The result was “All You Need Is Love,” a 17-episode, critically acclaimed TV series, originally broadcast worldwide between 1976-80, featuring episodes on ragtime, blues, jazz, vaudeville, the musical, folk, swing, country and western, rock n’ roll and beyond.

Included are interviews with Lennon, Paul McCartney, Elvis Presley, Jimi Hendrix, Jerry Lee Lewis, Stephen Sondheim, Benny Goodman, Bing Crosby, Mike Oldfield, The Beach Boys, Tina Turner, Sam Phillips, Dave Brubeck, Dizzy Gillespie, Richard , Roy Rogers, Bo Diddley, Muddy Waters, Phil Spector, Bill Monroe, Bill Graham, Bill Wyman, Frank Zappa, Eric Clapton and many, many more.

The show has been long unavailable, neither re-released on TV or made available on home video. Now, MVD Visual has packaged the groundbreaking series in a lavish five-disc box set, with all 17 episodes, for a list price of $99.99 (though you can by it at the MVD site or at Amazon for less). Available Tuesday, May 13.

May 13: French labor unions, students and teachers begin a 24-hour general strike. Jean Paul Sartre and 121 other intellectuals sign a statement asserting “the right to disobedience.”

May 13: Peace talks between the U.S. and North Vietnam begin in Paris.

May 14: The Czech government announces liberalizing reforms under Alexander Dubcek.

May 14: The Beatles announce the formation of Apple Corp.

May 15: Two thousand workers occupy the aircraft construction plant of Sud-Aviation at Nantes, France, holding the plant manager and his principal aides prisoner.

May 15: Director Frank Perry’s “The Swimmer,” starring Burt Lancaster and based on a John Cheever story, opens. Also opening this day is Peter Bogdanovich’s first film, “Targets,” starring Boris Karloff and Tim O’Kelly.

May 17: In Maryland the Catonsville Nine, including Phillip Berrigan, a Catholic priest, take hundreds of files from the draft board at the Knights of Columbus building and set them on fire with gasoline and soap chips.

Sources:

The Whole World Was Watching: An oral history of 1968. A joint project between South Kingstown High School and Brown University’s Scholarly Technology Group
Timelines of History
Timeline 1968
Rock Timeline
Wikipedia Music Timeline
Frank Eugene Smitha’s Macrohistory and World Report

May 6: Radicals and police fight pitched battles in the Latin Quarter of Paris, leaving 1,000 injured.

May 7: Traci Lords is born in Steubenville, Ohio.

May 8: William Styron (“Confessions of Nat Turner”) wins the Pulitzer Prize.

May 8: Catfish Hunter of the Oakland Athletics pitches the first perfect game in the American League in 47 years.

May 10: FBI director Hoover sends all field offices an urgent memo escalating the FBI’s attack on dissent, authorizing “Counterintelligence Program — New Left.”

May 10: Preliminary Vietnam peace talks began in Paris.

May 11: Thousands of students fight again in the streets in the Latin Quarter. They erect more the 60 barricades.

May 11: Ralph Abernathy, Martin Luther King Jr.’s designated successor, and the Southern Christian Leadership Corps, are granted a permit for an encampment on the Mall in Washington, DC. Eventually more than 2,500 people occupy Resurrection City. On June 24th the site is raided by police, 124 occupants are arrested, and the encampment is demolished.

May 12: Tony Hawk is born in Carlsbad, California.

Sources:

The Whole World Was Watching: An oral history of 1968. A joint project between South Kingstown High School and Brown University’s Scholarly Technology Group
Timelines of History
Timeline 1968
Rock Timeline
Wikipedia Music Timeline
Frank Eugene Smitha’s Macrohistory and World Report

April 29: The rock musical Hair opens on Broadway at the Biltmore Theatre and continues for 1,750 performances.

May 2: “The Odd Couple,” starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, opens.

May 3-17: Student riots and strikes hit France. Ten million workers go on strike. Workers strike the Renault factory on Seguin Island for 33 days until the government recognizes their union.

May 4: At the University of Paris — the Sorbonne — police are called in to end student rioting. 500 are arrested.

