"There is something faintly off-putting about this book’s subtitle. We live in a world where the obsession with music’s past threatens to overwhelm its present, where the only music magazines that sell in any quantity deal in heritage rock, where virtually the only TV coverage of music comes via retrospective documentaries: the story of modern pop has been told and retold until it’s been reduced to a series of tired anecdotes and over-familiar landmarks. But Yeah Yeah Yeah’s brilliance lies in the personal, idiosyncratic route Bob Stanley takes through the past: for him, the modern pop era begins not with Elvis or “Rock Around the Clock”, but the release of Johnnie Ray’s 1954 album Live at the London Palladium, the first time a screaming teenage audience had been heard on record in the UK. He devotes more space to 1970 one-hit wonders Edison Lighthouse than to Led Zeppelin, delivers a withering verdict on some surprising sacred cows – Joni Mitchell, Patti Smith, Steely Dan – and is great at unearthing a forgotten quote that challenges what you might call the authorised version of events: at the height of the 1967’s Summer of Love, he finds the Who’s Pete Townshend not boggling at the new frontiers mapped out by psychedelia, but grumpily complaining that “people aren’t jiving in the listening boxes in record shops any more like we did to a Cliff Richard ‘newie’”. Stanley has a way of tackling well-worn topics – not least the Beatles – from unlikely angles, and of talking about artists you’ve never heard of with a contagious enthusiasm that makes hearing them seem like a matter of urgency. Best of all, he makes you laugh out loud while getting directly to the heart of the matter. The lugubrious late 70s output of Pink Floyd sounds like music made by people “who hated being themselves”. The punk-era Elvis Costello sang “like he was standing in a fridge”, and the experience of listening to novelty ska revivalists Bad Manners is “like being on a waltzer when you’ve had three pints and desperately need the toilet”. If you’ve ever heard them, you’ll know exactly what he means."

"An underrated Stones record. You know, they had a sound. They originally started off and covered the Beatles' songs and other covers, because they didn't know how to write songs. Everybody hung out in the same clubs back then and they'd see each other socially. So, early on, the Beatles gave them 'I Wanna Be Your Man', which the Beatles recorded, but the Stones did as a single. Their manager Andrew Loog Oldham told them that they had to write their own songs, so they went down and developed that sound. Then eventually they saw the Beatles doing Sgt. Pepper's and all this experimental stuff and the Stones decided to go outside of their comfort zone. That's what I find interesting, whether Satanic Majesties is the Stones trying to do Sgt. Pepper's and ripping off the Beatles or not, it has production value and songwriting that isn't found on any other Stones records. '2000 Light Years From Home', '2000 Man'; I mean, we covered '2000 Man'. It's talking about computers and the year 2000, it's so interesting. I can remember being at school in the 60s and reading 1984 by George Orwell, which is all about how in the future the government would be spying on us. Of course this was written well before 1984, which now sounds like a long time has passed. So it's all relative. With the Stones' music, the strings and backwards stuff, there is some very very good material on that record. They happen not to like the record. I think it's a unique record that shows that the Stones have some depth. There is some bad, out-of-key background singing because they were never the best singers, they didn't have harmonies like the Beatles. The thing about it is that they were blues-based and they veered away from it on that record and went into almost Celtic and classical areas. It was a pastiche, a multi-coloured quilt! You can look at a band like a coin and say, 'I see everything, I don't need to see anything more', but there is that other side. That other side is what I think is more interesting. The depth."