The Rock 'n' Roll Years was a BBC television programme aired between 1985 and 1994. Each week's half-hour episode featured news and music from a given year, starting with 1956 and ending with 1989. The idea of combining a year's news reports and music was adapted from the 1980 BBC Radio 1 series 25 Years of Rock.
The programme consisted mainly of archive clips of news and current affairs, whose original soundtracks were crossfaded with music hits of the time. Archive music performances also featured, mostly from BBC programmes such as Top of the Pops. Without presenters or voice-overs, the only non-archive additions were explanatory subtitles.
The first three series were first aired over July and August in consecutive years: the first in 1985 covered the years 1956–63; the second in 1986 covered 1964–71, and the third in 1987 covered 1972–80. The fourth series, aired in March and April 1994, covered 1981–89.
Another version of the show appeared online only on the BBC's Doctor Who website in 2004, covering the adventures of the Doctor from the 1960s to the 1980s, using footage from the sci-fi series and accompanying music from each of the decades as per the regular format of the show.
See also
"We Didn't Start the Fire" — a song by Billy Joel whose lyrics include brief references to significant political, cultural, scientific, and sporting events between 1948 and 1989.
