But I’d rather spend an evening listening to the Velvet Underground.

Yes, certainly, the Velvet Underground and the Kinks please the conoisseurs (and me!), and they’ve enjoyed influence far beyond their (substantial) record sales. They might be “better” than the Beatles by a given critic’s measure of skill. But they aren’t — not even arguably — more influential than the Beatles.

I need to read the book but this does presuppose that one finds the Beatles or Microsoft that interesting. Successful certainly but some might argue that the less polished music of the Velvets or the social commentary of the Kinks are more enduring artefacts from the 60s.

Marketing and image is key – the Beatles and Stones had the best management to promote them and therefore they are ingrained in the popular consciousness in a way that Arthur Lee or Lou Reed are sadly not.

Re ‘talent’ — if you mean a fixed quality that you either have or you don’t, then I agree with you that it’s no more helpful a term than ‘genius’.

But that’s not what I’m talking about — it’s more like an innate potential, something that needs work to develop. And I don’t believe that excludes anybody from particular fields of creative work — I think people tend to be most motivated to do things that they are good at, and vice versa. E.g. it doesn’t bother me that I’m not particularly musical, but I don’t have any burning desire to be a musician. Desire and talent may well be two sides of the same coin.