Alan Beckett’s assessment of the Stones must be unequivocally welcomed. It represents the first serious critical account of the group to be written. The current maudlin patronage of pop music by Sunday newspapers and literary weeklies makes it all the more important to establish a genuine canon and the concepts necessary to underpin it. A politique des auteurs is required. Alan Beckett’s critique of the Stones, following his prolegomenon to pop music (nlr 39), is a pioneering start.

His analysis, however, calls for some comment. He unerringly isolates the distinctive circle of themes which form the effective ambit of the Stones’ music. The account of the key songs which enact them is in many respects a model. It is this approach which may, however, be questioned. Beckett’s method is to align the Stones’ music on an evolutionary axis borrowed from psychoanalysis. The perspective is a basically psychological one. Thus the music expresses ‘narcissism’ and ‘arrogance’, which may have a liberating effect on ‘the individual’, but invariably leads to ‘paranoia’ and ‘persecution’, unless transcended towards a more ‘reparative’ attitude. The Kleinian connotations of this line of argument are evident.