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Writing anything on popular music is difficult because
the music you like and think is important to our culture
might not be what everyone else thinks is important much
less listenable. Making a series of documentaries on it
is even more difficult because 1) you need to have a point-of-view
2) you'll have to pick and choose who truly are the most
importance musicians in history and 3) you'll have disagreements
no matter what. Such was Tony Palmer's difficult task with
"All You Need Is Love" which borrows its title from John
Lennon and Paul McCartney's classic flower power ballad
from 1967. ***
The show consists of 17 episodes running over 880 minutes
(or roughly 15 hours). Made between 1976 and 1980 the predictable
musical heroes are included (John Lennon is included as
part of the series which includes musical performances from
a variety of artists)covering a wide variety of styles including
folk, jazz, blues, ragtime, vaudeville, country and western
and, of course, rock 'n' roll. We get plenty of vintage
interviews and performances from Bing Crosby, Dave Brucbeck,
Dizzy Gilespie, Richard Rodgers, Roy Rogers, The Beach Boys,
Tina Turner, Muddy Waters, Eric Clapton, The Beatles, Elvis
Presley, Jimi Hendrix and other popular icons of their respective
eras. Directed by Tony Palmer who has made over 100 documentaries
on music covering everyone from Igor Stravinsky to Frank
Zappa), Palmer began this musical journey on film after
a suggestion of Lennon himself as their truly hadn't been
a documentary that had covered the history of popular music
with any depth. The single greatest flaw with this documentary
is one that is unavoidable; it was finished in 1979 with
the last episode broadcast in 1980 so while it covers the
bulk of rock 'n' roll, soul, the blues, punk and new wave
as part of the territory, it misses out on the rise of Michael
Jackson and impact of "Thriller" Jackson's magnum opus.
It also misses the movements of the late 80's and early
90's such as Grunge and even Electronica which although
a brief blip when it comes the history of popular music
remains an important development nevertheless. ***
The first episode tells us about the rest of the series
and I can only surmise that it was made AFTER the rest of
the episodes in the series. It provides a brief thumbnail
clip of the history of music but in jagged bits. It's essentially
a summary of what the rest of the series is all about. Oddly
dissatisfying, the first episode merely hints at what is
to come vs. providing us with actual information about each
era. It's not necessarily bad just oddly disjointed covering
too much ground without providing the depth of the rest
of the series. ---
Image & Sound:
The show looks as best as can be expected for a series
drawn from vintage film clips, videotapes and a variety
of interview sources. Much of the new material also looks
a bit soft with colors that tend to bleed a bit. Audio sounds
decent with dialogue front and center in the mono soundtrack.
The music varies a bit some with distortion and others sounding
amazingly good for vintage mono tracks. ---
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