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More than just a cultural trend – counter-culture became a social movement so powerful it shaped institutions, businesses, politics and the attitudes and aspirations of whole generations – including everything from haircuts to voting choices. In fact, it became so prevalent that it’s sometimes hard to remember how things have changed under its influence.

Comedian Stewart Lee presents a five-part series exploring the evolution and key ideas that have driven counter-culture from its beginnings with the Beats, folk and jazz in the 1950s, to its heights in the 1960s and 70s including the hippies and the early tech-communalists, the new liberation movements and punk, to the 1980s and early 90s, where political power on both sides of the Atlantic pushed back against the values of the ‘permissive society’.

Talking to artists, musicians, writers, activists and historians, Stewart continues to the present day asking where we are now, in the digital age of social media silos and the so-called ‘culture wars’ – what’s happened to counter-culture? Was it co-opted, did it sell out? Or did its ideas of freedom and identity become so entrenched within mainstream culture it’s legacy has become unassailable? Or has it migrated politically to the Right? Throughout the series, the counter-culture is explored not only in terms of its history, extraordinary cultural output and key events – but also its deeper political and philosophical impact, it’s continued meaning for our own age.

Part 2: Revolution in the Head. Against the growing political tumult of the early-mid 1960s, this episode looks at the rise of counter-culture as first of all a revolution in the head - the changing ideas of freedom and liberation, the power of psychedelics and rock, but also the new techno-ecological pioneers of the US West coast – all culminating in 1967’s Summer of Love. In London, a network of underground presses, clubs and bookshops, happenings and events like the 14 Hour Technicolour Dream channel the underground against mainstream society. The years from 1966-7 especially are a golden age for the counter culture and where many of its key ideas become entrenched – seemingly progressive, but later weaponised by its opponents.

Series contributors include musician Brian Eno, artist Hazel Albarn and musician Damon Albarn, author Olivia Laing, founding member of Steel Pulse Mykaell Riley, songwriter and guitarist Johnny Marr, founder of Rolling Stone magazine Jann Wenner, author Iain Sinclair, former Pink Floyd and Incredible String Band producer Joe Boyd, jazz musician Archie Sheep, sculptor Emily young, journalist and author John Harris, author and critic Paul Morley, historian Simon Heffer, activist and founder of the Hard Art collective Claire Farrell, DJ Norman Cook, poet Sonia Sanchez and folk singer Shirley Collins.

Presenter: Stewart Lee

Producer: Simon Hollis

A Brook Lapping production for ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Radio 4