The Rolling Stones: Sticky Fingers; Graham Nash: Songs for Beginners

THERE IS A tendency these days, particularly among writers, to become disillusioned with or even apathetic about pop. Among the peculiar literary breed that rock and roll spawned, it seems that pop music, which was once a great obsession of little value, has finally become a feature of questionable interest and inflated value. The new James Taylor album. Mudslide Slim and the Blue Horizon, is pleasant enough, but the total effect is a big "so what?" because it is, for the most part, introverted, maudlin, and saturated with a neurotic kind of self-involvement both lyrically and musically. The singular exception is his rendering of 'You've Got a Friend' (a classic Carole King song of which there is an abundance).