For American adolescents in the 1960s, the Beatles represented the dawn of unrestrained excitement and parental rejection—a time when screaming, long hair, loud music, risque fashion, snarky humor and drugs mocked authority and convention. But through a British lens, the Fab Four were something more—an escape from glum parents, cities slow to rebuild after the bombings of World War II, a dreary economy weighed down by war debt, a class-conscious society and a country clinging to stuffy traditions and set ways. Yesterday I found a fascinating multi-part documentary on the impact of the Beatles and the 1960s as viewed from the British perspective. Here's The Beatles Decade:
Here's Part 1: Teenage Rebels...
Here's Part 2: Sex, Spies and Rock and Roll...
Here's Part 3: Swinging Britain...
Here's Part 4: Peace and Protest (password = beatles)...
And here's Part 5: The Party Is Over...
