JOHN MORRISH observes musicians messing with politics and asks if it's possible for poor players to get that big, rich sound — and vice versa. Does a move up the charts mean a shift to the right?

You know how sometimes an annoying little tune can stick in your head, to the exclusion of everything else?

There you are, trying to remember a burst of Miles Davis, or Philip Glass, or the Smiths and up it comes: "The politics of dancing, The politics of ooh-ooh feeling good." In this case it wasn't the peculiarly vapid nature of the tune and its performance that drove me to distraction, but that phrase, "The politics of dancing."

I found it irritating. It is the sort of slogan you can imagine a group of admen conjuring up around the boardroom table. It is the sort of idea that gets run up the flagpole to see if anybody salutes. It is the sort of campaign that Darren out of "Bewitched" would have liked to launch.

But vacuous and silly as it undoubtedly is, "The politics of dancing" does seem to express the traditional politics of rock music: the vague air of rebellion, of menace, wrapped up with that old standby, probably gleaned from "Dancing In The Street", that as long as everybody keeps dancing everything is gonna be all right... The politics of the All Night Party, in fact.

Well these days, the politics of dancing seem to have given way to the politics of: "Madam chairman, I wish to speak in favour of the reference back of composite B in the absence of a substantive motion which enjoys the full and undivided support of... (and so on)."

Real politics, the politics of parties and committees and petitions, has become a central part of musical life, especially if you are a reader of born-again socialist Paul Weller's pronouncements or a follower of the ubiquitous Billy Bragg. And I, for one, don't know why this should be.

It's certainly a development not seen since the late 1960s when the politics were a little more, er, "hazy". Before that, rock and roll was too busy ingratiating itself into the entertainment establishment to risk alienating anybody.

For instance, we know nothing of Elvis Presley's politics in his early years (and too much about his Nixonite ambitions in later years). When people talk about Presley as a revolutionary figure it's a metaphor: that wouldn't be true of The Redskins, for instance.

Presley's revolt was a personal one and a stylistic one. He broke away from the constraints of his own history and of his own cultural heritage. And those two motives have been central to rock's development. The question of making a political statement (as opposed to a more generalised "comment" on social conditions) was as alien to Elvis and his contemporaries as it was to the black and white folk musics they inherited.

By and large the successors of Presley took the same line. There are examples of social comment in, say, Leiber & Stoller's songs, or some of Motown's products, but usually it is deeply embedded. Even the later "hip" Motown of the Temptations/Marvin Gaye school tends to report and deplore social problems rather than look to solutions.

In Britain, on the other hand, it was the establishment (and not only the entertainment establishment) that tried to ingratiate itself with pop — or at least that is the way it appeared. What else were we to make of Prime Minister Harold Wilson's desire to have himself photographed alongside those darlings of the Swinging Sixties, The Beatles?

Of course, it was a mutually-attractive arrangement. Brian Epstein, according to some biographers, was a keen socialist. He also knew the value of the right sort of social contacts if he was to achieve his aim of making the boys into "all round entertainers".

And for Premier Wilson there was all the excitement of his Kennedy-style merging of the glamorous in all fields: sportsmen and women, scientists, academics, models, photographers. And there, presiding over them, Harold "I won the World Cup" Wilson.

There's an obvious parallel with the various cosy chats that would-be Prime Minister Neil Kinnock has been having with some of our own representatives of youth culture. But there are equally obvious differences.

For a start, Kinnock is a long way from being elected. Wilson was polishing the image of an established regime. Secondly, with Wilson and the Fab Four, politics was not on the agenda (and nor was music, in all probability). With Kinnock, politics is probably the only thing on the agenda, and not in the traditional rock and roll sense of "let's all get together and make a big beautiful world".

Oh no, these characters are talking about "The Return of A Labour Government". For instance, when Kinnock invited NME editor Neil Spencer for a mug of tea and a plate of sandwiches (I bet), the topic of conversation was not the cost of newsprint, or "What happened to Nick Kent", but "What can I do to get the youth vote?"

The assumption that the Bragg brigade can deliver the youth vote is questionable both in its morality and its accuracy. Since the accuracy seems so dodgy, the morality is fairly irrelevant. The fact is, at the last election, the Tories did just about as well in the 18-25 bracket as they did elsewhere: in other words, very well indeed.

In that context, it seems strange that the two-way street between pop music and party politics runs only to the door of the Labour Party's headquarters. Where are our rocking Liberals, for instance? It's not the absurdity it seems. The anarchism that so many people seem eager to expound has a lot more to do with liberalism, historically speaking, than it has with the Parliamentary road to socialism.

