<<  -- 2 --  Peter Dale    FROM THE HEART

Mellers' Man and His Music (with Alec Harman) -- a single-volume critical history of everything -- was either going to be laughed out of court as hubristic folly or else achieve the near impossible. It plumped for the latter and today it remains a standard component of any self-respecting library, public or private, anywhere.

We take for granted now an open-mindedness about music of all sorts, but it was Mellers' books taking seriously the best of Bob Dylan (A Whiter Shade of Pale) and Lennon and McCartney (A Hard Day's Night) which blazed the trail (and still, incidentally, set the standard if the sort of drivel which came out for Dylan's 60th birthday last year is anything to go by). On the other hand, it is fashionable now to afford comparable cultural status to all music irrespective, some would say, of its intrinsic merit. The titles alone of two of Mellers' books -- Bach and the Dance of God; Beethoven and the Voice of God -- pull the plug on that oh-so-politically-correct solecism: you can almost hear the indignant snort of a man whose intelligence, let alone his common sense, has been compromised by such jejune daftness.

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