WANTING to die before getting old is one of those anthemic rock 'n' roll lines, which grabs the imagination of each successive teenage generation. But maybe there was a point. After all, what happens otherwise is ancient trailblazers looking increasingly skeletal on world tours - and a 60-year-old professor in charge of one of the most progressive prizes in British music.
Not only is he almost of pensionable age, but Simon Frith is distinctly old-fashioned. A self-confessed fan of vinyl, the shelves of his office are crammed with old records and stacks of singles, the paper covers worn and faded. He doesn't own an iPo
d - "I don't see the point in having 6000 songs on a machine, as you'll never listen to them" - doesn't play a musical instrument and admits that the albums he buys now are mainly country and western.
But then when you are the chairman of the Mercury Music Prize judging panel, the need to buy music is less pressing. "I get 200 of the best albums sent to me every year for the prize, so I don't tend to buy British music anymore," he admits. The professor earlier this year took up the distinguished position of the Tovey Head of Music at Edinburgh University - which will see him lecture on contemporary music's place in society - although he is still getting settled into his cramped office in Alison House, just off Nicolson Square.
The small top-floor room is filled to bursting with records, magazines and books which in an instant leave you in no doubt of his passion for music. Serious tomes discussing the history of popular music sit side by side with biographies on the Rolling Stones, volumes on Elvis and punk.
Two shelves are devoted to his vinyl collection, hundreds of pop and country albums - "There used to be thousands but now there are just hundreds," he says. "I mostly have CDs at home now."
But how does a 60-year-old manage to be in charge of one of the most influential and controversial music awards in modern Britain? After all, since its launch in 1992, when Primal Scream won the prize for Screamadelica, the Mercury Prize has made headlines. Admittedly Simon did take up the position 14 years ago, but it's his encyclopaedic knowledge of contemporary music which has ensured he's still the best man for the job.
"The original idea of the award was to create something for music that was like the Booker Prize, a totally independent prize that would help promote the kind of quality British albums that were not getting promoted," he says.
"The music industry has always been very good at promoting music to teenagers, but when people reach their 20s or 30s they don't read NME or listen to Radio One, so they will be much less likely to buy an album by a band they've never heard of. They wanted to create an award that people could see as mark of quality."
The idea of keeping the award independent made finding the judges a little difficult, Simon admits, as they had to be people who could listen to a few hundred albums over a couple of months, who knew about music but who didn't work in the industry.
It was eventually decided that a selection of DJs and music journalists would be the best people for the job. And while the line-up of judges changes every year, Simon has kept his place as chairman.
But while bringing to light some of the best British bands of the time, the judges have been repeatedly accused of ignoring commercially successful bands in favour of more obscure artists. Simon insists they have always worked to give the £20,000 award to the album that best captured the state of British music at the time.
One of the most surprising decisions the judges ever made was in 1994 when, at the height of Brit Pop, they ignored both Blur and Pulp to give the award to M People. "I don't think Blur's record company ever forgave us for that," he says. "And later Damon Albarn always insisted he didn't want the Gorillaz albums put forward for the prize, which is a shame."
The following year Oasis were overlooked and the award went to Portishead, a decision which Simon believes was one of the best the judges ever made. "It's the one I think most stands out because it was so innovative and it was a sound that really captured British music at that point. It was perfect," he says.
Simon's first memory of music was listening to his brother's Elvis records when he was a child, which quickly got him hooked and by the age of eight he was building his record collection.
"People always say they can remember the first record they ever bought, but I have no idea," he says. "The record that had the biggest impact on me though when I was a kid was Little Richard's Long Tall Sally, which I bought when I was eight." And as a teenager he started going to gigs, seeing concerts by legends such as Jerry Lee Lewis and the Beatles - "you couldn't hear a single solitary note they played because of all the screaming".
After graduating from Oxford with a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, and heading to California to study for a PhD in sociology, his love of music led to writing reviews for rock magazines and fanzines in the 70s.
He ultimately became the rock critic for two Sunday newspapers in the 80s before taking up a position at Stirling University in 1989, when the reviewing slowly began to stop. Here he admits: "There's only so long you can do it and by this time I had written maybe four reviews of Elvis Costello and I was realising there is only so much you can say about a performer."
It was only a few years later, however, that the offer to chair the Mercury prize came along. And while he may not own an iPod, Simon believes that the digital revolution will not be a bad thing for live musicians.
"There is always a certain amount of good music, and it doesn't matter how people listen to it," he says. "There will always be a demand for live music, and that was how the Arctic Monkeys got success, through playing gigs and building up fans. It was the fans who put their music on the internet and it was then really well marketed, but ultimately, live music is what it is all about."
MERCURY MUSIC PRIZEWINNERS
1992 Primal Scream for Screamadelica
1993 Suede for Suede
1994 M People for Elegant Slumming
1995 Portishead for Dummy
1996 Pulp for Different Class
1997 Roni Size/Reprazent for New Forms
1998 Gomez for Bring It On
1999 Talvin Singh for OK
2000 Badly Drawn Boy for The Hour of Bewilderbeast
2001 PJ Harvey for Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea
2002 Ms Dynamite for A Little Deeper
2003 Dizzee Rascal for Boy In Da Corner
2004 Franz Ferdinand for Franz Ferdinand
2005 Antony and the Johnsons for I Am A Bird Now
2006 Arctic Monkeys for Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
