All You Need Is Love: The Story of Popular Music

The film opens at a pop festival. Drug-smoking is very much in evidence. These fellows will answer to God says the Rev Jack Wyrtzen, for all the pollution and evil they have spread around the world. The thing about rock n roll says Lester Bangs, is that it is totally about adolescence, and about consumerism brought in the highest degree. In fact, as the film begins to point out, neither of these extreme points of view is true. Tangerine Dream perform religious music in Coventry Cathedral. Stomu Yamashta, a spectacular Japanese percussionist, clearly has nothing to do with adolescence: and no-one could describe Mike Oldfield as the product of consumerism.

This Episode takes place almost entirely on stage; fans are always seen from the performer's point of view. Thus, we begin to feel and experience first hand the pressures being put upon various individuals by the music industry. We are backstage with David Bowie as he makes himself up for a performance. We watch Alice Cooper ritualistically smashing up a doll, while the fans shriek for more and more. We are with Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull as he prepares to face a screaming crowd. We watch Eric Clapton before drugs, during drugs and after drugs. We are on stage with Keith Emerson as he hurls his electric organ as the audience.

The sixties began, according to Eric Burdon as "a party". "The aim of all of us, Hendrix, The Who, The Stones" Burdon goes on, "was to ball every chick in sight". Unfortunately, the party went sour. After the death of Epstein, the Beatles quarreled and split up. Jagger was arrested. Drugs became fashionable. The swinging sixties tore itself apart in an orgy of self-congratulation and self-indulgence.