I’ve always felt that Napster is a red herring. In my humble opinion (he said, for the benefit of any lawyers listening), it’s just a bootlegging tool. In theory, yes, you think you might like a band and borrow someone’s CD electronically to give them a listen. Live in close proximity with a lot of other people interested in music and you’ll be subject to a lot of influences and material. This will also increase your receptivity so that you’re quite likely to find things of your own from quite minimal hearings.

This, of course, is not the marketing model that the record companies have. They create a band and promote them and the idea is that you/we/they all go out and buy it. If this doesn’t happen, then all the investment is lost, which does happen, which is why record companies also sign bands on very restrictive contracts - they don’t want the successful ones to go straight off to a predatory competitor who may work by just doing this and never developing new acts.

This is pretty much music as fashion accessory and we could debate the difference between the way men and women consume music.

The obvious approach is that the record company goes out trawling for talent, signs it up and lets it get on with it, but a big industry doesn’t work that way. Marketing, promotion, release schedules etc all need to be planned. We can have some sympathy for the record companies because this is consumer music. However, some of the fans don’t see it that way. People who supported Metallica when they were just a heavy metal act expect to own a piece of them and, if they went out and spent real money on the albums, in a way they do. Of course, this doesn’t mean music is free. Musicians are honest labourers (discuss) and deserve a reward which they get by your liking their product and buying it. If you want them to work for free, then you have to volunteer to be an unpaid roadie - which is arguably barter and we’re back to reward again.

Home taping never killed music, it kept it alive. If it could ever be proved to have killed a record company, that’s a different matter, but I would argue that in fact and overall, home taping probably increased the revenue of the record companies. Which brings me back to Napster. It was too much of a challenge and the majors had to react to it. Emotional arguments don’t count. Quite simply, free “exchange” on that scale is a commercial threat. And, of course, when the record companies find a way of controlling the Napster technology and MP3, these will become mainstream distribution channels. We currently go into Virgin and buy a round plastic disc, which is not the same as the round plastic discs we used to buy. I see no reason why, in time, we won’t take our MP3 (or whatever) player into Virgin, plug it and our credit card into a the wall and load up what we currently want to listen to, at a quality level that will satisfy all but the purist (who will still be buying vinyl).

And you know what’s frightening about that? We won’t be buying the hardcopy but a licence to listen for a limited period - look at the way Microsoft is trying to go with software. You won’t show your kids your record collection - unless you have an illegal hardcopy machine - you’ll have to persuade them to believe you that music really was much better in your day.

But does anything really ever change? People complain a lot about manufactured bands nowadays. Many of the rock’n'roll acts were manufactured. The record companies largely invented doo wop because all the white musicians were on strike. The black vocal groups weren’t unionised because the unions wouldn’t have them…

Brian Epstein turned the Beatles, who were quite rough into a smooth act he could fancy and take home to mum. And Andrew Oldham turned a nice group of middle class art students into the ugly phenomenon that was the Stones. Joe Meek took Heinz Burt out of the Tornadoes and tried to turn him in to a superstar for all the wrong reasons (including the fact that he was a bass player).

Cream were largely manufactured by Robert Stigwood and then there’s all the Supergroups. Blind Faith weren’t called Blind Faith for nothing, you know, and people only forgive Derek & The Dominoes because of Layla. Interestingly, all those bands include Eric Clapton - what does that say?

Wee Willie Harris was not manufactured because you couldn’t invent him and Shane McGowan wasn’t because, frankly my dear, you wouldn’t want to. Teeth like that come along only once in a generation. And we should be thankful.

Punk is a phenomenon all of its own because, for a glorious few months in the mid Seventies, the lunatics managed to take over the asylum and it was the bands that controlled music and not the record companies. It was anarchy (in the UK) and it couldn’t last. And it didn’t. I didn’t invent the quote about The Clash being the only real punk band, but it’s a truism. The Stranglers were mightily successful (I have the album to prove it), but they were never punk. What happened was that the record companies signed anything that moved, most of it rubbish and quickly stuck the usual collection of the usual suspects together and took control. The real punk bands couldn’t and wouldn’t control anything, which was the point.

But the point is also that the era gave us both Joe Strummer and Paul Weller (the Jam were a mod band, not a punk band, which sort of makes a few of the points above). And which (be honest now) is the better musician? And who would you rather listen to? No, I haven’t got any Style Council records either. Of course, you should then play Jimmy Jazz by the Clash and discuss the point all over again, including why Paul Weller could never, ever, not in a million years have made Spanish Bombs (or The Guns of Brixton). And, if you mention Morrissey, you get no points, no supper and go directly to jail.

In fact, exactly the same thing happened in the early sixties (I remember them, being too young to take the things that caused you not to), when the record companies were busy signing anyone who came from Liverpool (and quite a few who merely talked funny). Freddy and The Dreamers were many things, but they were never, ever, ever, a pop act. Neither was Tommy Steele (discuss). English entertainment had a tradition in Music Hall and the Musicians’ Union also refused to let more than a few American acts work here, which meant that all the great Rock & Roll songs were cover versions watered down for local consumption (which was rife). Americans, having no history, got stuck straight in with Country & Western which, when you married it to R&B (or race music) became Rock & Roll. Well, sort of. They also had black music, even if they tried to ignore it, so that men dressed as women and women dressed as men and choruses with the audience just didn’t work for them.

Popular music is an accident of history and, with the exception of folk, which is traditional and there not quite the same, this is the first time the music of one generation has carried on to the next. I know young people today like the Doors and the Clash and probably wouldn’t turn off the Stones either. And I’ve got a Radiohead album and I like some other modern stuff too. I would probably like more if I had time to listen to it. Listen to music while you can, because one day you’ll wake up and find you haven’t got the time and you’ve lost the sources of new material. And then you’ll be buying stuff like Court of The Crimson King just because you’ve never actually had a copy of your own…