Chasing Paper, Getting Nowhere: The Beatles, Creative Ownership, and the Culture of Late 1960s London

This thesis argues that The Beatles' career traces the defining arc of a transatlantic "autonomy revolution" in late-1960s popular music culture. Between 1963 and 1970, a discursive shift among sectors of postwar youth reframed creative work as an inalienable extension of the self rather than a transferable commodity. This revolution unfolded in three phases: Collective Rebellion (1963–1966), in which the band broke from Tin Pan Alley norms but were institutionally protected by existing paternalistic structures (most notably Brian Epstein’s management); Utopian Autonomy (1967–1969), embodied in Apple Corps as "countercultural capitalism" (defined as the attempt to translate hippie-era collective, egalitarian ideals into a private corporate structure without traditional safeguards or infrastructure), a tax shelter disguised as a hippie collective that collapsed under administrative chaos; and Defensive Individualism (1970 onward), in which the myth of The Beatles’ collective identity gave way to four separate corporate fortresses. Drawing on High Court action papers, original interviews, and the fiscal and legal realities of postwar Britain (and to some extent the United States), the thesis demonstrates that the pursuit of both complete creative freedom and global pop-cultural hegemony ultimately forced the band (much like later artist-entrepreneurs like Taylor Swift, who similarly sought to reconcile artistic autonomy with mass-market dominance) to master the very predatory corporate and legal systems they had once rebelled against. In doing so, it reframes The Beatles' breakup as structurally inevitable rather than personal tragedy, nuances the myth of "Swinging London," and reveals how the autonomy revolution accelerated the neoliberal institutionalization of the creative self in the music industry, whereby true sovereignty is now found not in the absence of a corporation, but in its total ownership.