Historians often talk of ‘the long 18th century’ and ditto of the 19th century, with a few years either side of the calendar century deemed to belong with the hundred-year period in terms of style, innovation, industry, values, etc. The 60s, as we understand them as a cultural decade, are similarly not quite calendrical. But what can we say vis a vis British history (the US is a separate case, let’s not bring it in here) – as a bit of fun but also as something useful to the study of history – are the start and end points?
Phillip Larkin’s poem referencing ‘the Beatles first LP’ (March 1963) is helpful. One could make a case for October 1962 (‘Love Me Do’ becomes a hit – a month after skiffle sensation Lonnie Donegan’s last UK hit, which is conveniently baton-passing in retrospect). I’m tempted by 1963, maybe even beginning in January 1963 – the Marquee Club in London beginning its weekly R&B nights, initially with the Mann-Hugg Blues Brothers (soon to be Mannfred Mann) and ex-trad jazzer (who saw which way the wind was blowing) Big Pete Deuchar’s Country Blues, but soon ushering in the likes of the Rolling Stones, Yardbirds et al. Aside from ‘Merseybeat’, the music papers talked endlessly of both an ‘R&B boom’ and a ‘folk boom’ that year and the next – trad jazz clubs switched within a matter of months to R&B while folk clubs sprung up exponentially. The ‘trad boom’ of the 1960-62 era – trad jazz, becoming a Light Entertainment phenomenon – collapsed pretty suddenly, with only the top four or five acts surviving (Barber, Bilk, Ball, Lightfoot…), in the face of R&B at ground level and pop more generally. ‘Ready, Steady, Go!’ beginning in August 1963 might also be a marker for the start of the 60s. So, somewhere within the first 8 months of 1963, then…
What of the end? I was struck several years back when researching a number of Quintessence archive releases how swiftly their press coverage fell off a cliff. From formation in mid-1969, an ‘underground’ London word of mouth sensation, they inspired substantial coverage in the music weeklies – moving so fast from formation to bidding war and then Island Records signing them that the usual route involving a John Peel session or two simply didn’t have time to happen. They were perhaps the last of the great London ‘counterculture’ acts to emerge. Their press coverage (interviews, concert reviews) continued until June 1972… and then, bar one short piece in early 1973, nothing. Their final album in 1973 was both diminished as a piece of artistry, diminished in membership and utterly irrelevant. It was ‘out of time’.
Researching yet another Pentangle project recently, I was struck at how poignant the below piece of film from Australian TV is (in the comments). The Pentangle formed in early 1967, played a weekly London club night as a side project to members’ other activities for a year or so and then, come 1968, were launched as a major concerts act – and thus became one, with two albums that year alone and a Top 5 one the following year. The first ‘Melody Maker’ front page headline of 1973 screamed ‘Pentangle split!’ It was denied, but three months later ‘NME’ ran a piece entitled ‘Pentangle dies… with a whimper’, and none of those interviewed denied it. They’d all just run out of steam. The final tour was October-November 1972 in the UK. Earlier that year, between March and August, globetrotting, they had filmed five TV spot/concerts – Netherlands, Belgium, Granada (UK), Australia and New Zealand.
I’m currently on the trail of the NZ film, but for the moment the last glimpse we have of the Pentangle in their original run is from ‘GTK’ broadcast by ABC (Australia) in August 1972. That ‘middle of 1972’ thing again. Apart from being fabulous, it feels to me like a last hurrah of the 60s – as far as Pentangle, a unique fusion certainly but undoubtedly a product of ‘the 60s’ nonetheless, could progress within their sound. What would they have done in 1973? Brought Mike Batt in to add a stomping beat and borrow a pastiche 50s R&R saxophone section from Roy Wood? No – their last two albums were musically a natural end for them, I think. In a way, the very last one, ‘Solomon’s Seal’, felt like a careworn rumination the day after a long party – having a last look round before turning the lights off. Of course, the fact that Australian TV didn’t get colour TV until 1975 helps too – it gives the Pentangle performance the easily grasped patina of ‘another age’.
So, my vote for the ‘end of the 60s’ in British cultural terms in somewhere in the middle of 1972. Maybe others with more interest in glam rock and whatever else will come up with some set of releases within that year that help this argument – or maybe you have different suggestions for an end point?
