Sucking in the seventies? The Rolling Stones and the aftermath of the permissive society

This article explores how the Rolling Stones, as the most famous sixties rock band to survive the seventies, capture the changing nature of permissiveness across the two decades. The first section examines their continued opposition to what they perceived to be the anti-permissive forces of church, state and censorship in the seventies, though they moderated their antipathy to the music industry. The second section assesses how the Stones attempted to fashion their private lives along libertarian lines. It argues that, although they relished the unprecedented freedoms afforded to them as seventies rock stars, they risked becoming the victims of their own excess. The Stones therefore exemplify how permissiveness at once expanded in the seventies and lost much of its radical charge.