May 5: Buffalo Springfield perform together for the last time in Long Beach, California.

Sources:

The Whole World Was Watching: An oral history of 1968. A joint project between South Kingstown High School and Brown University’s Scholarly Technology Group
Timelines of History
Timeline 1968
Rock Timeline
Wikipedia Music Timeline
Frank Eugene Smitha’s Macrohistory and World Report

April 23: Students at Columbia University take over administration buildings and shut down the university to protest the war in Vietnam, university ties to the Defense Dept., and plans to build a gym over neighborhood objections. The sit-in lasts for a week.

April 23: The Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren Church merge to form the United Methodist Church.

April 24: Comedy performer Tommy Noonan (he was Marilyn Monroe’s boyfriend in “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes”) dies in Woodland Hills, Calif., at age 45.

Sources:

The Whole World Was Watching: An oral history of 1968. A joint project between South Kingstown High School and Brown University’s Scholarly Technology Group
Timelines of History
Timeline 1968
Rock Timeline
Wikipedia Music Timeline
Frank Eugene Smitha’s Macrohistory and World Report

April 18: 178,000 employees of the U.S. Bell Telephone System go on strike.

April 18: The London Bridge is sold to U.S. oil company McCulloch Oil. The bridge was disassembled and then rebuilt at Lake Havasu, Arizona.

April 19: Ashley Judd is born in Granada Hills, California,

April 20: Pierre Elliott Trudeau was sworn in as prime minister of Canada. He succeeds Lester B. Pierson.

April 21: At the 22nd Tony Awards, “Rosencranz & Guildenstern” wins for best play and “Hallelujah Baby” wins for best musical.

Sources:

The Whole World Was Watching: An oral history of 1968. A joint project between South Kingstown High School and Brown University’s Scholarly Technology Group
Timelines of History
Timeline 1968
Rock Timeline
Wikipedia Music Timeline
Frank Eugene Smitha’s Macrohistory and World Report

April 8: Baseball’s opening day is postponed because of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

April 10: President Johnson replaces General Westmoreland with General Creighton Abrams in Vietnam.

April 10: “Heat of the Night” wins best picture, Rod Steiger and Katherine Hepburn named best actor and actress, and Mike Nichols tapped best director (for “The Graduate”) at the 40th Academy Awards.

April 10: Luis Bunuel’s “Belle de jour,” starring Catherine Deneuve, opens.

April 10: Orlando Jones born in Mobile, Ala.

April 11: President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968. The act prohibits housing discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, physical handicap or family status.

April 11: United States Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford calls 24,500 military reserves to action for two-year commitments, and announces a new troop ceiling of 549,500 American soldiers in Vietnam.

April 11: Western “Will Penny,” starring Charlton Heston, opens.

April 14:, The Matt Crowley play “The Boys in the Band” opens in New York.

April 14: Phil and Ronnie Spector married.

April 14: Anthony Michael Hall born in West Roxbury, Mass.

Sources:

The Whole World Was Watching: An oral history of 1968. A joint project between South Kingstown High School and Brown University’s Scholarly Technology Group
Timelines of History
Timeline 1968
Rock Timeline
Wikipedia Music Timeline
Frank Eugene Smitha’s Macrohistory and World Report

April 2: Senator Eugene McCarthy wins the Democratic primaries in Wisconsin.

April 2: Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” opens.

April 3: “Planet of the Apes” opens.

April 3: North Vietnam agrees to meet with U.S. representatives to set up preliminary peace talks.

April 3: Simon and Garfunkel release the critically acclaimed album “Bookends.”

April 4: Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., 39, is assassinated while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn. James Earl Ray confesses and pleads guilty in March, 1969, but later tries to recant, saying he was a fall guy for a wide-ranging conspiracy (later proved). The King assassination sparks rioting in Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Kansas City, Newark, Washington, and many other cities. Forty-six deaths will be blamed on the riots. James Brown appears on national television in an attempt to calm feelings of anger following the assassination.

April 6: Black Panther member Bobby Hutton (17) is killed in a gun battle with police in West Oakland, Calif., and Eldridge Cleaver is arrested.