Over to you…
I reckon the end of the sixties can be traced back to the events at Altamont and Kent State (although Vietnam rumbled through everything like a low, distant note on a cello.) The shock of Altamont and the university shootings kick started a slow decline in the general technicolor optimism of the decade which had been initially sparked by the Beatles and which was extended further into the lovey-dovey (but well intentioned) hippy doodlings of Woodstock.
Ah, but you mustn’t have read the first paragraph in my post – I’m only opening a discussion about culture in Britain.
Note to self….
đ
I feel it was when glam rock was mixed with nostalgia for 50s rock and roll. The feeling that the 60s was gone and looking back to pre-Beatles times for a reminder of what it was like to just dance to music without any external context.
Dunno: California Man by The Move? Ball Park Incident by Wizzard? Rock and Roll by Gary Glitter?
On reading your first paragraph, I immediately thought 1962-1972.
Pop music in 1960 and 1961 was either very white American post-rock-n-roll/lounge music or else British covers/copies of same.
1962 introduced black American r&b into our equation and things got more exciting. Rock became pop and more colourful. Young people dressed less conservatively.
By 1972 the black music, such as Motown and Stax-type soul that we had embraced was being completely overwhelmed by disco, while white rock music had either become more rigidly rhythmical and noisier, or rather florid, complex and pseudo-classical. Less melodic, less “pop”. Pop fans had by then divided into distinct tribes, excluding any music and clothing that didn’t fit their chosen tribe.
That was Charles Shaar Murray’s contention. 62 – 72.
I reckon ’63 is pretty much right – off the top of my head; the promise of pop music aspirations to be taken as a serious art form, the mainstream recognition of pop art in general, Private Eye’s growing relevance, anti-establishment undercurrents starting to be seen on public display, Valentina Tereshkova a woman in space, Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech – all harbingers of a wave of cultural change.
And the end, well, personally I’d put it a little later than you – 1973 saw the Red and Blue albums released, signalling the end of something pretty significant. That year was also the first year when glam became a thing, and by the end of ’73 we were definitely into the ’70s. Downhill ever since then! đ
Private Eye – interesting suggestion. Though that and the Establishment Club (the well-publicised London satire club founded by PE man Peter Cook) began in 1961.
From the same satire stable, though, ‘That Was The Week That Was’ ran from Nov 1962 – Dec 1963 – that would certainly be heavily in the frame for any ‘beginning of the 60s’ (in Britain) discussion.
I’d need convincing that Red / Blue had any significance in the discussion… Glam was fully formed by 1973 – definitely its biggest year, with the look plus old R&R rebooting with make-up idea surely traceable pretty clearly back to T Rex’s ‘Hot Love’ on TOTP in 1971. That said, I would think of ‘Hot Love’ as a remodelling of 1969’s ‘Spirit in the Sky’ – a continuation of the 60s, albeit in retrospect the beginning of something new – still a hippyish thing with a lazy R&R groove, not the foot-stomping, bricklayers-in-bacofoil sound of 1973.
re. Red/Blue – that was the point where the general public got the message that the Beatles were indeed over, consigned to nostalgia, and not coming back, I think. Hence this is a good choice for the end of the 60s.
I would think they probably realised that when the McCartney album came out
My recollection is that red/blue came out aeons after The Beatles split up. The sixties had died years before.
I’m going for Dec 31st 1969 đ
And The Beatles split up then, and were properly formed ca 1960, what better barometer of the decade that fits almost perfectly?
It does rather depend on how we define ‘the 60s’. What were the attributes of the era we can define as being of the 60s?
That said, while I do think you’ve got a point with ‘Hot Love’. I think the question is interesting when we think about what marks the end of one era and the beginning of a new one. Personally, I don’t think one cultural era ends, until something new builds up sufficient capital to significantly spread into the mainstream and replace it.
While glam was a massive hit in terms of music and fashion, it was still essentially nostalgic in form whether it was the bacofoil bricklayers or Freddie Mercury. Likewise, heavy rock was a predictable progression of the late 60s blues boom. Of course we’re not counting the US here, but there, the shift from post-hippy idealism to solipsistic singer-songwriters took the dying days of the 60s onto a different trajectory. But OK, back in the UK, I think the 60s ended in one December teatime in 1976, on the Bill Grundy show.
