Original subtitles

[ Marvin Gaye's "I Heard It through the Grapevine" plays ]

♪ Ooh, I bet you wondered... ♪

SHOCKLEE: I started collecting records at the age of 5,

and the first single I bought

was "I Want To Hold Your Hand" by The Beatles.

♪ With some other guy you knew before ♪

I mean, my first record I bought was "Be‐Bop‐A‐Lula"

by Gene Vincent.

Whew. Magical.

♪ Took me by surprise ♪

CARPENTER: I do remember the very first 45 I bought

was "I Heard It through the Grapevine,"

and singing in the kitchen with my sisters.

♪ ...the grapevine ♪

♪ Not much longer would you... ♪

NARRATOR: Records, cassettes, CDs, and MP3s.

These are not just vehicles for music.

They are reflections of ourselves

and the times we live in.

♪ You turned me on ♪

HOROVITZ: So, you had your cassette,

and you'd put all your favorite songs on it.

MILNER: Make a collection

that you wanted to give to someone you liked.

HOROVITZ: This is how I feel, you know, about you.

[ Classical music plays ]

NARRATOR: As technology has evolved,

each generation has had a format to call its own.

When I was born, people were listening to vinyl.

[ Graham Central Station's "Your Love" playing ]

♪ Your love ♪

McDANIELS: The first album I paid my own allowance for

was Larry Graham and Graham Central Station.

That was my album.

♪ And your kiss... ♪

VEGA: Everything about vinyl was great.

The smell of it when you took it out of the package.

JIMMY JAM: You'd get liner notes,

which I always loved to read.

ST. VINCENT: I knew who engineered that record,

and I knew who produced that record.

That was my complete and total obsession.

NELSON: This is my modern‐day jukebox here,

where I can hear new music as it comes out.

They send it to me. They MP3 me.

You can get access to all the songs on the planet,

and I think that is brilliant.

CHUCK D: We're heading to a whole bunch of new rules.

Like, some people are like, "Oh, I miss going to a record store

and just taking the record

and opening it up and smelling the [Sniffs]

Well, I say, "Well, you're being a romantic.

I mean, that's wonderful.

Let's write some books about it."

NARRATOR: This is the story

of our on‐again, off‐again love affair with musical formats

and how magical pieces of wax, plastic, and silicon

changed the world.

All people always think their time,

their music, was better.

Mine actually was.

[ Guitar strumming ]

‐HARRISON: What key is it in? ‐MAN: What key is it...

McCARTNEY: It'll be in F for you.

SPECTOR: Here we go. Just one more time.

FRANKLIN: Right after I say, "Are you sure?"

Da da da ‐‐ yeah.

MAN: Oh.

WILSON: Hal, here's how I want to do it. It's like this.

BOWIE: All right, it's fun time. Fun time.

‐MAN #1: Here we go. ‐MAN #2: Oh, really?

MAN #1: 17, take one.

MAN #3: This will be a keeper.

[ Woman laughs ]

[ Up‐tempo jazz music playing ]

BAMBAATAA: Way back, before my time,

they had the turntable that you used to have to crank up.

Then it has this big, fat needle with a little pin on it,

and it could get on the record,

and you might hear the crack and pops poppin' in it,

and they used to hear the song comin' through a horn.

You might not have had no bass, but you had a lot of treble,

but you still was ready to dance with it.

GRANATA: Those old 78 RPM records ‐‐

The grooves were cut into shellac and were very noisy.

Those 78s, their playing time was three minutes, each side.

The 78 was, you know, big, and it broke.

[ Music stops abruptly ]

[ Record breaking ]

[ Big‐band music plays ]

GRANATA: In the 1940s, two major rivals

had been experimenting with a way

to create a quieter record with a longer playing time.

There was Columbia, headed by William Paley,

and RCA Victor, which was headed by David Sarnoff.

Sarnoff had RCA, and they had everything, okay?

They had radio. They invented the record player.

They invented the record,

the record being the 10‐inch shellac 78.

So, in 1948, Sarnoff, going along merrily, owning the world,

and this upstart Paley, 10 years younger,

invites him to the CBS office and says, "Listen, David,

we want you to hear our new product."

And he plays him the first 33 album.

‐[ Classical music plays ] ‐MAN: A new kind of record,

LPs play for 25 instead of 4 minutes without interruption.

GRANATA: As though it were a top‐secret mission,

Paley had his engineers create a long‐playing vinyl record

before RCA had the chance to come out with their version,

so that really aggravated Sarnoff.

VAN ZANDT: So, Sarnoff leaves there

and calls his entire office into the room,

and says, you know, "You have exactly five minutes

to explain to me how this punk beat me to the punch

with something new."

And they go through all their files

looking for some way to combat this,

and they go all the way back to their very first record.

[ Jazz music playing ]

It happened to be a 7‐inch disc.

And they create the 7‐inch 45.

MAN: On the new distortion‐free RCA Victor 45 RPM record.

♪ Come on‐a my house, my house ♪

♪ I'm gonna give you apple, a plum, and an apricot, too, ah ♪

GRANATA: What are teenagers listening to on the radio?

They're listening to one song, two songs,

that are the most popular.

