As rock critics lined up to pay homage to George Harrison recently, a telling consensus emerged. Gushing eulogies spoke of a reluctant celebrity retreating from the public eye with quiet dignity.

How reserved the youngest Beatle had seemed, brooding in his home counties Gormenghast for all those years while brash elder, fab Paul McCartney, strained for relevancy, pouring raspberry sauce over the group's legacy with a string of rancid and self-satisfied solo projects.

Perhaps Harrison, a celebrated spiritualist, had benefited from divine guidance. In hindsight, his disavowal of the limelight appears uncannily perceptive. Just ask Macca, currently presiding over an umpteenth flop album.

Released shortly before Harrison's death, Driving Rain debuted at number 13 in Britain, plummeting to the fringes of the charts within days. The record this week dropped out of the top fifty and appears to have swished down a metaphorical plug-hole.

McCartney isn't the only rock'n'roll demagogue who suddenly woke to discover he no longer walks on water.

Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger, once lip-curled embodiment of everything maniacal and debauched about guitar music, limped into the charts with his first solo project in more than a decade.

Critics swooned over Goddess in the Doorway but the punters didn't want to know. Not even the presence of Jagger's celebrity mates Bono and Lenny Kravitz could stall its tumble into mid-table anonymity.

Rivalling Jagger's disastrous showing is the cool reception being afforded to a frenziedly hyped "Best Of" collection from Pink Floyd, doyens of early 1970s' experimental rock.

Once again, a shrill music press rallied to the cause - once again the public shrugged and went back to listening to Britney Spears.

At least McCartney, Jagger and the Floyd still have their record companies to lean on. Spare a thought for rasping pop dwarf Rod Stewart, jettisoned by Atlantic after his last album, Human, died on the high street.

Stewart's commercial meltdown is unprecedented. Although hipster rock journos have been lustily disdaining the Woodstock generation since punk burst on the cultural landscape like a postulant boil a quarter of a century ago, record buyers have always quietly acquiesced to the expectations of the major labels, purchasing whatever re-heated bilge the baby boomer elite have deigned to fling our way.

Now, it is punk acts such as the Clash and the Sex Pistols which have become unimpeachable establishment icons.

Thirty one years after the Beatles' implosion, the bell is finally tolling for McCartney and his fellow dinosaurs.

Even hardcore Beatles and Rolling Stones fans have turned their backs on their idols. In his coruscating hatchet job of the "colostomy rock" industry, "Rock 'til your Drop", veteran New York Press writer - and long time Jagger aficionado - John Strausbaugh says: "Rock simply should not be played by fifty-five-year-old men with triple chins wearing bad wig hats, pretending to still be excited about playing songs they wrote . . . thirty-five years ago."

It's prime audience should not be middle-aged, balding, jelly-bellied dads.

Jagger and McCartney are pathetic hangovers of a vanquished era, says John Skea, owner of Trinity Records, a retro music specialist store in Dublin.

"It's time these guys retired gracefully and stopped making fools of themselves," he says.

"Their new music is completely irrelevant. We're not stocking their new albums. They simply wouldn't sell. Their day has passed - and everybody seems to know it except them."

While McCartney languishes in the bargain bins, his old sparring partner John Lennon continues to enjoy a sacrosanct profile. Ironically his later output was as drippy and insipid as anything McCartney ever produced.

"Maybe it's because he died at a relatively young age. Unlike McCartney or Mick Jagger he didn't get old and start churning out really substandard fare," says Skea.

With Harrison gone, the prospect of a ghoulish Beatles' reunion has now dissipated into the ether.

But the music industry was never going to pass up a gilt-edged opportunity to flog us some old records we already own.

Having disdained the charts for much of his life, Harrison will presently find himself thrust indignantly into the limelight.

A hastily repackaged version of his 1971 hit My Sweet Lord is due for re-release next month.

Expect it to scorch up the charts. Macca must be livid.