It’s a rule of life that adults shouldn’t understand young people’s music, ever since Little Richard made the old folk fume with his incessant and enigmatic cries of ‘A-wop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-lop-bam-boom!’ I bitterly recall when during my adolescence my father – a highly respectable Communist factory-hand who would rather have voted Tory than sworn in front of a woman – took a mysterious liking to all the outrageous acts I was crazy for, from Roxy Music to Sparks. Having been driven to find ever more unwholesome combos, the final straw came when, one Sunday morning, I was lying in bed when I heard the strains of my precious Velvet Underground album – WITH THE ANDY WARHOL BANANA COVER! – floating up the stairs. I’d never moved so fast in my lazy little life.
‘It’s about drugs! And male prostitutes! And a thing called SADO-MASOCHISM!’ I squealed at my dad.
The dog looked sad.
Of course music goes through the doldrums – but the crucial element of woke-scolding is what makes this slump different
‘I don’t care what it’s about,’ my dad shrugged with magnificent insouciance.
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