3 - Society, 1966–1970: The Beatles Go Too Far

Summary

This chapter examines public reactions to the Beatles’ mounting transgressions of social norms in the second half of their recording career. It argues that, although their popularity as a band remained undiminished, they became increasingly alienated and alienating figures within British society in four respects. First, they made little attempt to attain universal popularity. Their retirement from live performance meant no foreign tours, next to no collective press conferences, fewer photo opportunities and the shrinking of Beatlemania to a gaggle of Apple Scruffs. Second, their fabled transformational abilities often failed them, meaning that they were paradoxically at their most marginal when at their most socially engaged. Third, they associated themselves with strikingly unpopular causes. Anyone hostile to drugs, hippies, obscenity, infidelity, permissiveness, law-breaking, social protest, the rich, the far left, avant garde art, miscegenation, Americans, Indians or the Japanese had a reason to dislike the Beatles in the late 1960s. Fourth, they were no longer indulged by the popular press, which discarded the moptop caricature in favour of an equally simplistic image of them as conceited and out of touch. The chapter concludes by exploring how sex and drugs became polarising issues and provides prime examples of how the Beatles in the late sixties had gone too far.