APPROPRIATELY enough, rock books have a hit ratio roughlyequivalent to successful songs. To wit, pretty low. Not only dojust a few sell decently but only a tiny fraction are of anylasting worth. For every Greil Marcus there are a dozen factoryfodder writers who take the shillings to churn out the glorifiedteen magazine articles; for every witty Sting (no, really, it’strue) there are scores of inarticulate or barely literate subjects.But hey, look at the pictures.

Genesis: Chapter and Verse (Orion, $75) is a large formathardcover replete with hundreds of photographs. They cover thesquinting schoolboys posing with sporting trophies at Charterhousepublic school in England (which they were all attending at the timethey recorded the first Genesis album), through outlandish costumesworn by Peter Gabriel in full theatrical mode to hairy pop-rockchampions post-Gabriel and well-pleased, middle-aged men.

Between the photographs are large slabs of direct quotes fromband members, past and present, recorded in separate interviews andstructured to tell the band’s story without outside commentary. Ithas a linear flow and significant - and occasionally repetitive -detail but is by its nature, and their nature as well-brought-upEnglishmen, more concerned with thoroughness than analysis.

As coffee table books go, if the Genesis book would most likelyappear on a pristine piece of glass, The Books Of Albion: TheCollected Writings Of Peter Doherty (Orion, $49.95), the firstpublication by the celebrity drug taker, model boyfriend andoccasional musician, would be more appropriate on a chipped andstained chunk of wood balanced on two milk crates.

Not for its presentation mind. From its woody hardcoverdecorated with a head and shoulders in relief and two trails ofwatery paint (which could be misconstrued as drops of blood) to theartfully arranged photos, newspaper clippings, notebook pages (somewith blood stains) and reams of diary pages, there’s the smell of agood budget about this book based on a minor league Englishmusician whose bands, the often excellent Libertines and theusually dishevelled Babyshambles, have far less profile inAustralia than his extra-curricular activities. But that smell mustcontend with the more pungent aroma of a closed-up room, unwashedbodies, burnt material on the battered lounge and the mankyremnants of various discarded spoons of junk.

You can’t read the increasingly scrawled scribblings or gazeupon the increasingly scabrous face of Doherty without hearing thewords junkie, police, courtroom, Kate Moss and tabloid. If you canget past that and if you can decipher the writing, you realise alsothat as stupidly indulgent as Doherty may be in his private life,as haphazard as he’s been with his music particularly, the boy canwrite. And when he writes there is often no barrier. “My words areloyal too loyal to my life. They know about the phantoms about me,”one entry says.