And then there are all the Tory rockers we heard so much about before the first Thatcher election: the ones who were coming home if the Tories won...

It has to be said that the Tories have never looked very happy with real live musicians. Poor old Norman St John Stevas got into a lot of trouble after inviting the Village People to the House.

This apparent unanimity amongst contemporary musicians that the Labour Party (or the leftist splinter groups that hang on its coat tails) represent the only hope for the world seems a little odd, considering the way these people earn their livings.

Imagine this scene, if you will. It is the end of the century and the socialist Nirvana is with us. A parade is held to mark the anniversary of the glorious day, and the heroes of the revolution are there: the miners (tumultuous applause); the railway workers (more applause); and the pop stars, headed by the frail, elderly figure of Paul Weller, who comes forward to accept a revolutionary honour, the Star Of Lennon.

I don't see it, somehow. I don't see that being a pop musician endows you with a special insight into political realities. And I don't see why it should entitle you to massive coverage for your political views.

For instance, in any three-month period, a reader can find out rather more of what Paul Weller thinks of the great issues of the day than he can of Neill Kinnock's views. That is as much a fault of the tape-recorder school of interviewing and the laxity of pop paper editing as it is of Mr Weller and his friends — but it makes you think, all the same.

Because as far as I know none of these musicians is standing in an election. Their views are irrelevant to their social and economic function. Why pop press editors give them the space they do is a mystery. Maybe they think they are fighting back against Fleet Street's Tory bias: and if they do they are kidding themselves.

Unfortunately that seems to be the way the current political debate within rock is conducted. Or rather isn't conducted. Because in fact there is no debate. People go to work in offices and factories and supermarkets and on YTS schemes and come out with money which they spend on records and concert tickets for people like the Redskins who then proceed to tell them what is wrong with their lives and how they could be improved if only everybody did what they were told by people like The Redskins.

The pop politicians stand on the stage or in the studio and make their points. The audience roars its approval or it leaves in dribs and drabs. That's the level of the political debate. For the whole thing to work it depends upon a virtual unanimity in the first place. No minds are changed.

Personally, I don't find the willingness of large groups of young people to fall in behind self-appointed leaders a very hopeful sign. Especially when less than 10 years ago some of those leaders held very different views and were waving different coloured flags.

It's the sort of thing that makes you nostalgic for the classic pop star individualism of yesteryear, the kind of insight that gave us "Taxman is a Wilson, taxman is a Heath". Or even, God help us, "The politics of dancing." Maybe that slogan isn't so stupid as it seems. Someone once said "road signs are politics" and anyone who knows anything about, for instance, local government, will know the accuracy of that statement.

Because in one sense, there is a politics of dancing. The price of admission, the lack of public transport, the bar opening hours, all have their political dimension.

Similarly, the choice of pop stardom as a career has its political aspects, but you don't hear most of our keepers of the socialist faith talking about that. Because some of these people (and I count you out Mr Bragg) have done nothing much else in their adult lives but make records, play instruments, pose for photographs, travel around the world, and give their political views to pop paper journalists.

This is about as removed from the lives of the working class and unemployed people they profess to speak for as it is possible to be. Well, there can be no real objection to that. We pay them to do a job, which is to make music. But what happens to all their revolutionary fervour when it comes to dealing with their record companies, managers, video production companies and all the rest? How strange, they seem to go along with it all quite well.

Indeed, what else could they do? Where are the opportunities for concerted political action if you are a rock musician? You can hardly strike, can you, with a whole escalator-load of hopefuls waiting for you to stumble? And, of course, you'd only be hurting yourself.

Because the drive towards pop stardom is inherently competitive. It doesn't lend itself to co-operative action, to gestures of solidarity and to a common plan for a better society.

It doesn't lead anywhere except at the expense of somebody else. There is only so much record company money around. Wrap it up how you like, in terms of "inspiration" or "artistic excellence", the essential stance of the professional musician is against fellow professionals rather than with them. And rock musicians generally have traditionally thrived on precisely that competitive battle.

That doesn't mean they have to endorse any "dog eat dog" social Darwinism in their lives outside music. Oh no, they may be straight-down-the-line Labour Party members, Stalinists, Trotskyites or card-carrying anarchists (joke). But they all express their political selves through political action: they join parties, sign petitions, canvass for other candidates, stand for election, lose elections, win elections, speak in council or at their union conference or in Parliament. It's hard work: but that's democracy.

What they don't do is short-circuit the process by giving their political views to people who are paying them to play music. By the way, have you heard the new Neil Kinnock album?