Peers read rock shirts the way CEOs review résumés — as a quick rundown of all you are about. Such is the influence and impact of rock’n’ roll that wearing a rock T-shirt not only announces to the world what you think is cool, it announces that you are cool too!” So says the introduction to Rock Tease, a new book charting the history of the band T-shirt in photographs. And it’s at least half-true: music fans have long found their own cool via the power of the T-shirt, whether it’s that girl leaning against the wall in a nightclub or that guy skulking in the corner of the record shop. You know you’ve unearthed a member of your own precious tribe when you see that they’re wearing that same wiggly-lined Joy Division design as you.

The London-based Swiss artist Nathalie Zdrojewski, a diehard Sonic Youth fan, recently created a whole art project around music fans and their T-shirts. She held an event at a Central London bar, open to absolutely anybody as long as they turned up wearing their musical heart on their sleeves. (She did bring a few spares with her in case anyone came along without one, “but only really embarrassing U2 ones, as punishment”.) What she noted at the event was “how people will easily talk to each other because of their band T-shirt. You see a guy wearing a T-shirt of a band that you thought only you liked, and then it’s easy to strike up a conversation with him. It’s communication via the T-shirt.”

The only problem is that, much as you hope to look like a member of your beloved band when wearing their design, musicians themselves rarely wear their own T-shirts, so you’re doomed to end up looking more like the roadie. This is the problem with that slippery notion of “cool”: over the years, the wearing of rock T-shirts has increased in inverse proportion to their coolness. Where once the menacing motif of Iron Maiden signified “Lock up your daughters, for I bring danger and moral turpitude”, now it screams “I’m an IT professional who bought this at Topman, thank the good lord in heaven that it came with the sleeves already cut off.” It’s as sure a sign of dullness as the person who walks up to you on your first day at university and announces that they are, you know, a bit wild and crazy — you just know that they’ll prove themselves about as wild and crazy as the Inland Revenue.

And for the band, the popularity of their T-shirts can be a curse as well as a blessing. AC/DC shirts will never look the same after the cartoon characters Beavis and Butthead made their home in them, and as for poor old Motörhead, their sartorial offering seems to have become a byline for celebrity mid-life crisis. When Sporty Spice launched her solo career, she appeared on the cover of Top of the Pops magazine in a Motör-head T-shirt. (Girl band? What girl band?) When Missy Elliott shed her youthful nickname Misdemeanor and started her big rebranding campaign, she also did it clad in that familiar skull and crossbones for the Get Ur Freak On video. Welsh rugby hero Gareth Thomas appeared in a BBC interview and confessed he was in a bad way and hadn’t slept for five nights — he was carted off to hospital still wearing his love for Lemmy. Even David Beckham has been spotted with his Motörhead mojo on.

It spells trouble; it spells rebirth; what it doesn’t promise is a person inside it who can name any of the band’s songs. And it’s not just the fans and the fickle who communicate via chest messages: it’s also a way for bands to send messages to members of other bands.

When Blur pipped Oasis to No 1 back in the heady days of Britpop, the bassist Alex James wore an Oasis T-shirt on Top of the Pops as a comic gesture. When Damon Albarn later complained that the Oasis single sounded like Status Quo anyway, the Mancunian band responded with pride by printing “Quoasis” T-shirts that their fans bought in their droves. Blur soon got their comeuppance anyway: the Scottish band Mogwai launched “Blur: are shite” T-shirts, and they soon became the frontispiece of choice for festival-goers all across the country.

And moody Mogwai weren’t the first to spell out their hatred of their peers: Johnny Rotten notoriously customised a Pink Floyd T-shirt by adding the words “I hate” to the top of it. Inspiral Carpets fans got arrested for the ones that said “Cool as f***”, and wearing Marilyn Manson’s “God of f***” shirts (without asterisks) became an offence in some sections of Middle America. The indie act James were said to have sold more shirts than albums — as did the Ramones.

T-shirts can also offer patronage; a way for bigger bands to big up their lesser-known heroes. Kurt Cobain championed the Scottish band Teenage Fanclub, back when they were called Captain America, via the power of the T-shirt. And his appearance at the 1992 MTV awards in a T-shirt saying “Hi How Are You” propelled its creator, the troubled outsider musician Daniel Johnston, to a public profile he might never have attained otherwise.

Then there is the patronage of those who are actually doing just fine without it. Madonna asked Dolce and Gabbana to design her an “I Love Britney” T-shirt for a 2003 show, a favour which was returned when Britney wore a Madonna top. It was a little like watching two shy kids passing love letters across the classroom, except that one had fake boobs and the other was old enough to be a sex offender. Still, they ended up getting a televised snog out of it.

After all this, Nigella Lawson wanted in on the action and so wore a T-shirt proclaiming her admiration of her forerunner with the word “Delia” was emblazoned across it. Unfortunately, her antics managed to kill the trend for celebrity bosom-slapping stone dead. Oh well, at least she didn’t look like a roadie.