Often, equipment can as easily function as a security blanket for musicians unwilling or unable to risk anything personal in the studio. Whether one catches the feeling on a record is a subjective matter. How can you be sure? The machinery can hold out the promise of at least mechanical perfection.

'Let's Get It On' is a classic Motown single, endlessly repeatable and always enjoyable.

As long as Elton John can bring forth one performance per album on the order of 'Someone Saved My Life Tonight,' the chance remains that he will become something more than the great entertainer he already is and go on to make a lasting contribution to rock.

The Who, England's most self-conscious band, have released 'Quadrophenia,' which in turn freezes in time our image of the mid-Sixties Mod sensibility.

My ambition was to be a record producer, and I had started doing that in the late '60s with my work with the MC5 and my friend Livingston Taylor.

The Rolling Stones have been the best of all possible worlds: they have the lack of pretension and sentimentality associated with the blues, the rawness and toughness of hard rock, and the depth which always makes you feel that they are in the midst of saying something. They have never impressed me as being kitsch.

'Band on the Run' is a carefully composed, intricately designed personal statement that will make it impossible for anyone to classify Paul McCartney as a mere stylist again.