ETERNAL YOUTH

Through no fault of my own, have been hearing a fair bit of frog rock recently, including the perennially silly "Je t'aime...moi non plus". It's worth reflecting that Jane Birkin will be 60 this December, and it makes you wonder if, were she our mother or aunt, we wouldn't be a tad embarrassed at her heavy breathing being broadcast for the benefit of all. In a personal or family context, this sort of thing would be locked away, only occasionally brought out for reminiscing with one's peers or amusing the children. Stuck on a public record, of course, it becomes timeless.

And, as Barry Norman used to say, why not? It chills me to see a pensioner with a book on Frank Zappa, and it amuses me to see a student with a biography of Edie Sedgwick. The uses of the '60s. In the early '90s, when I was a student, we looked back to it for inspiration - read the Beats and Hunter S. Thompson, listened to the Velvet Underground and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, and Frank was on the back of the bathroom door, sitting on the can with his pants around his ankles. So it should be. There's an excellent essay by Harlan Ellison called "The Song the Sixties Sang" which lays out why they were, and are, important. No young person's education is complete without knowing something about them, and being fired by it.