Sources C and B are different because they are both talking about different bands altogether. Source B is a description of a concert that had been written in the 1990s by a fan of the Rolling Stones, written to share memories of their experience in 1964, whereas Source C is Paul McCartney talking about what it was like to be confronted by fans and how he handled it and how other bands at the time handled it. Although they both describe how mad fans went for their favourite musicians, they are talking about two different groups. Also, Source B describes fans as a “heaving, maniacal, screaming mob” whereas Paul McCartney is saying that he understood where the fans were coming from and therefore found himself more capable of handling them appropriately, so they sort of contradict each other.
QUESTION 3
Source D is somewhat useful in telling us why so many young people believed that the 1960s gave them opportunities that they had never before. Source D is an entry in the Tv Times in 1965, describing a television programme which would be broadcasting in the forthcoming week. It is a picture source and coming from the magazine the “TV Times” and is written to attract young people to the show. It is useful because it is from the time that the Beatles were popular so it is exactly what people at the time were seeing, it also tells us that young people were being given their own types of music, their own television programmes and music programmes and that they no longer had to do the same things as their parents. However, the source is definitely not entirely useful as it doesn’t tell us how people reacted to it. It doesn’t say whether it was a popular show, or if many young people actually tuned in and watched it, only that it would be broadcasted.
Source E is a description of radio in the 1960s, written in the 1990s by someone who was around at the time, written to tell people what it felt like for teenagers to finally have their own music to listen to and not have to listen to the same music as their parents. It is useful because the person who wrote it was actually there at the time and knew what it felt like. However, it is not useful in the way that it doesn’t tell everything, it doesn’t tell us how everyone felt, just how this one person felt at the time.
QUESTION 4
Source F is part of an article written in the Daily Mail, 25 May 1964. It is written to inform readers that a schoolteacher, Mary Whitehouse had “launched a campaign to help writers who find it difficult to induce the BBC TV to screen their work.” Mary Whitehouse disapproved of rock music as she believed it encouraged young people to use drugs and have sex before marriage and believed it went against Christianity. Source G is a written source taken from a biography entry for the singer Janis Joplin which was published in the 1990s. It tells us that she was a rebellious teenager and that after pursuing a career in music, she died of drug overdose in 1970. These two sources support the fact that some people see the 1960s as a period of bad influences on British society. Source F is telling us that some people fought against the influences being given out in this era, Mary Whitehouse for example, and many people had the same beliefs as her. Also, it tells us that the Daily Mail did not support the BBC in them allowing this article to be printed. It tells us that many people, not the young people of the time, thought that it was a period of bad influence and that rock and roll was giving young people poor role models. Source G sort of gives us a reason to believe that people like Mary Whitehouse had a point and that celebrities at the time were giving out bad messages to the youth. Source G tells us of singer Janis Joplin and how, after pursuing a career in music and becoming extremely successful, she overdosed on drugs in 1970. This proves that the young people may have seen people like her, and she may have been many young girls’ idol and in taking drugs, she was giving the message to her fans that it was a ‘cool’ thing to do and it would make young people want to do it. However, these two sources are not representative of the whole nation at the time. Just because source G tells us that Janis Joplin died of a drug overdose it is not necessarily saying that all musicians at the time were into taking drugs and just because source F is telling us Mary Whitehouse disagreed with the BBC, it is not saying that the majority of people at the time did disagree.
QUESTION 5
Some people will disagree with the statement that “Popular Culture did more harm than good” in the 1969s. They would disagree with this because when people look back on the era, they look back on it fondly. They remember having lots of fun and therefore we must assume that it did no harm. People like Joanna Lumley, who wrote source A and the fan of the Rolling Stones who wrote Source B both look back on the 1960s fondly and don’t mention that the bands were a bad influence on their lives. Paul McCartney also looks back fondly of the time when Popular Culture was important, he doesn’t talk about how he or his band members done drugs or were a bad influence on people. Source D and E tell us that young people were given freedom to express themselves by listening to their own styles of music. Source H tells us that teenagers now had money and were being targeted by the entertainment industry. Source I tells us that more young people were staying in full-time education and that is a good thing, so, one must assume that it done no harm.
On the other hand, some people would agree with this because of people like Mary Whitehouse who were around at the time, insisting that Popular Culture had a bad influence on young people and singers like Janis Joplin who were becoming bad role models for young people, dying at a young age due to a drug overdose. People would have to agree because many of the sources describe the fans of these bands as insane, even “maniacal” in some cases.