Investigation

For a man not blessed with the kind of appearance naturally lending itself to the limelight, Elvis Costello always did a damn good job of promoting himself. It helped that those around him were past masters of pop marketing. After all, music lovers of a certain age will recall the infamous t-shirt of his first label Stiff, bearing the deathless slogan: 'If it ain't Stiff, it ain't worth a f**k'.

Pride, it is said, comes before a fall. But when Elton John made a concept album at the height of his success, celebrating the journey he and lyricist Bernie Taupin had made since their first meeting in 1967, the old maxim didn't hold true. Not only did it become the first album to top the Billboard charts in its week of release, it would also prove to be a creative high-water mark for the songwriting partnership.

If you want an illustration of just how quickly pop evolved in the 1960s, you only have to look at the first two years of The Who's recording career. That was the stretch of time between their flinty, mod-informed R 'n' B rock debut LP – 1965's My Generation – and a cheekily post-modern third album that seemed to mock the very idea of pop music as anything more than a vehicle for commerce.

When Alice Cooper's single 'School's Out' swept across America in the spring of 1972 then went on to become an international smash hit, it offered a ready-made shoutalong anthem for a generation.

If ever there was a band that arrived on the scene fully formed, it was Roxy Music. Before they were even signed to a label, they had a startling, glitter-flecked, faintly androgynous image, and a unique hybrid sound. This blended stomping glam pop with jazz-inflected avant-prog and experimental electronica, drawing influences from show tunes to war movies and torch songs while adding dashes of sensuality, camp and black humour. And it helped, of course, that they threw some highly memorable tunes in there.

Apiece of art that can today be found in 45m homes around the world was kick-started by a simple, none-too-detailed instruction to 'do something clean, elegant and graphic'. The instruction came from Pink Floyd keyboardist Rick Wright, and was given to Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell, the founders of Hipgnosis, a London-based art and design group whose first sleeve design had been for the Floyd's 1968 album A Saucerful Of Secrets.

There are enough books about rock and pop music to capsize a cruise liner. So for this third part in my series on good books that connect music to hi-fi I have picked a few of the lesser-known reads. Arguably the best starting point for pop industry insight is George Martin's 1979 biography, All You Need Is Ears in which Martin shares his jaundiced views on the Apple organisation (unrelated to Apple computers, of course), which The Beatles set up in the mid '60s.