A searching look into the world of pop music, at the manipulators and the manipulated; the people behind it, in the forefront, and those hanging on all around it. Is it important, or just self important?

With Maureen Cleave, Pete Murray, Simon Dee, Ann Nightingale, Alan Freeman, Eddie Rogers, Tony Secunda and the pop stars themselves
Introduced by Nicholas Barrett
Produced by Sandra Harris and Nicholas Barrett
A World at One production

Pop goes a Person?
It is just ten years since Tommy Steele burst on to the Popular Music scene, and turned it, rather dramatically, into the Pop Music scene. 'Rock with the Caveman,' he shouted from a cafe under the arches near Waterloo station, and the whole country joined in the chorus. shouting, stamping and screaming.
The 'Moon,' 'June,' 'Sweet Dreams,' and 'Sweet-hearts' were sent, rather smartly, somewhere over the rainbow. Lyrics were suddenly no longer lyrical. A young man called Adam Faith invented a new word 'baybay.' A teenager called Harry Webb changed his name to Cliff Richard and steered us through the early 1960s with songs that, in retrospect seem rather dull. Then came 'the finest flowering of British pop music' - the Beatles. The North moved south, grinning broadly, and cocking a snook at any sort of distinction or discrimination it saw. Groups with strangely long hair arrived from Liverpool, from Manchester, and Newcastle upon Tyne, and, fresh from the Home Counties, the one we all love to hate, the Rolling Stones. 'It was a case of the cat looking at the King for the first time,' says Maureen Cleave. 'But now I think a rather dull phase has set in. I can't see what can happen now.'
Well what will happen? Is it important anyway? Are the pop singers personalities any more, or have they been swallowed up by the big-business machine? Are they less important than the records they make? Have sounds taken over from people? Today's programme takes a look behind the tinsel.
(Nicholas Barrett)