So let's come out with a disc that has two songs on it,

and we'll sell it for 50 cents.

VAN ZANDT: And, along with the kid's records,

the kid's record player,

which he takes into his room by himself to play his records.

And a whole new thing is born called "teenage rock 'n' roll."

♪ Ooh, well, I've got a girl with a record machine ♪

♪ When it comes to rocking, she's the queen ♪

ANKA: Music was everywhere,

and it was always a social event

based around that funny little machine.

♪ The elevator's broken down ♪

BECK: To hear Eddie Cochran, "Twenty Flight Rock."

That was it, when this thing

used to whirl around and almost rattle itself off the table

'cause it's spinning so fast.

♪ Say, come on over, honey, I'm all alone ♪

DALTREY: The rock single was the thing

that really made us all want to be rock singers

or guitarists or in a band,

and it was the noise of it.

♪ So I walked one, two flight, three flight, four ♪

♪ Five, six, seven flight, eight flight, more ♪

MARTIN: What amazed me

was the sheer technical ferocity of the stuff.

‐Volume. ‐♪ I'm too tired to rock ♪

I could actually see the loudness

of the record in the groove.

The louder you could make a pop record,

the better it was likely to sell.

♪ Ooh‐ooh, ooh ♪

ROONEY: Rock 'n' roll was considered bad

for the youth of America

by a lot of people, mostly adults.

♪ Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, love me strong ♪

♪ I don't mind it if it's all night, Daddy ♪

Music was segregated during the '50s.

People used to call black music race music.

And a lot of the people used to think

that it was a little too suggestive.

♪ When you thrill me like you thrill me ♪

♪ With a touch that always fills me with love ♪

♪ So fine, ooh ♪

♪ In the morning... ♪

The 45 records,

I think, did a lot for bringing the races together.

I think it was beginning of the end for that old race music.

STOLLER: Jerry and I were young white kids,

even though we liked to think of ourselves as black,

who loved black music,

and those were the artists that we wanted to write for.

LEIBER: I first met Big Mama Thornton

in Johnny Otis' rehearsal space.

She was quite intimidating.

STOLLER: She had a few scars on her face,

looked like razor scars, but she could sing.

♪ I said, oh, oh, baby ♪

♪ Why you wanna ♪

♪ Why you wanna do these mean things to me? ♪

The A&R man, Johnny Otis, called and said,

"I'm doing a session with her,

and I need songs, so you better come on down."

LEIBER: She was wearing old farmer jeans.

She looked like she didn't have much use for guys like us.

STOLLER: Her actual physical being inspired Jerry.

I think it probably took us about 10 minutes

to write "Hound Dog."

LEIBER: I said, "You know what, man?

I'm not happy with this song."

I said, "'You ain't nothin' but a hound dog' is not ‐‐

It's not enough kick.

I want something really dirty,

like 'Dirty Mother Furrier' don't you know?"

And I said, "No, they won't play that on the radio."

I really want something that's really kick‐ass.

Hound dog? I mean, give me a break.

We attempted to interest her in the song.

She snatched the paper out of my hand.

She said, "What's this?" I said, "That's the song."

She said, "This the song?" I said, "Yeah."

♪ You ain't nothin' but a hound dog ♪

STOLLER: I remember Jerry saying,

"It doesn't go like that, Big Mama."

She said, "White boy, don't tell me how to sing the blues."

♪ You ain't nothin' but a hound dog ♪

♪ Been snooping around the door ♪

And we knew we had a hit.

♪ You ain't nothin' but a hound dog ♪

♪ Been snooping around my door ♪

♪ You can wag your tail ♪

♪ But I ain't gonna feed you no more ♪

♪ You told me you was high class ♪

JOHN: My mum came home with a record.

She said, "I've just heard this record,

and it's a sort of music I've never heard before."

She said, "But it's fantastic."

And she said, "Listen to it."

♪ You ain't nothin' but a hound dog ♪

♪ Crying all the time ♪

♪ You ain't nothin' but a hound dog ♪

It was a total introduction

to a different sort of music, obviously,

which I found out later to have its roots in blues

and rockabilly and folk and country and gospel.

But, you know, Elvis Presley, you know, was the one.

♪ You ain't nothin' but a hound dog ♪

♪ Crying all the time ♪

Thanks to Elvis, we were able to combine a mixture

of what they thought white felt and what blacks felt.

♪ And you ain't no friend of mine ♪

♪ Well, they said you was high‐classed ♪

Elvis brought a style of his own

of wiggling his behind and what have you

and singing the same song by Big Mama Thornton,

and all of a sudden, it became acceptable.

[ Screaming ]

♪ You ain't nothin' but a hound dog ♪

When I heard Elvis' rendition of "Hound Dog,"

I thought it was kind of rockabilly,

didn't have any blood in it.

STOLLER: But, after it sold 7 million records,

it started to sound better.

♪ Well, you ain't never caught a rabbit ♪

♪ You ain't no friend of mine ♪

[ Music ends, screaming ]

GRANATA: Big Mama Thornton's recording of "Hound Dog" in 1953

did very well.

It was a 78 RPM that sold between half a million

and a million copies.

