All You Need Is Love: The Story of Popular Music (1976)
- Directed by
- Tony Palmer
- Genre
- documentary television program
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Length
- 1 season, 17 episodes
- Rated
- A
- Rating
- 6.5 of 10 from 2 voters
- Elsewhere
- IMDb
The catalogue in 3D
The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this series is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.
How it feels
This documentary series traces the history of popular music from the mid-19th century through 1976. It covers many genres like folk, ragtime, jazz, blues, and rock and roll using interviews and archival footage.
informativewide-rangingarchivaleducationalretrospectivesteady-pacedinterview-heavyfactual
What happens
All You Need Is Love: The Story of Popular Music is a 17-part television documentary series on the history of modern pop music directed by Tony Palmer, originally broadcast worldwide between 1976 and 1980. The series covers some of the many different genres that have fallen under the "pop" label between the mid-19th century and 1976, including folk, ragtime, Tin Pan Alley, vaudeville and music hall, musical theatre, country, swing, jazz, blues, R&B, rock 'n' roll and others. All You Need Is Love was born out of the reaction to his 1968 Omnibus episode on popular music called All My Loving which presented the music of the 1960s with no reference to the musical forms that preceded it. Around 1973, Palmer conceived of a 16-part documentary about American popular music which, after considerable shopping around, he convinced Bernard Delfont of EMI to bankroll. He proceeded to film over 300 interviews in approximately one million feet of film and was given access to archival footage of the same length. Instead of writing a script, he enlisted the help of a dozen or so subject matter experts who wrote 2000-word essays that became the narration for each part. John Lennon was a friend and mentor to Palmer during the production of the series, and its title is taken from the Lennon-penned 1967 Beatles song, "All You Need Is Love". Although punk rock had entered the pop music scene while the series was being constructed, Palmer was refused the funding and time to include the genre in All You Need Is Love. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)
More like this
Seven Ages of Rock (2007)
Classic Albums (1992)
The Beatles Anthology (1995)
1971: The Year That Music Changed Everything (2021)
The World at War (1973)
Rock & Roll (1995)
Arena (1975)
The Talent Show Story (2012)- More like this series, on a shelf you can walk up to.It's the lit case on the top shelf.