All You Need Is Love

Introduction

New York, London, Paris, Munich. Everybody's talkin' 'bout Pop Music. Talk about…

Music in its many forms has been with us since the earliest days of mankind, constantly evolving over the years as technology and tastes changed. The 20th Century inevitably saw more change than previously due to changes within society and popular culture plus the modern inventions of the electric guitar and the synthesiser.



In the 1970's, based on a suggestion by John Lennon, film maker Tony Palmer decided to write a book documenting the story of popular music. It turned into what's been described as the definitive documentary series on the subject and was screened worldwide between 1976 and 1980. Of course, it only really covered up to the mid-70's and also couldn't even hope to cover every single genre of music out there, but it attempted to cover as broad a base as possible.

With access to stars and not so wellknown performers across 17 episodes covering a wide gamut of styles, Palmer attempted to show where the music we love came from, how it has itself been influenced as well as how it influenced others. Amongst the huge list of contributors to this series are John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Jimi Hendrix, Stephen Sondheim, Benny Goodman, Bing Crosby, Mike Oldfield, The Beach Boys, Tina Turner, Sam Phillips, Dave Brubeck, Dizzy Gillespie, Richard Rodgers, Roy Rogers, Benny Goodman, Bo Diddley, Muddy Waters, Phil Spector, Bill Monroe, Bill Graham, Bill Wyman, Frank Zappa, and Eric Clapton.

Visual/Audio

I only received a sampler that contained one episode so not sure exactly how much will change between that and the retail version, so it's pointless talking about this element of the release.

Overall

The music industry is a billion dollar industry that is dependent on the creative talents of a wide range of artists, some who make it big but many more who don't quite get the recognition they sometimes deserve. It's very much a combination of luck and marketing that is slowly changing in the age of the internet, where more artists are finding it possible to survive without the hampering of unfair contracts from huge Record Companies who earn far more than the artists that earn them that money.

There are vast swathes of musical genres now that a wide ranging and broad documentary on modern music would be next to impossible. You could argue that to a lesser degree that the same problem existed in the mid 70's, but Tony Palmer produced a quite fantastic piece of work that documents as much as possible about the music of the time and where it originated.



Sadly I was only provided with a sampler containing the first episode, but this is an introductory episode and thus contains small excerpts from the remaining sixteen episodes. It looks really interesting but without the major detail, hard to grade overall - and thus I haven't.