When Elvis' came out on a 45 RPM record in 1956,

it sold 10 million copies.

And that was a turning point for the 45.

[ "In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning" plays ]

Meanwhile, other artists are beginning to make inroads

with the 33 1/3 LP.

♪ In the wee small hours of the morning ♪

♪ While the whole wide world is fast asleep ♪

By 1954, Frank Sinatra is at the top of his game,

the sweet spot for his voice and his work.

At the same time, he's got this deep emotional upheaval,

'cause he's really carrying a torch for Ava Gardner,

to whom he's still married, but not with.

He's already broken up with her.

[ "Mood Indigo" plays ]

And when he walked into the Capitol studio

to record "In the Wee Small Hours,"

he understood that he could use this new format, the LP,

for long‐form expression.

♪ You ain't been blue ♪

♪ No, no, no ♪

ROSEN: Before the long‐playing record,

we had a 3‐minute‐long song.

Now we could have a long‐form musical story,

and so Sinatra created this crazy thing

called the "concept record."

♪ Till you've had that mood indigo ♪

GRANATA: Frank sat with little pieces of paper

with each song title on it,

and he would shuffle them around so that they told a story.

16 songs, single statement ‐‐

what it's like to lose your love.

♪ While I sit and sigh ♪

Frank always wanted Ava back,

and what we hear in "In the Wee Small Hours"

is a reflection of that anguish

that he had lost this great love of his life.

♪ Always get that mood indigo ♪

♪ Since my baby said goodbye ♪

♪ In the evening when the lights are low ♪

♪ I'm so lonely I could cry ♪

This landmark album coincided with true high‐fidelity sound,

the LP, magnetic tape,

and these gorgeous Neumann microphones

that gave you the most incredible richness.

I mean, as we're sitting here at Capitol,

I still get blown away by this room.

Right on that exact spot

there was a full orchestra setup,

and Sinatra was facing this way,

and he sang all the songs.

CASH: I was just in the old Capitol building,

and we went in that room

where Sinatra recorded with Nelson Riddle

those great classic records.

And that microphone.

It was just so goosebump‐y.

♪ While I just sit around and sigh ♪

♪ Go 'long blues ♪

GRANATA: In creating this concept album,

Sinatra solidified a format for all of music to follow.

When 78 RPM discs were the format,

and the only format out there,

it didn't really matter in jazz whether it was a small group,

a singer and band, a big band,

they would all kind of record the same way,

which was we've got to get this in and done

within 3 1/2 minutes.

[ "Hot House" plays ]

WAS: If you listen to a Charlie Parker 78,

they're short solos.

It just goes around a couple of times,

and then he's out of time.

So, suddenly, the LP gave jazz musicians

the opportunity to express themselves.

[ Miles Davis' "So What" plays ]

KAHN: In the spring of 1959,

Miles Davis went into the New York Columbia Studio

and recorded "Kind of Blue."

[ Trumpet solo ]

Miles Davis created new kinds of freedoms,

the idea of modal scales, no chordal structures.

He wanted to kind of allow the individual voices of the soloist

to come through and begin speak in extended paragraphs.

The tracks are all roughly 9 minutes,

10 minutes, 12 minutes long.

It was released in August of '59,

and by the end of that year,

it had already become the bible for many musicians.

WAS: "Kind of Blue," you know, it's still in the jazz top 10.

[ Laughs ] Can you imagine that?

I don't know that it ever left.

♪ Love Potion Number Nine ♪

DEEJAY: Number four, "Love Potion Number Nine."

ANKA: Well, the '50s and the early '60s,

the single record was the thing.

If you didn't have that,

you didn't get the album, which was the follow‐through,

and then you didn't have a career.

♪ 93 KHJ ♪

DEEJAY: 24 minutes now before 9:00.

JAMES: And radio was the way

you put new records in front of the public,

‐so I loved AM radio. ‐DEEJAY: Be happy.

Come on, everybody. It's a beautiful night in Chicago.

JAMES: These 50,000‐watt clear‐channel stations ‐‐

I mean, WLS in Chicago would hit 10 million to 20 million people.

Hi, everybody all over America. This is your Cousin Brucie.

It's the WABC party. Go, go. Whoo!

JAMES: They'd hit 38 states at night.

MAN: [ Echoing ] Number one!

♪ You never close your eyes ♪

JAMES: There's nothing more exciting thing on this earth

than an exploding smash‐hit single,

because it just ‐‐

It happens everywhere at once, and it just goes.

It's like an atomic bomb.

DEEJAY: Tommy James and the Shondells, "Mony Mony."

ANKA: So, you knew going in the studio

that everything you had to say

had to be no longer than 2 minutes and 30 seconds,

or shorter, if you wanted to get on the radio.

DEEJAY: ...shall return with "Stop! In the Name of Love."

♪ On the "Dan Ingram Show" ♪

ROBERTSON: This is, like, 1965.

We were zooming around Manhattan.

♪ Action Central News ♪

And John Hammond Jr. said,

"Listen, a friend of mine is recording,

and I said I would stop in and say hello

and hear a little bit of what he's doing."

So we went to Columbia Recording Studios.

[ Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" playing ]

And Bob Dylan and these musicians

were in there recording,

and they were recording "Like a Rolling Stone."

♪ Once upon a time, you dressed so fine ♪

♪ Threw the bums a dime in your prime ♪

♪ Didn't you? ♪

♪ People call, say, "Beware, doll ♪

♪ You're bound to fall," you thought they were all ♪

♪ Kidding you ♪

And I didn't know him, but I thought,

"This song is really interesting."

It was like a different kind of songwriting.

Dion from Dion and the Belmonts was there.

DION: It was great to watch.

Dylan had recorded some albums with just his guitar,

and now he had a few of the guys

from the Brill Building come up and played with, you know,

drums, a full band behind him.

♪ Your next meal ♪

♪ How does it feel ♪

It was exciting.

He was like somebody let him out of a cage or something.

He knew what he was about and exactly what he wanted to do.

You couldn't sway him,

'cause I heard some musicians say, "Listen, you can't do."

He said, "Follow me."

♪ Like a rolling stone ♪

"Like a Rolling Stone," in my opinion,

is the greatest single anyone has ever made.

It's a really ambitious statement

to put in a rock 'n' roll 45

just a couple years past, like, "Be My Baby."

♪ At Napoleon in rags ♪

♪ And the language that he used ♪

♪ Go to him now, he calls you, you can't refuse ♪

♪ When you ain't got nothing ♪

♪ You got nothing to lose ♪

♪ You're invisible now ♪

♪ You've got no secrets to conceal ♪

SPITZ: Columbia had really become an album company.

Bob makes what is perhaps the longest single ever made.

It's six minutes long.

♪ To be on your own ♪

♪ With no direction home ♪

♪ Like a complete unknown ♪

"Like a Rolling Stone," all of a sudden,

it becomes a hit single.

DEEJAY: Now Bobby Dylan comes front and center at WHK

with song number six on the survey.

This is called "Like a Rolling Stone."

You're gonna hear the whole six‐minute version here.

WAS: I think the impact of radio was huge, you know,

but maybe we can offer more to go along with the advertising.

♪ You walk into the room with your pencil in your hand ♪

♪ You see somebody naked ♪

Bob Dylan, you know what he did?

He brought in thinking single‐handedly.

And it was brought home to me by John Lennon,

who adored Bob Dylan,

and Dylan would use phrases that Lennon would pick up on.

So, he picked up on those lyrics.

Well, we can actually tell the truth?

You know, we can actually talk about our own lives?

♪ Something is happening here ♪

♪ But you don't know what it is ♪

♪ Do you, Mr. Jones? ♪

People really didn't do that very much.

I mean, Sinatra certainly sounded like he was doing it,

but now here's Dylan actually throwing in something

that certainly seemed autobiographical.

♪ And somebody points to you and says, "It's his" ♪

DONAHUE: This is Tom Donahue back in action.

This is KSAN in San Francisco.

Rachel and I will be here until midnight.

VAN ZANDT: Around '69, FM radio started,

which meant, you know, the deejays were slowed down now.

DEEJAY: And that's the way it was, and that's the way it is,

and it's always changing, and it is always the same.

VAN ZANDT: And they were talking more conversationally,

and it was all sort of being taken much more seriously.

♪ Ah ♪

♪ Now, I don't hardly know her ♪

We went out with Hubert Humphrey

in 1968 on the presidential campaign.

He was, of course, running for president.

He was the vice president.

♪ Crimson and clover ♪

Well, when we went out on the campaign...

...the big acts of the day

were The Rascals, The Association,

The Buckinghams, Gary Puckett, us.

You know ‐‐ all singles acts.

90 days later, when we get back, no kidding,

the hottest acts are Led Zeppelin,

Blood, Sweat & Tears,

Crosby, Stills & Nash ‐‐

all album acts.

We knew that if we were gonna stay in this business,

we had to sell albums.

VAN ZANDT: Led Zeppelin, I believe,

was the first one to tell the record company

they were not permitted to put out a hit single anymore,

because they were just so uncool.

All of a sudden, the '50s,

people are on album covers, they're all smiling.

The '60s hit,

you didn't smile on album covers anymore.

Kennedy was assassinated.

Rock 'n' roll went down about five octaves.

It got serious.

WAS: All of a sudden, the album took on all this value.

You didn't want to miss a ‐‐ You wanted every song.

Every song was important.

You had to make a complete artistic statement

with your whole project.

And then, for black people, that album is by Marvin Gaye.

[ Piano playing ]

BOYD: Marvin Gaye, a lot of people don't realize the career

he had with Motown before reaching this point.

♪ Just call my name, I'll be there in a hurry ♪

♪ You don't have to worry ♪

♪ 'Cause, baby, there ain't no mountain high enough ♪

♪ Ain't no valley low... ♪

The early '70s,

he's done the duets with Tammi Terrell,

which are very popular.

♪ To keep from getting to you, baby ♪

♪ Remember, the day I set you free ♪

♪ I told you you could always count on me, darling ♪

Tammi Terrell suffers a very tragic fate.

Marvin's very, of course, distraught.

