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Permissiveness on trial: Sex, drugs, rock, the Rolling Stones, and the sixties counterculture

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journal contribution
posted on 2018-02-20, 11:22 authored by Marcus CollinsMarcus Collins
This article examines how a 1967 scandal involving drug-taking among popular musicians catalyzed a debate between its principal participants—the Rolling Stones, politicians, the press, the courts, and the counterculture—about what was and was not permissible in matters of personal conduct, individual liberty, and social responsibility. These discussions reveal the provisional, contested, and circumscribed quality of permissiveness in 1960s Britain, which was nonetheless becoming a more diverse and pluralistic society. Permissiveness was not a monolithic cause and existing models of it—whether they stress its marginality or its magnitude, its malign or benign effects—risk simplifying a constellation of behaviors and beliefs championed by different interests for different reasons.

History

School

  • Social Sciences

Department

  • Politics and International Studies

Published in

Popular Music and Society

Citation

COLLINS, M., 2019. Permissiveness on trial: Sex, drugs, rock, the Rolling Stones, and the sixties counterculture. Popular Music and Society, 42 (2), pp.188-209.

Publisher

© Taylor & Francis (Routledge)

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publisher statement

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Popular Music and Society on 17 January 2019, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/03007766.2018.1439295.

Acceptance date

2018-02-08

Publication date

2019-01-17

ISSN

0300-7766

eISSN

1740-1712

Language

  • en