Beatles

The Beatles Ignited a Culture War and Changed the World

by Randall J. Stephens

While Peter Jackson's "Get Back" documentary focuses on the last phases of the band's work together, it's important to think about how the group's emergence changed American culture, especially around sex and gender. 

The Beatles vs. the KKK

John Lennon's notorious "bigger than Jesus" comment prior to the group's 1966 American tour brought out right-wing protestors and helped push the band to stop touring permanently. 

Liverpool Museums Dismiss Link Between "Penny Lane" and Notorious Slave Trader

Local historians and Liverpool's International Slavery Museum released a statement saying that there was no evidence that the street made famous by Paul McCartney was named for slave trader James Penny.

‘It’s a Beatle haircut’: historian claims 15th-century portrait is from the 1960s

National Gallery’s 1450 portrait by Rogier van der Weyden was created in the 1960s by Eric Hebborn, says art historian.

Ron Briley: Review of David Simonelli's "Working Class Heroes: Rock Music and British Society in the 1960s and 1970s" (Lexington Books, 2013)

Ron Briley reviews books for the History News Network and is a history teacher and an assistant headmaster at Sandia Preparatory School, Albuquerque, New Mexico. He is the author of "The Politics of Baseball: Essays on the Pastime and Power at Home and Abroad."For anyone coming of age in the 1960s and 1970s, Working Class Heroes will evoke the rock soundtrack of youthful rebellion. But unlike the many memoirs by musicians which tend to dominate rock music literature, awash with accounts of sex and drugs, David Simonelli, associate professor of history at Youngstown State University, employs the British rock scene from the Beatles to the Sex Pistols to make important observations on the politics, economics, and social class attitudes of Britain during the 1960s and 1970s.