Ask people who they consider to be amongst the greatest pop/rock songwriters in history, and many will say Lennon and McCartney, maybe even Taupin and John, and all are possibly right, for these guys wrote some fantastic songs. What they may not realise is that writers such as these arguably owe their success to a small number of teams that wrote literally thousands of songs, many of which have become rock and roll and pop standards. This two-disc collection is a detailed and fascinating look at the lives, careers, and ups and downs of some truly legendary names in the history of modern music.

The time was the early ’60s, the place was the Brill building in New York. From the outside, it was much like any other building, but inside it was anything but ordinary. It was within these walls, in factory style, where the best-known rock and roll songs were literally churned out for the burgeoning teenage record buying market, by teams of contracted guys and gals who were barely out of their teens themselves. You had Carole King and Gerry Goffin in one room knocking out songs like The Locomotion, Up On the Roof, Some Kind of Wonderful. One Fine Day, Take Good Care of My Baby and Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?. Next door you'd probably find Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil who banged out On Broadway, We Gotta Get Outta This Place, Blame it On the Bossa Nova and You've Lost That Loving Feeling.

Pop your head around another door and you'd likely find Neil Sedaka, possibly knocking out his hits such as Oh! Carol, Breaking Up is Hard to Do, and Calendar Girl. These teams of kids were contracted to write songs for publishing companies that had a stable of artists to sing them.

Other writers to be a proficient at that time include Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who wrote mega hits such as Hound Dog, Jailhouse Rock, Kansas City, Poison Ivy and Love Potion No. 9. Guys like Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman were extremely prolific at this time also, writing for artists such as Elvis and The Drifters. Their hits included songs like Save the Last Dance, Suspicion, and (Marie's The Name) His Latest Flame.

Bacharach and David were always prolific, responsible for a swag of hits such as Do You Know The Way to San Jose?, Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head, What's New Pussycat?, and Walk On By.

The artists who delivered these hits are not forgotten, and the series gives more than a passing nod to the likes of The Coasters, The Drifters, Dionne Warrick/Warwick/Warwicke, The Righteous Brothers, The Ronettes, Connie Francis, Elvis Presley, Ben E. King and The Shirelles.

Most of these individual players and teams contribute significantly to this series via interviews conducted in all sorts of places. They explain how it all came together, how they got involved, where their inspirations came from and how everything changed. There are few full number performances, but lots and lots of music is played in the background and in short bursts to emphasis various points.

Budding songwriters will either be fuelled to work harder, or totally depressed at the amazing output of these extraordinarily talented people. As the age of the singer/songwriter gradually took over in the middle ’60s, music publishers found they had too much competetion and the idea of a stable of writers contracted to write songs for other artists is all but gone. Still, it was an amazing time to be a teenager, and an even more amazing time to be a part of the music industry I am sure. This is a highly entertaining series that will be enjoyed by all lovers of fine pop music.

This is a recent series (2001), but it uses footage from many sources and is of extremely varying quality. The whole series is in full frame aspect ratio and therefore not 16:9 enhanced. It is mostly in colour and although the picture is never razor sharp, it is mostly of high quality. Colours at times have that very '70s VHS look, and suffer from colour bleeding and noise. The more recent interview footage is of much better quality. There are numerous film artefacts in the older footage particularly, but shadow detail is very good. The contrast varies wildly as the mixed quality material flashes across the screen, and skin tones also fluctuate wildy but it really doesn't matter. This collection is the history of rock and roll and must be watched in that context. There is a layer change on disc one at 67:10, but it’s not disruptive.

The English Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo soundtrack is mostly very good, with most drops in quality attributable to the source material that in many instances is more than 40 years old. The most noticeable separation, not surprisingly, can be heard in the numerous musical selections. The interviews and narration are always loud and clear. The sound range is relatively good, occasionally a little thin when the older musical selections are played, but it really doesn't matter, as this is a series about people and their songs more than how they sound on today's high quality sound gear. Low frequency sounds are not window-rattling, but music in the ’60s wasn’t about that anyway. There is an audio glitch or two on the first disc that throws the audio synch out for about five minutes towards the end of the first episiode, The Hitmakers, but this quickly rights itself.

The only genuine extras included are some short Biographies and Discographies for Dionne Warwick, Carole King and Neil Sedaka on Disc One and Leiber and Stoller, Burt Bacharach and Bobby Darin on Disc Two. These are accompanied by Umbrella Propaganda on each disc which contains trailers for eight other music-themed DVD releases.

Great music is a winner in anyone's book. The Songmaker's Collection is a wonderfully informative and first-hand account of the rise of rock and roll in the late '50s and early '60s. Times have changed for the world of music, and these days just about anyone with a gimmick and a few dollars can bang out something that will possibly sell a few copies, but genuinely talented writers and performers are working in a much harsher and more disposable musical world. Today, music is a business like never before, and it is unlikely that things will ever be so simple again.