Blimey, you’re almost in the 80s there!
The sixties were like, totally elastic, man
Well I think the seventies began in 1968 in some ways with the pre-eminence of the album and a more hairy, less psychedelic approach. Back to basics, hard rock. The seventies proper was an exploration of the inventions of the sixties. The innovations were established, now they could go wild. Singles and albums were like two different worlds. There was the sense of an underground, still a counter culture but then it became big business, a music industry making millions. The idealism seems rather hollow in the light of that. So 1973 maybe, Dark Side Of The Moon. Money.
I sometimes think of ‘Abbey Road’ (1969) as ‘the first 70s album’ in a way.
The McCartney parts of the medley seem quite 70s to me, soft rock and seemingly something of an inspiration to 10cc, along with Oh Darling! that’s how it sounds to me at least. And he is creating a style for his solo career.
It isn’t linear, mind. I would say the 1950s ended around 1964, with the 60’s running until about 1974/5. The 1970’s were short, 1974/5v to 1980, with the 1980s lasting until around the millennium. Uncertain where we are now, but somewhere back between 1964 and now. And no, I won’t show my workings.
The sixties started when we woke up one day and the world was in colour.
The seventies started when the world went brown and orange..
..and we found we were only working a 3-day week.
I reckon the end is, as someone said above, when Beatles split up.
The 70s actually began in 1969 with In The Court Of The Crimson King
By 1972 ELP had released 3 albums and they’re def not 60s. The Nice were 60s
Rule of thumb: If the clothes, hair and sleeve design are crap, it’s not the 60s.
Compare the front covers of ‘Nashville Skyline’ and ‘New Morning’.
Increasingly I reckon The Beatles ‘are’ the 60s and vice-versa, and so I’d take the ‘long’ 60s to run from the UK release of ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ in March 1956 – the youngest Beatle, George, became a teenager the previous month – to the last record (Let It Be LP in the UK / The Long and Winding Road 45 in the US). However, as you ‘have’ to include the 1970 World Cup (Final on 21st June) and cease by the time of the dull-as-ditch water – none more ho-hum 1970s – Plastic Ono Band and All Things Must Pass albums later in the year… I’ll say Friday 18th September 1970.
Quite apt that Friday, 18th September 1970 should signal the end of the summer and, of course, it is the day Jimi died.
Funny that I should extend the decade backwards (1956-1970) when most dodgers would stretch it forwards.
No Beatles, no Jimi, no 60s… and you are ‘entirely’ welcome to it. In fact, I insist you have it and not me!
Oh, and bags me ‘not’ to be at the 1970 Isle of Wight which looks truly awful.
I actually find myself nodding along in agreement with most of this.
I remember when my aunt saved up and bought the extraordinarily expensive Let It Be album in its fancy box with the ânew phaseâ nonsense. As a twelve year old, the packaging seemed better than the music, if equally pointless. I struggled to relate to these hairy herberts when Iâd been mesmerised by them aged five.
No Mothers Of Invention, no ’60s. “Hot Rats” and the Mark Volman & Howard Kaylan “Mothers” were most definitely ’70s.
As others have noted, the release of “In The Court Of The Crimson King” and the sacking/subsequent death of Brian Jones are also pointers.
1978 and the end of the Black and White Minstrel Show if weâre talking the 1860s
I bought a copy of the Guinness Book of Hit Singles on Ebay a while back. One of the things I noticed while browsing was that a lot of the entries for what we would call easy listening or jazz artists show their hits drying up noticeably around late 1963. Artists who were having top 10 hits start to have top 30 hits and then stop having them at all. I seem to remember that September 1963 was a common cut off point, which I think would have coincided with Beatlemania.
In his On the Cusp book, David Kynaston makes the case for the 60s starting a bit earlier, in the summer of 1962.
As for the sixties ending, I tend to agree with the folks saying December 1969, but in my case, I’m saying its for the release of Led Zeppelin II. That’s not a sixties record. Neither is Hot Buttered Soul, which was also a 1969 record.
Anyway, the 70s are definitely there by 1970. Hot Love, Maggie May and Paranoid are all 70s records.