April 7: Scotsman Jimmy Clark, one of the greatest race car drivers of all time (with two Formula 1 World Championships and an Indy 500 title), dies at age 32 in Hockenheim, West Germany, in a racing accident.

Sources:

The Whole World Was Watching: An oral history of 1968. A joint project between South Kingstown High School and Brown University’s Scholarly Technology Group
Timelines of History
Timeline 1968
Rock Timeline
Wikipedia Music Timeline
Frank Eugene Smitha’s Macrohistory and World Report

March 25: The 58th and final new episode of “The Monkees” airs on NBC.

March 26: Joan Baez marries antiwar activist David Harris.

March 26: Blues artist Little Willie John dies in prison after being convicted of manslaughter.

March 26: Kenny Chesney is born in Knoxville, Tenn.

March 27: Gen. Suharto succeeds Sukarno as president of Indonesia. Suharto thwarts a Communist coup and gradually assumed power; thousands of alleged communists are executed amid widespread violence.

March 27: Yuri Gagarin, 34, Soviet cosmonaut (Vostok I) and the first man to orbit the Earth, dies in a plane crash.

March 28: The U.S. lost its first aircraft in Vietnam. An F-111 vanishes in a combat mission over North Vietnam.

March 28: A riot erupts in Memphis during a protest march in support of striking sanitation workers led by Martin Luther King. One African-American marcher is killed and King urges calm as National Guard troops are called in to restore order. King leaves the city but vows to return April 4.

March 29: Don Siegel’s “Madigan,” starring Richard Widmark, Henry Fonda, Inger Stevens, Harry Guardino and James Whitmore, opens.

March 29: Lucy Lawless is born in Mount Albert, Auckland, New Zealand.

March 30: The Yardbirds record their live album “Live Yardbirds” at the Anderson Theater.

March 30: Child star Bobby Driscoll dies at age 31 of coronary arteriosclerosis in New York City.

March 30: Celine Dion is born in Charlemagne, Quebec, Canada.

March 31: President Johnson announces: “I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President.”

Sources:

The Whole World Was Watching: An oral history of 1968. A joint project between South Kingstown High School and Brown University’s Scholarly Technology Group
Timelines of History
Timeline 1968
Rock Timeline
Wikipedia Music Timeline
Frank Eugene Smitha’s Macrohistory and World Report

March 18: The U.S. Congress repeals the requirement for gold as the backing of U.S. currency.

March 18: Mel Brooks’ “The Producers” opens.

March 18: In Paris, youths set off bombs in the offices of Chase Manhattan Bank, the Bank of America and Trans World Airlines to protest the war in Vietnam.

March 19: Howard University students seize the administration building.

March 20: Cat-and-mouse thriller “No Way to Treat a Lady,” starring Rod Steiger, Lee Remick, George Segal and Eileen Heckart, opens.

March 20: Writer and film director Carl Theodor Dreyer dies in Copenhagen, Denmark, at age 79.

March 21: Dyan Cannon divorces Cary Grant, charging that he went crazy when he used LSD.

March 22 In Paris, police arrest five young persons over the March 18 bombings. A group of about 150 gather at the University of Paris to protest the arrests, and they begin what they call the Movement of March 22.

March 22: In Czechoslovakia, Antonin Novotny resigns the Czech presidency, setting off alarm bells in Moscow. The next day leaders of five Warsaw Pact countries meet in Dresden, East Germany to discuss the crisis.

March 22: Gen. William Westmoreland is relieved of his duties in the wake of the Tet disaster. Troop strength under Westmoreland had reached more than 500,000 and he wanted more. He is succeeded by Gen. Creighton Abrams. Abrams reverses Westmoreland’s strategy. He ends major “search and destroy” missions and focuses on protecting population centers. William Colby takes charge of the pacification campaign.

Sources:

The Whole World Was Watching: An oral history of 1968. A joint project between South Kingstown High School and Brown University’s Scholarly Technology Group
Timelines of History
Timeline 1968
Rock Timeline
Wikipedia Music Timeline
Frank Eugene Smitha’s Macrohistory and World Report