BLAIR MORGAN

The reviews are still coming in for Foreign Tongues, and most critics seem relieved simply to have another Rolling Stones album. Fair enough. Mick Jagger is now approaching 83, Keith Richards is 82, and nobody seriously expected another studio record after Hackney Diamonds. Listening to it, though, I kept thinking of another Stones album - one that almost nobody rates - Dirty Work.

Recently there were four deaths that, on the surface, seem unrelated: guitarist Wayne Perkins, singer Dennis Locorriere from Dr. Hook, producer Jack Douglas, and actress and singer Claudine Longet. Yet together they form a map of the 1970s - excess, celebrity culture, reinvention, and the feeling that another world is slowly disappearing from view.

As the nights have closed in, I’ve found good company in three new music-related reads that cut across pop stardom, rock mythology, and gritty crime fiction.

Every now and then, a song taps you on the shoulder and more or less demands to be written.

In which our hero reaches the 3/4 Century mark , a couple of books shed light on the most interesting phase of his career ...