The 60s: The Beatles Decade

The Beatles' decade began in Liverpool in July 1957 when 16 year old John Lennon and 15 year old Paul McCartney met. This chance encounter produced one of the most important musical partnerships of the 20th Century. They listened to American artists and hung out in the Jacaranda coffee bar. They were part of a new breed of 'teenagers' who benefited from their parents increasing affluence. Fashion was changing too, and Mary Quant designed youthful and colourful dresses. In America, youth was winning too, and Kennedy was elected President. The Beatles went to Hamburg in 1960 and it was there they discovered freedom, sexual freedom. It was during this time that the Cuba Missile Crisis posed a great threat to world peace and for a while the world waited to see if peace would be shattered. Working class writers and actors started to emerge along with the Beatles. Everything was changing. Music, consumer goods, fashion - the sixties generation really did seem to have it all.

In Liverpool in 1962 the Beatles caused a sensation at the Cavern Club. They had only one single to their name. But a fateful meeting with Brian Epstein was to help them top the charts. Epstein changed their image from the American biker look and soon realised the sixties was the selling decade. Youth was all the rage and the old Tory Prime Minister Harold McMillan seemed out of step with the times. The Profumo sex scandal nailed the Tories and before long Harold Wilson's Labour government took power. The age of deference had passed and the Beatles played up their cheeky persona. As 'Beatlemania' was exported around the world, it embodied the optimism and national pride which had infected Britain. By the end of 1964 Britain had shifted into a modern age. The Beatles success was evidence that a more meritocratic society had arrived and class barriers had fallen.

By 1965 the cultural renaissance of Britain was in full swing and the Beatles embodied the feeling of optimism. Having won over the British public the Beatles were ready to take on the world. The new fashion labels like Biba, new faces like Twiggy and hair dressers like Vidal Sassoon were an important ingredient in the Swinging London explosion. However, the economy was in a terrible state Harold Wilson had inherited huge debts and done little to stem the problem. And The Beatles lives as superstars had turned into a living hell by 1966.

In April 1967 The Beatles produced the drug fuelled Sgt Peppers, an Album that was to change everything. The Beatles had turned to eastern mysticism and become distant from their mentor, Epstein, who died suddenly. Britain was undergoing a radical transformation from the legalisation of homosexuality and abortion to the relaxation of theatre censorship and introduction of the 'no contest' divorce. But soon the social revolution was overtaken by political revolt on the streets against the Vietnam War. At the beginning of 1968 the Beatles took control of their own careers. They had a grand vision of a media empire and set up a number of companies under the name Apple. It proved to be a disaster. Privately the Beatles were arguing - about Yoko, about what they should record, about the future. Outwardly they were still sensationally successful. But there was trouble brewing.

As the decade came to an end a more chaotic world was to come. But what had changed dramatically during the 1960s was the education system and the introduction of the 11+. (Both John Lennon and Paul McCartney went to Liverpool Grammar schools). Paul and John's wives, Linda and Yoko, had one thing in common - they were strong, independent women, but with very different personalities. They typified the changing relationship between men and women which was beginning to emerge in the late sixties. The Beatles split up and Harold Wilson had been gone, the sixties had well and truly ended. By the end of the decade, Britain had genuinely changed. Youth culture had been born. Political protest had taken to the streets; and blind, class deference had gone forever. The Beatles had personified this social revolution - and their split coincided with the return of conservatism. But in the historical ebb-and-flow of the decades that followed much of this change would be permanent.