Awop Bop Aloobop Alop Bam Boom!" The Sixties Seismic Shakes

Strap in for a captivating journey through the most explosive, transformative decade in modern history! Join hosts Steve Millward and Frank Vigon as they unravel the seismic cultural and political shifts of the 1960s—a time when youth culture broke all the rules. From the world-shaking phenomenon of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones to groundbreaking cinema, psychedelic rock, and the rise of the permissive society, this course dives deep into the high-octane spirit of the era. Relive the high-stakes political drama of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the dark mysteries of the JFK assassination, the peace-and-love dream of Woodstock, and humanity's ultimate triumph on the Moon!

13 th April 

With Frank Vigon

If you’re Black get back - Civil Rights in America

America suffered a bloody Civil War in the middle of the nineteenth century, a human tragedy from which it has still yet to recover. The reality of the American Dream is that it frequently sours and turns into an American nightmare. The move from slavery to emancipation was long and frustrating, often marred by violence and deep-seated prejudice. Frequently it was a case of two steps forward and one back as even the most progressive could not bring themselves to face the Inconvenient truth. Black people hanging from trees, marches through the South and little girls accompanied to school by US Marshals……”Free at last, free at last – thank God I’m free at last!”

Profumo – “The isle is full of noises”

The full hypocrisy of the ruling classes was laid bare. The British Establishment was shaken and challenged by a young “model” who managed to sleep with the Secretary of State for War and separately with a Russian Military attaché. A Prime Minister who believed a lie and a spate of high society sexual scandals led to the eventual fall of said Government. A socialite Chiropractor made a scape goat, takes his life with innuendoes about the Royals. A masked whipper, black men living on the earnings of white girls and Peter Rachman building an empire in vice and slum housing, all conspired to shine a light under the very seamy side of the Great British Life…..and still they were in denial…….said Mandy Rice Davies to the judge in court….”Well they would, wouldn’t they?”

20th April 

With Steve Millward and Frank Vigon

1960 and 1961 – we have lift off

The world faced the new decade with a mixture of trepidation and optimism. The Cold War boiled over with the American invasion of Cuba while in Africa violence accompanied independence. The UN Secretary-General was killed in a plane crash. Spirits were lifted, however, when the first man went into space. Meanwhile the heyday of rock and roll was over and the era of the ‘boy-next-door’ was at its height. Everybody was doing the Twist - who was to know pop was on the brink of a golden era?

The Sixties Cinema

As the age of Austerity came to an end a new wind of consumerism blew across the face of Britain, chiefly blown by the Prime Minister, Harold MacMillan. Cinema audiences began to shrink signalling the rise of television and a change in entertainment habits. The smaller audience had different tastes, a mixture of the young and those seeking a cultural stimulation. This was the age of the Art Film, the Cult film and the International Legends. The French Nouvelle vague continued to lap our shores in cinemas like the Cinephone in Oxford Street. A plaintive harmonica played out the Spaghetti Westerns and the Graduate and Billy Liar explored their post adolescent dreams. The Brits told it how it was and Alfred Hitchcock frightened us out of our wits. The films were iconic and groundbreaking, but they played to an ever decreasing clientele…..it was a Space Oddity !!!!

27th April 

With Steve Millward

1962 and 1963 - Something in the air

Another year, another crisis in Cuba – this time nuclear war was only narrowly averted. A year later, the assassination of President Kennedy threw the world into uncertainty yet again. Yet despite the tragic headlines there was a feeling that things were changing for the better - nowhere more so than on the pop scene with new trends on America’s West Coast - surf music – on the East Coast – Phil Spector’s ‘wall of sound’, and in the UK, the entertainment phenomenon of this, or any other, era: The Beatles.

1964 and 1965 – Changing Times

Elections in both the USA and UK – within three weeks of each other – kept politicians in the news. Britain elected the youngest Prime Minster for seventy years and his Party’s manifesto offered new opportunities for teenagers, reflecting the country’s burgeoning youth culture. The success of The Beatles spawned thousands of pop groups, though their only serious rivals were The Rolling Stones.

The new American President faced multiple challenges, in particular the demand for civil rights and the escalating conflict in Vietnam.

4th May 

With Frank Vigon

Decade of Decadence – the Swinging Sixties

After the second world war, young people seize the day and make the world their own. The sixties mark a social, political, and cultural change that was seismic in its impact. Things were never going to be quite the same again. How did this happen and how did it happen so quickly? Now was the time of the open and permissive society. It was a revolution of fashionable youth. The age of Sex Drugs and Rock and Roll. It was youth versus the establishment; the rebels pushed the edges of the envelope as far as they would go and challenged the status quo. Mary Whitehouse, Canute-like, tried to push back the tide and Kenneth Tynan pushed back Mary Whitehouse. The very pornographers she sought to abolish took her name and gave it to a soft porn magazine. It was the end of deference, but it was also the rise of poverty. In a period of seeming hedonism there was an underclass who got washed aside.

The Kennedy Assassination – one of your boys did it

A young hopeful president and his attractive star quality wife go to Dallas to get him re-elected. They are going into the lions’ den. He is almost universally hated even by member of his own party in Texas. The sun shines bright as another young man with a record of disturbed behaviour makes his way to the building where he works overlooking Dealy Plaza. In a bag he has a rifle purchased under a false name, concealed as “curtain rods”. As the Kennedy’s car moves towards an under pass “shots” ring out and in minutes the President of the United States is slumped backwards dead. But this is not the end. This is the beginning of one of the great mysteries and conspiracy theories of our time. Everyone knows where they were when John Kennedy was assassinated, but no one knows who really killed him. Botched autopsies, lies, inadequate enquiries and poor security point to a cover up, which like the bullets and the slow release of documentary evidence, continues to ricochet even to this day.

11th May 

With Steve Millward

1966 and 1967 – Love and Haight

All eyes turned to San Franscisco with its expanding community of young people advocating love and peace - the hippies. Their music was fuelled by their drug of choice, LSD, and was labelled psychedelic, one of many influences that flowed into a Beatles masterpiece. The struggle for civil rights had for a soundtrack the emotive, uncompromising music known as soul, while in Manchester Bob Dylan was called Judas for using electric instruments. Meanwhile there was war in the Middle East and China exploded its first hydrogen bomb.

1968 and 1969 - One Giant Leap

The assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, the My Lai Massacre, the Sorbonne riots, the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia – one catastrophe followed another. Civil rights, though enshrined in US law, were not being enacted, leading to increased militancy among African- Americans. But President Kennedy’s promise to get a man on the moon by the end of the decade was fulfilled – to worldwide jubilation. And a rock music festival in New York demonstrated that the hippie dream was still alive. What would the future bring?