Hmm… Paranoid 7th August, Isle of Wight end of August with boringjoni in tow (yikes), Jimi had already released the last record of his career anyway… food for thought.
Alas, the woeful ‘Self Portrait’ came out on June 8th. Still, with any luck you’d be too caught up in the best World Cup ever to notice.
End of the 60s? Carlos Alberto’s goal in the 86th minute of the 1970 World Cup Final on Sunday, 21st June 1970. The football in the onion bag via the best goal, all The Beatles/Jimi discs in the record bag via the best decade.
Sorry for not being more precise. The Golden Age, it went that-away. Might have to ditch some fag-end frankies on the back of this revelation.
Still ongoing for some people, aren’t they?
I don’t know, I managed to dodge them.
The end of Britpop might have been the end of the 60s, with all the Beatles and Kinks influences overtly, and Small Faces less so. Where every last drop had been wrung out – so it’s probably Be Here Now.
It lives! It’s still with us like a parasite, It’s tentacles crawling and entwining themselves in all we are. The endless resuscitation of that band in documentaries, not to mention other acts that must be worshipped still. Get Back? Get dead!
We have been rather haunted by the 60s though. You missed them and you wish you were there, a flowering and cultural, revolutionary peak that defined what was to come. Bit of an albatross round the neck that wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
You need to have a chat with deramdazeâŠ
I quite like the 80s. It won’t end well.
I was there, and it wasnât like that at all, unless you were rich and/or famous and zoomed up and down the Kingâs Rd in your Mini Moke (dick-a-dum-dum). You assumed it was all going on somewhere, but not where you were. Apart from the hair, the music, and things like Ready Steady Go, life was much the same.
I guess most of us are thinking about music when considering this, so surely 1963 is the year the 60s start, and the pattern is set there for the rest of the decade. 1972 is a good marker for the end – most of the 60s bands had run their course, Roxy and Bowie et al arenât of the 60s, Led Zeppelin had peaked artistically, prog had reared its head, nostalgia had become a thing; I often say that we never listened to anything âoldâ in the 60s as we were too busy listening to the new stuff, whereas we suddenly seemed to be reviving rock and roll in the early 70s.
I would add that we also seemed enter a period of pessimism at that time, whereas the 60s were supremely optimistic where anything seemed possible.
July 1969, moon landings and Space Oddity coming out. Start of something?
âLed Zeppelin had peaked artisticallyâ
No, they hadnâtâŠ
When did pub rock begin? The amalgam of country, folk, blues and rock into short digestible songs, begetting, sort of, punk and certainly new wave. Thatâs where time could happily stop for me. Earlier stuff I can appreciate as historical artefact, but, I would assert, is still the basis of a lot of ânewâ stuff today.
Having said, much of what I listen most to, derives fro the century before and before that, however many drum kits, electricity and âtronica they throw at it.
Quite where unadulterated âtronica and techno fit in, Lord knows. Is that a parallel and ongoing 80s?
U OK, hun?
1971/72? Arguably? Eggs Over Easy, Brinsleys – must be about thenâŠ
October 5th, 1962 – the release date of ‘Love Me Do’ and ‘Dr No’ is as good a start to ‘the 60s’ as anything. I would also agree that the start of glam, around 1972, is a viable end-point.
There is a cultural/geographical dimension to this as well. Someone once said something like ‘for most people in the UK the 60s happened in the 70s’ and I think this is spot on. I lived in London in 1962 with my parents and we regularly went to Seaford on the south coast for our summer holiday. It’s only 50 miles away but it was like stepping back in time by 3 or 4 years. The clothes were outdated (winkle pickers!), the films were out of date, hairstyles, everything.
Seaford is much unchanged to this day, stuck around 1964, despite the cosmopolitan Newhaven, up the road, where time has marched forward to about 1973.
Brighton is about 2000, bar the North Laine area, which isn’t even in this country, being a satellite of Haight-Ashbury c. 1967.
Eastbourne 1950.
Lewes? Anything you want it to be, maan, just let it dissolve on your tongue.
End of the 60s: Jagger and Richards conviction in 1967 followed by William Rees-Mogg quoting Alexander Pope “Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?”
When they started selling hippie wigs in Woolwoths man