1981

Overview

It was the year megabands ruled the arenas and the airwaves... in 1981, the music world bade farewell to some of its greatest luminaries and gorged itself on sugary pop. Music became something to see as passion, politics, money and marketing took center stage. Lennon was gone and seventies stalwarts like the Doobie Brothers, Earth, Wind and Fire, and The Eagles were all in the process of breaking up. Long besieged by bubble gum pop, the music scene was now completely overrun with the likes of Sheena Easton, Olivia Newton John, Hall and Oates, Styx, Journey and Christopher Cross. It was a year that saw the country's president survive an attempted assasination, a hostage crisis come to an end, an explosion in popularity of video games, the death of disco and the birth of MTV and music videos. Suddenly musicians were seen and heard and acts such as the Police, Pat Benatar, The Go-Go's, Rick Springfeld and The Clash rose to fame in a video age. Features interviews with Sting, Pat Benatar, Debbie Harry, Andy Summers, Tommy Shaw and more.

Episode Information