The Beatles Tour, Australia, 1964: popular culture in a globalising world

When we think of globalisation in postwar Australia, we often focus on Americanisation. Such a focus is unsurprising when we consider the growing, very visible embrace of American culture in Australia from the 1940s onwards, which took place against a backdrop of rising US influence in geopolitics and the global economy. In the late 1950s, when rock and roll music made its first big impact in Australia, it was widely regarded as a foreign symbol of disorder, rebellion and American modernity. Rock and roll quickly became synonymous with the teenager and teenage consumerism, and a transnational marketplace quickly grew up to supply these teenagers with products to define their new identity (including clothing, music and films). Tours by American rock and roll artists were part of this international circulation of youth culture.