The preface uses contemporary cartoons to introduce the four principal characteristics of the Beatles and their relationship to 1960s Britain, which is explored in the book. It argues that the Beatles should be understood as iconic, divisive, atypical and prefigurative. The band’s iconic status rested on more than their popularity, talent, wealth and fame. It existed because they functioned as ready-made symbols of modernity and controversy. The divisive effect of the Beatles is illustrated by opposition to their threat towards established institutions and identities. The Beatles’ atypicality, signified by their distinctive appearance, later identified them as elitist and eccentric. Once viewed as Everymen, they were associated with some of the most marginal and least popular elements of late sixties society. The prefigurative nature of the Beatles is demonstrated by the familiarity to us of the events depicted in the cartoons and the unfamiliarity of their underlying assumptions about class, gender, ethnicity and popular culture. Much of what seemed absurd to the cartoonists seems unexceptionable now. To understand the Beatles in their time, we need to examine why they often seemed so funny peculiar in 1960s Britain. To understand their legacy, we should consider why we struggle to laugh at these cartoons today.

This chapter uses contemporary opinion polls to provide the necessary context in which to understand contemporary attitudes towards the Beatles. The polls under analysis encompass permissiveness in its broadest sense. They include polls about women, ethnic minorities and the young as well as those concerning abortion, the age of majority, birth control, censorship, capital punishment, corporal punishment, divorce, drugs, gambling, homosexuality, illegitimacy, prostitution, religion and suicide. The chapter introduces the concept of an ‘anti-permissive permissive society’ to account for the ambivalence of public attitudes displayed in polling data. Most people perceived a permissive society as coming into being from the 1960s onwards, but they disapproved of most of its manifestations and legislative reforms. The chapter then drills down into the raw data of opinion polls to compare attitudes towards different issues across demographic groups. The variations seen across age, gender, class, religion, region, nation, education and marital status reveal a complexity not captured in standard models of sixties Britain and provide clarity regarding which elements of British society were more permissive than others. Although the Beatles, like the typical permissive respondent, were young and male, they were in most other respects singularly unrepresentative representatives of sixties Britain.