Volume is paramount on the new Apple docuseries 1971: The Year That Music Changed Everything, both in the play-it-loud sense as well as the sheer-quantity sense. The watershed social and artistic moment explored across the eight episodes contained a staggering amount of genius, to the point that an interview quickly dissolves into the same awed name-cataloguing one might expect to hear around a college radio station or independent record shop.

...But for all their open-hearted admiration, the brilliance of their new project lies in the discipline with which they channel that spirit of fandom into a more studied form of cultural anthropology. The vast purview of their chosen year – John Lennon moving to New York, the Stones shacking up in the south of France, the Concert for Bangladesh, Joni Mitchell releasing Blue, the list of key events seems to go on forever – forced them to consider more thoughtful, creative methods of organizing the material. Though they worked from the basis of David Hepworth’s book Never a Dull Moment, the creative team wanted to move away from his straightforward chronology toward a structure shaped by overarching themes.

“When we got into the research, it became apparent what a seminal, transitional year this was,” Gay-Rees says. “The 60s had ended so badly – Kent State, Altamont, Charles Manson, the Beatles breaking up. It felt like there was a tonal shift to this golden age of paranoia. We all did a lot of reading around it, we being a team of 15 people beyond us, all in an open-plan office kicking around ideas all the time.

“It became really exciting when we realized there might be a different way to approach a music documentary, because we didn’t want to do the Behind the Music type thing. There’s a place for that, but it’s not our specialty.”

More at https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/may/22/asif-kapadia-1971-music-documentary-apple-tv?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other