American Dreams

The theme song 'Generation' was written and performed by Emerson Hart, lead singer of the band Tonic, and it won him an ASCAP award for Best Theme Song of Television in 2003.

The show aired in Australia under the title Our Generation for its debut season before reverting to American Dreams for the second season.

Art Garfunkel played record store owner Mr. Greenwood; in the third season his character was said to have gone 'on a worldwide tour with his friend,' an in-joke referencing Garfunkel's real singing partnership with Paul Simon.

The show's sets were located at Sunset-Gower Studios, and fans even flew an aerial banner over NBC's Burbank studios in a campaign to save the series after cancellation.

Creator Jonathan Prince managed to get four additional episodes produced by arranging for companies like Kraft and Nabisco (as well as Campbell's Soups and Ford) to pay for them in exchange for product placement.

NBC filmed two different endings for the season finale, but ultimately chose not to air a 12-minute epilogue set on the day of the Apollo 11 Moon landing because the network could not secure sponsorship to cover the expensive music licensing fees for the rock songs featured in it.

The unaired series epilogue was finally shown to the public for the first time at the second annual ATX Television Festival on June 9, 2013, when creator Jonathan Prince unveiled a rough cut to the reunited cast and crew.

Future DVD releases of seasons two and three were long stalled due to the high cost of music licensing for the show's many needle-drops, with the season one DVD replacing about 20% of the original music with cheaper substitute recordings to cut costs.

The show took considerable creative liberties with history, such as keeping American Bandstand filming in Philadelphia throughout the series even though in reality the show moved to Los Angeles in February 1964, and featuring performers like The Who, Ricky Nelson, and The Monkees on Bandstand despite none of them ever actually appearing on or even existing as acts at the time depicted.