The 60s: The Beatles Decade — Season 1, Episode 1: Teenage Rebels 1960-1962
Documentary • 30 min • 1 season, 5 episodes
Episode synopsis
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.
About The 60s: The Beatles Decade
When people are asked to think about the 1960s, they automatically think love, peace and...The Beatles. Over the decade, the Fab Four changed from cheeky pop mop-heads to blissed-out experimentalists, and this transformation mirrored the country as a whole. This five-part documentary series looks at how the world's most famous pop group personified one of the most explosive and volatile decades of the 20th century. Although the 60s generation had it all, a changing political landscape and changing attitudes to sex and relationships were dragging Britain into a new age. By the end of the decade, The Beatles had split up, proving that the band's personalities and their music had become true symbols of an iconic decade.