Why did groups like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones have such a great impact during the 1960s?

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Why did groups like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones have such a great impact during the 1960’s?

        In this essay I will explain how groups like the Beatles and Rolling Stones had such a great influence during the 1960’s. These groups had a significant impact on the society as they became social icons, especially to the younger generation. I will be looking at how the following factors helped with the success and impact of such bands throughout Britain; these factors are: Increase in social wealth, Americas influence to Britain, Radio and Television and their appeal to youth culture and teenage rebellion.

        

To begin with, I will firstly look at how Britain’s increase in wealth impacted the society.

In 1959, the average weekly income increased a vast amount; therefore people had more money in their pockets to spend. The change in wage impacted not only the lives of the public but also the economy. For instance the manufactures took advantage of the fact that people had more money. An example of this would be the manufacturing of cars. The amount of cars on road rose exceedingly from 1955-1965. In 1955, there were approximately three and a half million cars on the road; this amount then grew to around nine million cars in 1965.

         In addition to this, the increase of wage enabled the younger generation to have more power as they had more money, therefore more individual rights. One may say that groups such as the Beatles and Rolling Stones guided the younger generation through this change. This is because around the same time, it was such groups that also changed in style, genre and fashion and the new wealth and power of the teenagers adapted to these groups and accepted them to do so. Due to this, such groups became idols; people wanted to look like them, sing like them and be like them. Looking back on the idea of manufactures taking advantage on wealth they also took advantage of bands such as the Beatles and Rolingstones. They had done this by creating products and clothing specifically relating to such bands as their image appealed to the youth and the demand to look like them became exceedingly high. These icons became the key to make money.

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        Focusing on this idea of alteration within the society, America was the core factor upon this change. This is because then and even now Britain is influenced by America in many ways, one being music. In the fifties, music that showed such high significance in the United States like electric rhythm, blues and soul was hardly played in Britain. However, as time moved on such music was imported from the USA to Liverpool. In the sense of music, America had direct shipping routes to Liverpool; therefore this became the music capital of Britain. The Americans had yet again significantly ...

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