QUESTLOVE: He left the road after Tammi Terrell's death,

you haven't heard new material in two years,

and now that his brother's home from Vietnam,

and he has this vision of being a messenger.

I started to think about the war in Vietnam

and my brother, who was ‐‐

He used to tell me,

write, respond with some pretty horrible stories about the war.

I became quite affected by them.

At the same time, there was a great deal of unrest in America.

Civil rights, black power, Vietnam.

These shootings of the kids on the college campuses.

QUESTLOVE: Berry Gordy headed Motown,

and he's like, "No, we're not a message company.

You're not gonna release this album."

BOYD: Berry Gordy doesn't want this kind of music

because Berry Gordy's been making money

by selling pop songs ‐‐ "Stop! In the Name of Love,"

"I Heard It through the Grapevine."

He wants that Marvin,

and Gordy, it turns out, was wrong. Quite wrong.

[ Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" plays ]

And Marvin records this incredible album.

It's a concept album ‐‐ "What's Going On."

♪ Mother, mother ♪

♪ There's too many of you crying ♪

♪ Brother, brother, brother ♪

♪ There's far too many of you dying ♪

♪ You know we've got to find a way ♪

♪ To bring some lovin' here today ♪

♪ Yeah ♪

QUESTLOVE: For a lot of us,

like, that's black people's "Times Are A‐Changing."

And you go from song to song.

QUESTLOVE: Everything is a suite.

No one ever considers the first six songs

on "What's Going On" as six songs.

Like, the entire side one is just one song to me.

♪ You know we've got to find a way ♪

♪ To bring some lovin' here today ♪

♪ Oh‐oh‐oh ♪

♪ Picket lines ♪

CHERRY: I think for me, it was in 1972, '73.

♪ ... punish me with brutality ♪

It's mixed with a very dark, difficult time in my life.

‐[ Gaye vocalizing ] ‐MAN: Right on.

Whoo! Right on, brother.

‐[ Indistinct conversations ] ‐[ Gaye vocalizing ]

CHERRY: And, to me, when I hold my original copy

of "What's Going On," you know,

it takes me back to living on Ninth Street in New York

and the memory of how much it was raining in that period,

and I don't know whether that association

comes with Marvin Gaye on the record sleeve

in patent black raincoat with raindrops on his coat

or a real memory.

♪ Oh, but who are they to judge us ♪

It's an incredible album that expresses and holds so much,

which is why I think it was such a meaningful record

and still is.

BOYD: The only problem with that album ‐‐ It's too short,

meaning I need more.

I want more. I'm not done.

♪ Ooh, ooh, ooh ♪

Right on, baby. Right on.

MAN: What's happening?

[ Gaye vocalizing ]

McDANIELS: You know what's crazy?

Those albums ‐‐ Marvin Gaye, John Lennon, Bob Dylan ‐‐

those records, that music, those artists were our lives.

Our lives is on that vinyl.

[ Gaye scatting ]

MILNER: During the '70s, especially in the rock world,

the LP was king.

But it had drawbacks.

They can scratch,

they're certainly not portable,

and there was no way to make one easily.

You had to go in a recording studio.

You couldn't just make an LP at home.

♪ Rah‐rah, rumble seats and running boards ♪

[ Cassette player clicks ]

MAN: Music in pocket size and instant loading.

MILNER: The cassette tape was a good example of a technology

that really didn't even pretend to be an advance

over what came before in terms of sound quality.

It was, however, very, very portable.

MAN: You record from your radio or make your own programs.

MILNER: And, for the first time, anybody could make a recording.

It's very easy to make, like, a direct, you know,

from vinyl‐to‐tape recording.

GODRICH: I just taped all my friends.

Yeah, I just had thousands of cassettes.

You know, I was pirating as a child.

You know, absolutely.

Think about when you were a kid, and you're going to school,

and your pockets are like this, and it's, like, all tapes.

GROHL: We would make cassettes and share them with friends,

and we would pass them around,

and then we'd go see those bands when they came into town,

and we felt like that music was ours.

[ The Cure's "Love Song" playing ]

MILNER: Of course, you could also make mix tapes,

so essentially, you could create your own LPs.

HOROVITZ: You had your cassette for a dollar,

and you'd put all your favorite songs on it.

♪ Whenever I'm alone with you ♪

MILNER: You could find connections between songs.

You could find thematic things.

HOROVITZ: If I was making a tape for you, I'd be like,

"You know what? I have a feeling you're gonna like

these particular types of songs."

You'd maybe put some romantic things on there.

You'd try to be cool with it.

This is how I feel, you know, about you.

MILNER: This particular selection of songs

in this particular order ‐‐ It was a big deal.

QUESTLOVE: It's an extent of your arm.

It's an extent of your personality.

There's a girl that you're really into,

the first thing I'd do is, I'd go make her a mix tape.

MILNER: It was a document for who you were at that moment,

who you ‐‐ how you wanted the rest of the world

to see you through the prism of the music that you loved.

[ Hip‐hop music plays ]

♪ From the South to the West, to the East...♪

CHERRY: I remember getting a mix tape from Corona, Queens.

It was Spoonie Gee.

It was just, like, a cassette from, like, a bodega,

and I think I probably killed it.

