dorling kindersley books

Straw poll time: Adam, our next door neighbour, a man who owns a set of four hi-fi speakers each larger than the average garage, came round wearing a tractor driver's cap and says: "It looks like me."

Try getting that across to the designers. Mind you, he does look a bit like the roll bit. I don't know about the rock.

Jambo, one of George's friends, happens to have rock 'n' roll hanging out of his pants, so we invite him round for an interview. Like many of George's contemporaries, at 17 he is not really our target audience, but he dropped out of school around Christmas, and has an endearing taste for early Zeppelin, and an admirable understanding of the importance of James Brown, Hendrix and the Doors. An opinion to be valued.

I ask him the rock 'n' roll question; his eyes glaze over even more than they are usually.

"Is this about the Stones book?" he asks, looking as if he is trying to be helpful (so much for the "TOP SECRET" nature of the project).

"Yup"

"Well - er - look like? Christ, I don't know. Hendrix at Woodstock, doing Star Spangled Banner?"

He's got a point, but it's not much help.

Half an hour later, they've all got together listening to Groove Armada and discussing the liabilities of the Chemicals. Little do they know, but this is the spawn of the Stones. I suppose they are too close to being funky to know how to define it. And they don't read books. So, no help here then.

We will just have to invent how rock'n'roll looks on the page ourselves.