps the title track, is irredeemably forgettable. And the title track is barely mediocre.
I then listened to the White Album. I guess I was not in the mood to listen properly to it, but it did somewhat prove my thesis that The Beatles are rightly held by posterity to be great because such a high proportion of their songs are good or better, compared with, say Madonna or Queen, who produced some storming records but also produced too many mediocres or turkeys.