You know, I played it to death.

It was, like, the first real uncommercial hip‐hop,

sounding like it was coming off the street.

And I fell in love with it.

[ Punk music plays ]

♪ You ♪

GROHL: The first music scene that I fell in love with

was the punk‐rock scene.

My cousin Tracy, she brought me upstairs,

and she showed me her record collection,

and she had fan zines.

And you'd go to the back of one of those fan zines,

and there'd be this classified‐ad section

with, "Hey, I have a band. Here's my demo tape.

It's only $2.50.

Send two stamps, and I'll send you a sticker and my cassette."

And I realized there was this whole underground network.

Like, "Whoa, man.

All of this is happening

without anybody having any idea it's going on."

[ "Truckin'" plays ]

WYBENGA: A huge part of the Dead experience

and the Deadhead experience, in particular,

has been all these bootleg cassettes.

♪ Truckin' ♪

♪ Got my chips cashed in ♪

♪ Keep truckin' ♪

♪ Like the do‐dah man ♪

♪ Together ♪

♪ More or less in line ♪

♪ Just keep truckin' on ♪

The Grateful Dead live ‐‐ It was just a dragon.

♪ Arrows of neon... ♪

In the studio, we never could bring out that dragon.

That dragon never really happened in a room

without people, you know,

and there was no way we could remember

what we did the night before.

That was not possible,

because we were taking mind‐altering drugs every night.

♪ Houston, too close to New Orleans ♪

♪ New York's got the ways and means ♪

GARCIA: Some nights, it would be just awful,

and some nights, it would be wonderful.

If we're experiencing authentic inspiration,

then something magical sort of takes over.

♪ Truckin' ♪

♪ Like the do‐dah man ♪

♪ Once told me you've got to play your hand ♪

CANTOR‐JACKSON: The experience of a Grateful Dead show,

it is hard to describe.

It was like a religious experience.

You go there, a lot of it was the partaking of LSD,

our sacrament at the time.

When we all got to that level, the music would just soar.

It would go off, and the crowd would go with us.

I mean, the whole audience was in the same place.

WYBENGA: You have music that is highly improvisational

and not played the same way twice.

You had this impulse to document.

MAN: Follow the chords from those microphones, folks.

MAN #2: Yeah, right.

MAN #1: Let's find out who these people are.

The Deadheads were recording our performances,

and that was illegal.

MAN #1: Put that spotlight out there

on that microphone, the periscope.

You'll see it sticking up there.

HART: And they ran their copies of cassettes,

and then they would give it away.

It was called a Grateful Dead Free Tape Exchange.

MAN: Underground Records, Incorporated.

So, we said, "We don't want to be cops,

and we don't want to hire more security.

‐Let 'em come." ‐[ Instruments tuning ]

WYBENGA: I know it came to a head in the '80s

when their sound man had problems consistently

with microphones blocking his sight lines

from the back of the house.

MAN: You down there with the microphone,

if you want to get a decent recording,

you got to move back about 40 feet.

Eventually, the Grateful Dead addressed this whole issue

of taping by giving tapers their own section.

HART: It built an army of tapers.

They were responsible for making the Grateful Dead

a world phenomenon,

and that was one of the smartest moves we ever made.

WYBENGA: Having a Dead tape collection was a display

right there of the depth of your commitment to the band,

a form of social currency.

One of the first tapes that I heard was 7/13/84,

Greek Theater ‐‐ just a nice little show.

And then 1977 was an improbable height of sorts for them ‐‐

the tightness of the playing.

♪ Sometimes we visit... ♪

5/7/77, for a long time, was my favorite.

And that's a show that had come into circulation

through Betty Cantor‐Jackson.

CANTOR‐JACKSON: My stuff is not taper stuff. It's different.

My stuff is always direct

from the mikes on the stage from the band.

WYBENGA: Betty Cantor‐Jackson had done various sound work

for the Dead throughout the years,

had been a part of that Dead family since very early on.

CANTOR‐JACKSON: I did the taping pretty much for my own pleasure

and for Jerry.

He'd come over the next morning, sit in my living room,

and have a cappuccino and listen to the playback.

It's something I really enjoy,

just carving music into the tape, you know.

WYBENGA: These pristine soundboard recordings

became the source of what became known as The Betty Boards ‐‐

bootleg cassettes that started to emerge in the late '80s.

So a lot of shows that Deadheads had loved already,

even in poor sound quality, became available

in crystal‐clear sound quality.

CANTOR‐JACKSON: I think they'd been out there for quite a while

before I ever knew about it.

I heard some of them recently that were amazing.

WYBENGA: You know, it's interesting to think

whether this all would have shaken out the same way

if cassettes tapes didn't exist.

You've got to figure that the Grateful Dead

has to be the most recorded musical ensemble in history.

WOMAN: The cassette industry is booming.

For the first time ever, prerecorded cassettes

are beginning to rival sales of the vinyl disc.

GRANATA: The thing that really drove cassette sales

was the advent of a handheld cassette player

that you could listen to with headphones.

♪ You really feel the music with a Sony Walkman ♪

MAN: The Sony Walkman is a tiny stereo cassette player

with truly incredible sound.

