England Rocks! - Ziggy played guitar...and this is where

When I was young, there was a song by Roger Miller lodged in the charts: "England swings like a pendulum do, bobbies on bicycles, two by two, Westminster Abbey the tower of Big Ben, the rosy red cheeks of the little children." So bad was this song that the English Tourist Board bought every copy and melted them down. That's what I was told. Nevertheless, enough people had heard Miller's doggerel to deter a generation of music fans from ever visiting the UK.

But maybe enough years have passed. This month, the English Tourist Board's successor, Enjoy England, is launching a campaign to market our pop heritage worldwide. After all, The Beatles made Liverpool famous; Happy Mondays did the same for Manchester, after a fashion. So stand by this year for "England Rocks!", which intends to get us out visiting the venues and birthplaces, the sources of inspiration and the curious streetscapes that ended up on English album covers.

The campaign's pride and enjoy is a hi-tech map on the web where you can type in the name of a band or of a place and see where it fits into the musical history of our nation. What we have is a mixture of the obvious, the arcane and the downright bizarre. That zebra crossing in Abbey Road is listed, of course. Not surprising given that it is the location of what must be the ultimate album image, snapped during a 10-minute photo shoot in 1969. A lamp post outside 23 Heddon Street W1 is also on the map because the cover of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars was shot there one night in 1972.

Some locations make it on to the map because they provided unforgettable inspiration. The Thames at Waterloo Bridge gets in simply because Ray Davies wrote about it in "Waterloo Sunset". And Primrose Hill in NW1 is there because Paul McCartney encountered the "Fool on the Hill" there. Rather tenuously, Cambridge has made a bid for stardom because the lawns outside King's College inspired Roger Waters of Pink Floyd to write "the lunatic is on the grass". Allegedly. More impressive claims are to be found by the River Tyne, which gets three plugs as the inspiration for Dire Straits's "Southbound Again", Jimmy Nail's "Big River" and Lindisfarne's "Fog on the Tyne".

But it is not surprising that the really big "Oh my God, I must go there" stuff is to be found in Liverpool. Three of its locations - Penny Lane, Strawberry Fields and that Ferry Across the Mersey - really did inspire great anthems. Moreover, you can visit the statue of Eleanor Rigby (dedicated to "All the lonely people") and stay in the Hard Day's Night Hotel (opening shortly). And there are lots of statues of the Fabulously Wealthy Four themselves - at John Lennon airport, at the Cavern Walks shopping centre, over the Beatles Shop in Matthew Street and outside the reconstructed Cavern Club itself. You can also visit Mendips, the childhood home of John Lennon, and Forthlin Road, the home of Paul. Both houses now belong to the National Trust.

There are some other imaginative bits of blue plaquery, including Freddie Mercury's house in Logan Place, Ridgmount Gardens, where Bob Marley smoked his first UK wacky baccy, and the tree into which Marc Bolan smashed his Mini GT on Barnes Common. Some of the memorabilia stretch the point, though. Would a Pulp fan really go all the way to Castle Market in Sheffield because Jarvis Cocker worked on a wet fish stall there?

Some places do deserve a place in the rock hall of fame. The University of Leeds refectory has a reasonable claim as the place where, in 1970, The Who recorded Live at Leeds. In Brighton there are Quadrophenia Tours for people who want to relive Franc Roddam's Mods and Rockers epic. In St Mary's Churchyard, Henley, you canvisit the stone marking where Dusty Springfield's ashes were scattered and join herfans celebrating Dusty Day on 15 April.

On the whole, though, this is a promotion that will appeal primarily to the nerds who already knew - or cared - that the Arctic Monkeys' first gig was at The Grapes in Sheffield. For most of us, the places on this map are going to be more a talking point than a point of pilgrimage, but as long as England Rocks rather than swings, the UK will survive it.

Contact England Rocks! (0845 345 2689; enjoyengland.com/rocks)