TV Pop Diaries
Pop Music on British Television 1955 - 1999

For some reason journalist and TV presenter Michael Parkinson was chosen to host this five-part look at popular music and how the industry was run in the early seventies. Like Tony Palmer's All My Loving it was a documentary made by the baffled. It was however to be congratulated for getting Soft Machine, Frank Zappa, John Peel and other left-field artists and players involved.

The first show Elements Galore looked at pop's constituent parts, where they came from and talked to those involved about how it all came together. The second show looked at the recording process and included footage of Marmalade recording in Decca's studio. The third programme asked if promotion of pop music was just a con. The fourth show looked at pop's numerous 'tribes', while the fifth and final show looked at song writing. There would also be a BBC Publications tie-in book.

The show contained fragments of footage from long-wiped early seventies shows like Disco 2, while the show itself would have newly shot footage that would be plundered years later for many of BBC4's Friday night documentaries.

Despite the unusual title the name had been used before by ABC TV in 1966. However, it didn't stop someone at the Record Mirror referring to it as 'Labotomy Of Pop'.

ANATOMY OF POP

BBC1

10th January 1971 - 7th February 1971