♪ You really feel the music ♪

LUDWIG: They came up with a really good set of headphones

for these little Walkmans, and for the first time,

you could take a device this big with a good set of headphones

and climb the top of Mount Everest,

and you could listen to a Mahler symphony

and get chills down your spine.

[ Opera music playing ]

MAN: The Sony Walkman

has forever changed the way the world listens to music.

That was exciting new technology, because basically,

it inaugurated the era of private listening.

It was about walking in the street with your headphones on

and the music being contained to your personal space.

DJ SPOOKY: The idea that being able

to have your own soundtrack wherever you went,

that's what really, I think, changed the game.

MILNER: You could actually take them with you on the bus.

You had the sound right there in your head.

♪ Do you really want to hurt me? ♪

♪ Do you really want to make me cry? ♪

By 1983, the labels had records,

and they had cassettes.

They didn't see anything really new on the horizon.

[ Speaking Japanese ]

INTERPRETER: It's a disc, a digital audio disc,

a gizmo so revolutionary that backers hope it will make

records and tapes obsolete.

KNOPPER: The CD sounded really, really good,

but the record industry has always been

deeply suspicious of new technology.

Industry executives said, you know, "No F'ing way," basically.

"We will never get the compact disc."

And the reason was because they were so worried about piracy.

When you copied a CD to a cassette tape,

that was a pristine copy.

But the CD was cool.

At the time, it sounds so quaint now, but it was shiny,

and if you tilted it a certain way, it looked like a rainbow.

It didn't scratch,

and you could play it, potentially, in your car,

and so the consumers really liked this thing.

♪ These mist‐covered mountains ♪

And certain artists were saying,

"We're gonna make much greater‐sounding records

with this new technology."

LUDWIG: Dire Straits, "Brothers in Arms" ‐‐

It was really the first compact disc

that I mastered completely 100% as a CD.

♪ Through these fields of destruction ♪

♪ Baptisms of fire ♪

KNOPFLER: "Brothers in Arms" itself

struck a lot of chords with people.

♪ I've witnessed your suffering ♪

♪ As the battle reached higher ♪

This fellow was a soldier in the Gulf War,

and he said that they fought this tank battle all night,

and then in the dawn, they just linked up all the tanks

and played "Brothers in Arms."

♪ ... and alarm ♪

♪ You did not desert me ♪

♪ My brothers in arms ♪

Sometimes, I'll write a song

that will somehow reverberate with events,

and it can just be a success.

At the time, I was just making another record.

LUDWIG: Not only was it a great record,

it was a real landmark CD,

and lots of people bought compact discs

because of that record.

That record sold a lot of CD players.

QUARTARARO: And towards the end of the '80s,

people started to rebuy their music

they already owned on vinyl.

They started to repurchase the same collection on CD.

$18, $19, $20 for a CD that was really worth no more,

or maybe even less, than the LP.

HADLEY: They ran a bit of a hustle.

They were able to sell CDs

and have maybe one or two good songs on it.

IOVINE: You got a record deal, you got one song,

you put 17 other songs on because they fit,

and the people bought albums for $18 that had one song on it.

WAS: When we look at the decline in the popularity of the album

and of sales, I think that was just way worse

than some college students

downloading songs for free, you know.

It was, like, making shitty records. [ Chuckles ]

MAN: With the click of a mouse,

Napster allows fans to download virtually any song

completely free.

MILNER: In 1999, some college students

created a file‐sharing program called Napster.

HADLEY: All of a sudden, people are like, "Wait a minute.

I don't have to drive to the record store, pay $20

to buy a CD that just has two songs on it that I like?

I can sit at home and download countless albums for nothing?"

And it just was like you just discovered

this gold mine, you know.

Just, all of a sudden, all of the music you want

is right there in front of you, and it's very easy to download.

STRANG: When they put music up for file sharing,

40‐some‐odd million people came.

And, you know, there were other companies,

like, giving away money on the Internet,

and you couldn't get 40 million people to come.

So the power of music was the first thing that struck me.

I was like, "Wow."

MILNER: The courts struck down Napster after two years,

but by then, there were all these services

all over the Internet,

and they all used the same new format ‐‐ the MP3.

♪ I am sitting in the morning at the diner on the corner ♪

♪ I am waiting at the counter ♪

♪ For the man to pour the coffee ♪

♪ And he fills it only halfway ♪

♪ And before I even argue, he is looking out the window ♪

♪ At somebody coming in ♪

I was taking my daughter to school,

and one of the parents that I didn't know turned to me

and said, "Congratulations on being the mother of the MP3."

♪ To the woman who has come in ♪

♪ She is shaking her umbrella ♪

So I went home and looked it up, and, sure enough,

it had this story about how this engineer

called Karlheinz Brandenburg had used

the original unremixed version of "Tom's Diner"

to test this thing he was working on, called the MP3.

BRANDENBURG: My research was how to compress music in a way

so that it would fit through a phone line,

and I already thought, "I'm pretty much done.

Everything works well."

♪ I open up the paper ♪

Someone was playing "Tom's Diner" down the hall.

