Retro : Whole Lotta Documentin’ Goin’ On

We don’t see Plato quoted a lot about rock ‘n’ roll, but then we also don’t see many PBS documentary series promoted with the phrase “Crank It Up.”

Well, both these unlikely phenomena figure in “Rock & Roll,” a co-production by Boston station WGBH and the BBC of a set of 10 hourlong episodes. (This week in Los Angeles they run two a night, Sunday through Thursday, on KCET.)

Plato, you ask? The series actually opens with an epigram from the Greek philosopher: “When the mode of the music changes, the walls of the city shake.”

Talk about your classic rock.

But before rock can be intellectualized to dust, another quote pops on the screen, this one from a more expected figure, Jerry Lee Lewis: “Whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on.”

Still, starting with Plato is an unmistakable sign that the producers took the topic with a kind of probing seriousness that helps set it apart from “The History of Rock and Roll,” another 10-hour series on the subject (produced by Time Warner and aired earlier this year on commercial TV).

WGBH’s Elizabeth Deane, the new series’ executive producer, has no doubts that as a cultural phenomenon, rock deserves the same level of examination given in recent years to the Civil War and baseball, two topics documented by the renowned Ken Burns.

“This is the defining sound of the second half of the 20th Century,” she says. “I worked on the TV history of Vietnam and shows about Nixon and the Kennedys, and always this music was in the background, growing from a sort of renegade music to become the most pervasive musical form around the world.”

Rock historian Robert Palmer, who was chief consultant for the PBS series, sees no dichotomy in taking such a highbrow approach to what has generally been a lowbrow art form. Researching for a companion book, “Rock & Roll: An Unruly History,” Palmer took it even further.

“I traced it back to some really early paradigms with Dionysus and Apollo,” says the writer, who grew up in Arkansas roadhouses before serving as the New York Times’ first full-time rock critic from 1976 to 1988. “I found some really interesting material about Dionysus and about Sheba that was like talking about rock stars.”

But the series does, indeed, crank it up in a way that some might not consider fitting for the same venue that brought us such dignified fare as “The Civil War.”

“I think [some public TV executives] wondered when they first heard about this if it would be within our mission,” says Deane. “But when they saw it they got really excited.”

The series is full of dynamic concert footage of many of rock’s most Dionysian figures, from Little Richard and Elvis Presley through Iggy Pop through the Beastie Boys--much of it rarely seen--and plenty of straight talk about rock ‘n’ roll’s often inseparable siblings: sex and drugs, with no moralizing or apologies.

“We’re telling a history and don’t flinch,” says Deane.

In telling this history, Deane and Palmer say, it was key to take different tacks than other examinations that have been made as rock entered respectable middle age.

“We wanted to focus not only on the major artists--though they’re certainly in there--but to look at it as a collaborative art form where producers and engineers and songwriters and session musicians have a hand in the creative process,” Deane says, noting that the Time Warner series was more performance-oriented.

One episode recounts how ‘60s soul music was a vehicle through which African Americans finally had an opportunity for mainstream acceptance. Seeing that chance, Motown founder Berry Gordy made sure every detail was taken care of, right down to sending his artists to etiquette classes.

“Maxine Powell [who ran the Motown Finishing School] lights up that particular episode,” Palmer says. “She tells how Marvin Gaye came in and said he didn’t need the charm school, and she started critiquing what he did on stage, especially that he sang with his eyes closed. ‘In the Copacabana,’ she told him, ‘they expect you to sing with your eyes open.’ ”

In a later episode, ‘60s confrontational, absurdist theater is shown as inspiration to rockers who were sick and tired of the hippie love vibe.

“The BBC produced that episode, with Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground and Iggy Pop and David Bowie,” Palmer says. “There’s a marvelous bit where you see some living theater performance and cut back and forth between those and what Jim Morrison was doing on stage and you see the influence so completely.”

Is this a little too much respectability for rock ‘n’ roll, especially coming on top of the opening earlier this month of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland? Palmer recalls how, in the ‘70s, jazz study courses sprouted up in colleges around the country, while few young musicians actually learned to play the real thing. He hopes that the series’ focus on underground renegades and innovators can counter that.

“The vitality that really keeps [rock ‘n’ roll] going is not going to be found in a museum any more than the vitality of jazz will be found in college courses,” he says. “It’s about getting out and playing, learning from the experience of others and then making it into something new yourself. This is how rock ‘n’ roll happened.”

“Rock & Roll” airs 9-11 p.m. Sunday through Thursday on KCET.