The importance of Liking Yourself is a notion that fell heavily out of favor during the coptic, anti-ego frenzy of the Acid Era – but nobody guessed back then that the experiment might churn up this kind of hangover: a whole subculture of frightened illiterates with no faith in anything. Hunter S Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72
Cops and Robbers in 1965 England was still a kind of Ealing comedy: crimes rarely involved firearms. The denizens of F-wing were losers in a game they had been playing against the cops. In queues for exercise, the constant questions were ‘What you in for, mate?’, followed by ‘What you reckon you’ll get?’ When Freddie and I responded with ‘Suspicion of drug possession’ and ‘We’re innocent, we’ll get off’ they would burst into laughter, offering: ‘Listen, mate, they wouldn’t have you in here if they had any intention of letting you off. You’re living in dreamland, you are.’ Joe Boyd, White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s
In the sixties, the Commune emerged as a riposte to the nuclear family. This was an autonomic re-creation of not only pre-industrial, but pre-agrarian life; it was the Return to Nature, but the Commune, like the colleges from which the idea reemerged, only functioned if Daddy was paying the bills, for the rejection of property can work only in subvention or in slavery. It is only in a summer camp (College or the hippie commune) that the enlightened live on the American Plan – room and board included prepaid – and one is free to frolic all day in the unspoiled woods. David Mamet, The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture
The unprecedented rise of pop music in the 1960s was just one of the many collisions between class and culture that have changed this country in the last hundred years. Melvyn Bragg on Class and Culture, BBC 2012
88,149. Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(Which was rather late for me) –
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles’ first LP.
Up till then there’d only been
A sort of bargaining,
A wrangle for a ring,
A shame that started at sixteen
And spread to everything.
Then all at once the quarrel sank:
Everyone felt the same,
And every life became
A brilliant breaking of the bank,
A quite unloseable game.
So life was never better than
In nineteen sixty three
(Though just too late for me) –
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatle’s first LP. Philip Larkin, Annus Mirabilis
Welcome to the Sixties ... TV went from blitzed out black and white to living colour. It Was Alright in the 1960s, Channel 4 2015
BBC live TV with ringing telephones ... Mainly Millicent 1964 with Roger Moore (Millicent trips) ... The Charlie Drake Show 1961 (knocked out by prop) ... Cigarette adverts ... Tomorrow’s World (live bullets fired at man) ... Naturist documentary ... Woody Allen v Kangaroo ... Child of the Year Competition ... The Bonzos (Minstrels) ... The Ravers (yoof documentary) ... Dixon of Dock Green (racism) ... Department S (sexism) ... The Saint (sexist spanking & racism) ... Emergency Ward 10 1964 (first interracial kiss) ... Mainly for Men 1969 (late night) ... Scott on Birds 1964. ibid.
The Beatles were an immaculately packaged product. Dominic Sandbrook: Let Us Entertain You I: The New British Empire, BBC 2015
The Sixties only swung for a tiny minority. ibid.
Around half the family’s income is still going on the essentials … but there is more cash around. Back in Time for the Weekend, BBC 2016
30% of households owned their own vehicle. ibid.
In the autumn of 1966 The Beatles were working in the studio on a new song Strawberry Fields Forever … At the end of the same month Jonathan Miller’s controversial adaptation of Alice in Wonderland was broadcast by the BBC … In popular culture and mass media it had been a year of restless stylistic experiment and the search for new forms of expression. Arena: 1966 – Thirty Years Ago Today: The Year the Decade Exploded, BBC 2016
‘They are anti-war, and they’re love everybody, and their sexual lives have become freer. The kids are looking for something else, or some different moral value.’ ibid. Mick Jagger
‘Nobody thought we were going to come out of it alive. Most kids of my age didn’t expect to make it through the Sixties.’ ibid. Steve Gibbons, The Ugly’s vocalist
‘The music is the only living thing. Draft only those over forty. It’s their war; let them kill each other.’ ibid. Lou Reed, The Velvet Underground
‘This can by psychological dynamite.’ ibid. Fyfe Robertson
Beat Girl 1960 ... Oliver Reed jig-jigs ... Adam Faith plays café ... Adam Faith et al continue rocking at party. Glimpses [short], Talking Pictures 2016
The latest test score from Australia: at the end of the fourth day’s play 30,000 cricket lovers stormed on to the field to congratulate Freddy Truman on the best bowling figures of his test career. In a 14-over spell Freddy took 9 wickets for 47 runs. Live It Up! aka Sing & Swing 1963 starring Kenny Ball & David Hemmings & Jennifer Moss & Veronica Hurst & Heinz Burt & Joan Newell & David Bauer & Patsy Ann Noble & Gene Vincent & John Pike & Peter Nobel et al, director Lance Comfort, television news flash
A lot of sparks were lit in the ’60s but much of it took off later. Noam Chomsky, lecture Back Page Books January 2008, ‘Interventions’, Youtube 1.06.26
Let’s take a trip through the most visionary period in British music history: five kaleidoscopic years between 1965 and 1970 when a handful of dreamers re-imagined pop music. In the mid 60s a counterculture swapped the white heat of technology for an older Britain of Edwardian fantasy and bucolic bliss. From out of the Bohemian underground psychedelia took over the pop mainstream. Psychedelic Britannia, BBC 2017
In 1965 the Yardbirds release Still I’m Sad: it was the sound of British R n B loosening its moorings. ibid.
LSD25, a legal substance introduced to Britain by America in 1965, began ripping through the Bohemian underground in 1966. ibid.
While UFO, LSD and Pink Floyd were galvanising the freaks, a group of misfits from Canterbury were developing a sound along parallel lines: Soft Machine. ibid.
The Move: I Can Hear the Grass Grow. ibid.
The concept album became de rigueur. ibid.
The TV was the centre of the house. I don’t remember a time without TV. The Sixties s1e1: Television Comes of Age, Tom Hanks, Yesterday 2014
The magic of Carol Burnett. ibid. commentator
There was no denying the shift in attitudes towards sex, towards race relations, towards politics. ibid.
It was all televised. ibid. other commentator
Television changed absolutely everything. ibid. Tom Hanks
Early on in the sixties you had this backdrop of tension. The Sixties s1e2: The World on the Brink, CNN, Robert Dallek
Bay of Pigs: It was a calamity: Kennedy had been totally misinformed by American Intelligence. ibid. Marvin Kalb, CBS Moscow correspondent
It is a mixture of pretty scenery and ugly events. The Sixties s1e4: A War in Vietnam, news report
Early on Kennedy made a command decision: We will not allow South Vietnam to fall to the communists. ibid.
I uh feel that we must bear a good deal of responsibility for it. I should not have given my consent to it without a round-table conference. ibid. Kennedy
The frank answer is we don’t know what’s going on out there. ibid. McNamara
The United States was killing twenty-five thousand civilians a year. The blowing up and burning down. ibid. reporter
It was the wrong damned war. ibid. commentator
June 1966: Currently there are about 267,000 US fighting men in Vietnam. bid. television news
Going after a bunch of half-starved beggars. ibid. McNamara
It was a tragic comedy of errors. ibid. Morley Safer
The sit-in movement has challenged certain fundamental concepts of law and is shaking the regional traditions of the South in an entirely new way. The Sixties s1e5: A Long March to Freedom ***** Chet Huntley, NBC News
An angry mob just came out of nowhere. ibid. John Lewis