Every true pop fan has one great fantasy, and this is to own a time machine that can send them winging back to the recording session which produced their favourite album or single. Imagine sitting in as Sinatra recorded All Or Nothing At All; Presley soared through his Sun sessions; Dylan made Blonde On Blonde; The Sex Pistols roared out God Save The Queen or, more recently, Radiohead created OK Computer. Well, a new television series entitled Classic Albums promises the next best thing, a re-enactment of the original creation of what they describe as "the greatest records in rock history". Sadly, if the three programmes I watched from the first series of six are anything to go by, the series' producers fail to deliver. Big time.
The first thing wrong is the choice of artists, which includes all the usual male suspects from the 1960s: The Band, Jimi Hendrix, Fleetwood Mac, Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder and The Grateful Dead. That list might keep ageing hippies happy but what about the rest of us?
Let's hope the second series spreads the net a little wider, though one must ask if the selection is in any way influenced by record company/marketing considerations? After all, the prototype for the series was the Sergeant Pepper documentary in 1987 which sent that album back to the top of the charts. It's rumoured that albums such as Rumours, by Fleetwood Mac, "flew out of the shops" in the US following the screening of their documentary in this series. Money for old rope, one could cynically suggest.
And who on earth decided that Stevie Wonder's Songs In The Key Of Life is better than Innervisions? On the contrary, despite its moments of magnificence it's probably his most self-indulgent album. Irish director David Heffernan does manage to capture some wonderful moments of intimacy between Wonder and his musicians. He also gives the show a modicum of contemporary relevance by including an interview with rapper Coolio about his 1995 hit Gangsta's Paradise, which was based on Wonder's Pastime Paradise.
What other albums are covered and are any of the shows worthwhile? The documentary on Paul Simon's Graceland is, by far, the best, featuring extensive interviews with many of the South African musicians who were involved, such as the positively ebullient Joseph Shabalala, nor does it shrink away from the political issues raised by the recording of the album.
In other programmes, however, the socio-political context is sidelined, often in favour of personal anecdotes, such as Robbie Robertson revealing that The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down is "very quiet" because he had to compose it while his new-born child was asleep in a nearby room. Hardly newsworthy.
Time and again, one longs for a more critical approach to all these albums, and artists - as in using what the producers falsely describe as the "soul searching interviews" to push Paul Simon on the question of why he removed Art Garfunkel's voice from the album Hearts And Bones? But then one notes that Simon himself is co-producer of his Graceland documentary, as is the case in relation to all these artists and all these documentaries, meaning that most are simply extended promotional videos. Overall, Classic Albums is a lost opportunity, of little more than vague interest when it could have been an invaluable chronicle of some of the most influential recordings of our time. It's a time machine that doesn't work. Maybe that's why the BBC has given the series a ghost slot so late at night.
Classic Albums on Mondays at 11.20 p.m. from July 21st (BBC 1).
