All You Need is Love (DVD)

Quotes

"A mighty achievement. Thank you." —John Lennon

"Magnificent … the editing is truly outstanding. A priceless archive." —Bing Crosby

"Its colossal emotional, intellectual and historical range is breathtaking." —Pete Seeger

"Palmer at his most acerbic. All You Need is Love displays everything that is best in informative and entertaining television, and will undoubtedly make Palmer into the Lord Clark (of Civilisation) of popular music, to the intense annoyance of more-or-less everyone else." —The Times

"Just sensational." —Sunday Telegraph

"A highly intelligent and sensitive survey of a very complicated story." —Chicago Daily News

"Absolutely fascinating films. Incredible energy, which augured well even if you had never bought a pop record in your life." —Daily Express

"This is a highly intelligent and sensitive survey; educated and displaying a vast knowledge and respect for the subject." —San Francisco Examiner

"All You Need is Love has winner stamped all over it. A beautifully assembled work of popular scholarship. A firework display. Unique." —Daily Mail

"Visually rich as mass entertainment. Loaded with great musical personalities, its appeal should transcend most frontiers." —Variety

"These films will quite rightly attract a massive audience. They are scholarly and one of the most comprehensive surveys of popular music yet to appear." —Evening Standard

"The musical content is superb, with enough highlights to fill any schedule." —New York Times

"A stunning triumph. One of the finest television offerings of this or any year. It is entertaining, exhaustive, informative and, regardless of age or musical preference, utterly captivating." —Ottawa Citizen

"An illuminating, bracingly prejudiced survey of the whole pop phenomenon, which is bound to please all but the irredeemably tone-deaf." —American Cosmopolitan

"A brilliant exposition, told in a magisterial style. Magnificent." —The Sunday Times

"Splendid and great fun. A wonderful survey of American mass music." —Houston Chronicle

"As provocative and entertaining a work of art as you are ever likely to find." —The Guardian

"The first well-planned, thoroughly opinionated, non-nutty history of the people's music in the people's century, infuriating, stimulating, long overdue and hugely welcome." —The Listener

"Palmer's a TV genius." —Toronto Globe & Mail

"The descriptive passages are of the highest quality. This is outstandingly good." —The Economist

"The whole series overflows with fascinating anecdotes. All in all, it is comprehensive and masterly." —San Diego Union

"A brilliant and authoritative historical study." —New York Library Journal

"Compulsive — full of sheer gems." —Rock Star, U.S.

"Just brilliant." —Screen International

"A whale of a series piled high with information." —Massachusetts News Tribune

Contents

Popular music is now an essential part of our daily lives. Yet we know comparatively little about it - where it came from, how it developed, how it has influenced or been influenced by social change. Today, the popular music industry controls billions of dollars; it has a greater revenue than the combined efforts of cinema, theater, sports and all the other entertainment industries put together. Yet that industry depends, ultimately, on the creative talents of a group of remarkable individuals. The story of popular music, therefore, is a story of the struggle by those individuals to survive the demands of an avaricious, thieving and capricious industry. This critically acclaimed TV series, originally broadcast worldwide between 1976 and 1980, is featured here in its entirety — 17 episodes contained on 5 discs, encompassing ragtime, blues, jazz, vaudeville, the musical, folk, swing, country and western, rock 'n' roll and beyond.