Classic Albums

A documentary series on several of the key albums in music history. Each episode covers a different album and shows the making of the album, its success and influence. Included are interviews with band members and supporting staff (eg producers, engineers, session players) and with music critics and historians.

Superb series. Well researched and well presented. We don't just see the making of the album but the backstory to it - the band/artist's history to that point and any influences on them in making the album, long-term and short.

Good coverage of how each song was made - really gets you inside the mind of the writers and performers and shows the creativity that went into each song.

Interviews are relevant and illuminating - no "experts" just being cheerleaders.

The review written by rooprect says everything there is to say really.

This was a superb series in which albums aren't just given a bit of info and their tracks played over narration and clips put together by someone rehashing and churning out crap.

The artists are completely involved, interviewed and seem to take real enjoyment in explaining the album, taking apart the music, how it was created, constructed and picking out their best and most favourite little snippets which to the untrained ear you otherwise miss. It's a pretty long, laborious process to record and put any music together so once done it's like handing in a final paper you've spent two years on and kicking back a huge sigh of relief that it's done with.

It's the albums and artists you don't necessarily expect much from I found the most interesting and ended up completely immersed throughout.

Again it's been mentioned how Black Sabbath's Paranoid was put together using the most unlikely sources, sounds, instruments and their inspiration coming from the most random places but you find most of the classic albums and greatest musicians are filled with that stuff it's just not immediately obvious.

Def Leppard's "Hysteria" was great even though I'm not a huge fan of the band or album itself. I have always had mad appreciation for that drumbeat used in "Rocket" so hearing Joe Elliot talk about its inspiration sent me off down the rabbit hole and discovering another several artists and albums that just.. wow.

Paul Simon's "Graceland" is probably my favourite episode mostly because Paul Simon's excitement and enthusiasm is so contagious and the time, effort and detail he takes to explain everything from the mixing desk makes you really sense how keen he is to share the little things and what's hiding out. He' s like a kid at Christmas it's brilliant.

Someone else commented on the lack of female artists in this series as though they've been deliberately ignored or just not considered in the first place. Bearing in mind there are only 44 albums included in the entire series, there are countless classics you could add to the collection and have enough to keep it running for another 20yrs.

Trouble is to feature in the episode requires the consent and co-operation from the artists themselves and if they don't want to be interviewed or don't want to sit and pick apart their work in such detail I guess they won't feature. Fleetwood Mac discussing the making of Rumours was really interesting and the fact they managed to make it at all incredible but it's a wonder they will touch the story behind that album after decades of being asked and explaining the same old same old.

One of the most interesting, fascinating musicians and albums I'd love to have seen feature is Kate Bush's "Hounds of Love" particularly with more in-depth discussion about the B-side to the album (The Ninth Wave) because even now after all these years, I keep hearing something new and discovering something different now and then that makes me go "Oh my God... that's superb"

Again despite being on of music's all time most successful musicians with groundbreaking and "classic" albums, she's a fiercely private person that doesn't do interviews so won't have featured.

I grew up in a family of musicians and can sing, play piano and harp and as a kid my brothers were playing in bands and had me listening to everything from Slayer, Iron Maiden, Stevie Wonder, The Beatles to Ella Fitzgerald and Nina Simone. I learned to drum on an old beer covered Marshall amp to the theme from "Warriors" but even with older brothers in their teens, hair down to their knees and metal fans in the 80's, there was no such thing as a genre that was good, bad or I should like more than any other. It shaped my appreciation for all music and in particular the little things and devil in the detail.

If you're a musician, sound engineer / music nerd or just an average Joe fan of a particular album, there's still likely to be something you'll like.

If you're Kate Bush reading this - come on lady get your act together. You're a few episodes that need sorting but an indepth special for "Ninth Wave" is long overdue and there's things I want to know woman...

Carly Simon and Amy Winehouse. And Fleetwood Mac. That's all the women we get from Classic Albums.

"Classic Albums" is a series of 44 episodes (as of the time I'm writing this, 2020) that takes a deep dive behind-the-scenes of our favorite albums, and some of our not-so-favorite albums, in a way that makes all of them really interesting. What makes this an exceptional documentary is the depth of information we're given which certainly makes the musicians & audio engineers drool, but at the same time it's not so technical & dry that it would put regular fans to sleep.

I'll give you just one example. In the Black Sabbath "Paranoid" episode, we are teased by the engineer telling us about a song which features "an instrument that has never been used on a Black Sabbath album". Immediately we perk up and pay attention, even if we're not Sabbath fans, we want to know what the mystery instrument is. What does it turn out to be? A piano. Yes folks, Black Sabbath, the classic metal band who would be more likely to set a piano on fire than use one, has a piano very subtly mixed into one of their songs... and it doesn't end there. There's an even BETTER mystery instrument which I won't spoil. You gotta check out the show.

The entire Classic Albums series is peppered with these awesome bits of trivia and engineering eye-openers which never fail to deliver at least 1 big surprise per show. Things that you can annoy your friends talking about. Or at least spend a paragraph writing about in an imdb review. These cool bits of info are demonstrated for us with the original multi-track tapes as the engineer or artist solos the tracks and talks us through what we're hearing.

It isn't all studio stuff either. Each episode also dedicates a generous portion to explaining the context of the album & what makes it great in terms of the decade that spawned it, the personal issues of the band members who made it, and tons of fun factoids such as Peter Gabriel being nailed shut in a barn until he finished writing the lyrics. This show covers everything that went into the making of an album.

The episodes are each 1 hour long, but I highly recommend getting the DVD because they are packed with bonus features such as the original musicians often showing us the parts they played. Hats off to the Classic Album crew for delivering everything we want to know, as well as stuff we didn't know we wanted to know. I hope they keep doing this show as long as music exists.