♪ ... who had died while he was drinking ♪

BRANDENBURG: Suzanne Vega's voice

sounds like she is standing in a room,

and it's a very clear and clean voice, and I said,

"Okay, I want to try to see what our algorithms do with it."

♪ I am sitting in the morning at the diner on the corner ♪

♪ I am waiting at the counter ♪

Unfortunately, Suzanne Vega's voice was destroyed.

[ Humming "Tom's Diner" ]

It took us a couple of years

until we really could do her voice perfectly clean.

VEGA: I had no idea what would come next,

and I met Karlheinz Brandenburg,

and they were talking about this great new thing

that was just gonna be the coolest.

You could play music on your phone, on your cellphone.

I remember thinking that's kind of ‐‐ Who cares?

Like, I don't need to play music on my phone.

I just did not see what the MP3 ‐‐

what the future was gonna be.

I didn't see it coming.

♪ Da‐da, da‐da, da ♪

♪ Da‐da, da‐da ♪

♪ Da‐da, da‐da, da ♪

♪ Da‐da, da‐da ♪

HADLEY: Early 2000s are really tumultuous period,

because a format change.

Digital technologies recalibrate almost everything

about how we consume music.

♪ "It is always nice to see you" ♪

♪ Says the man behind the counter ♪

WOMAN: You plug it into your computer

and download your favorite songs.

HADLEY: iTunes comes along and is selling songs for 99 cents.

The music industry is just reeling.

WOMAN: The best‐selling digital music player in the nation,

revolutionizing the way Americans of all ages

listen to music.

HADLEY: MP3s unravel what we know

about people wanting albums,

and so, interestingly enough,

we're back to a singles‐driven culture.

We take it for granted now,

but then it was a really remarkable concept

that I could walk around with 10,000 songs in my pocket?

♪ Da‐da, da ♪

But then, with the era of YouTube,

one of the main pieces of content

that people want to upload is music.

They want to upload their favorite song.

They want to upload this video

that they made to their favorite song.

And YouTube still, I believe,

is the number‐one music streaming service in the world.

♪ As long as you lo‐lo‐lo‐lo, lo‐lo‐lo‐lo... ♪

Justin Bieber's songs have been listened to ‐‐

Some of them have been listened to 400 million times on YouTube.

We listen to music on our earbuds,

over our telephones, through computers.

MAN: When I'm listening to full albums on YouTube,

people just upload them,

and sometimes it'll just go to the next video.

Oddly enough, YouTube is kind of like a new radio.

CDs are just disappearing, you know?

CDs are dead.

ROSEN: Today, we have a format

which is almost an invisible format.

There is an amazing amount of,

you know, these streaming services.

My preferred method of listening to music is Spotify.

Soundcloud.

I Heart Radio.

Sometimes Pandora.

Sometimes iTunes. I'll buy songs.

I don't know. I actually like that it's not physical.

I feel like it saves time, energy, money.

Our kids, our grandkids will literally be baffled by the idea

that, at one point, people owned music.

GARBUS: Whether we like it or not,

people want music instantaneously

at their fingertips.

I do. I want to turn on my Rdio or Spotify or whatever.

I want to say I really need to hear

"Dancing in the Sheets" by Shalamar right now.

♪ You and me, we should be dancing in the sheets ♪

And I can have that, you know?

That is just the world that we live in.

The problem I have is discovering good new music.

There's just an overwhelming abundance of material.

MANN: Trying to figure out which technology,

it became such a different experience on so many levels

that I just stopped listening to music.

It's only been lately that I've started again

and kind of almost giving myself permission

to jump back into stuff from the '70s

that I never paid any attention to, like Bread.

♪ Hey, have you ever tried ♪

♪ Really reaching out for the other side? ♪

KNOPPER: The format shift in the record industry,

I mean, on average is usually 15, 20 years.

Everything's up in the air now.

The next 5 to 10 years will be super‐interesting.

But the power of music will always be massive.

♪ Oh, yeah ♪

♪ All right ♪

♪ Are you gonna be in my dreams tonight? ♪

MARGOULEFF: It's about the song.

It's about the art, not the medium.

BOYD: Music transcends the technology, the format.

Whatever form you give it to me in, if the quality's good,

if I can access what I want to hear,

I'm a happy man.

QUARTARARO: What won't change is your relationship with music,

because sometime this year,

you're gonna hear a song that makes you want to cry.

And we human beings have been trying to work out

what it is about the mathematics of the arrangement

of musical notes that elicits an emotional response in us,

and it's still a mystery.

Our lives are pretty much defined by, what,

I don't know, 20, 30 records?

RZA: How many ever years passes

when you want to go back to your high‐school memory ‐‐

A song could do it for you.

There's always that piano, that verse,

that voice, that beat, that cut, that scratch, that guitar riff,

that's gonna save your life.

I'm so grateful to all the musicians

that made the music that I ever heard,

because it all went in, and it enriched my life.

♪ And in the end ♪

♪ The love you take ♪

♪ Is equal to the love ♪

♪ You make ♪

And we've seen now 100 years of recorded sound,

and we've seen the effect of that sound on people,

and it has been quite remarkable.

It's changed our lives.