The most successful musicians of the time—the Beatles and their imitators—took the rhythms of American blues guitarists (most of them black) and paired them with material drawn directly from the language and experience of the British working class.4 This highly original combination then became the indigenous, trans-national culture of European youth. The content of popular music mattered quite a lot, but its form counted for more. In the 1960s people paid particular attention to style. This, it might be thought, was hardly new. But it was perhaps a peculiarity of the age that style could
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