Examining prominent figures and cult venues of the Kádár Era pop music scene, the study explores the various attitudes of the III/III department of state security in the Ministry of Interior towards their own work and the subjects of their surveillance. In addition, it also discusses the intentions of the operative corps overseeing the agents, in this case the Budapest Police Headquarters. One of the main sources is the responses of the subjects of surveillance when they discovered that they had been monitored by state security operatives in the past. Csatári also analyses the reports filed by agents whose motivations were different. His analysis reveals the various considerations behind the cooperation between musicians and the state security operatives and assess the influence of the state security on their decisions. Finally, the study compares archival documents with the oral history interviews conducted by pop and rock musicians involved. This comparison provides an insight into the ways in which the individual musician subjectivity processed the recent past that has now become known through ministry documentation, and into the overpoliticised media hype of the recent past that created an oddly distorted image about the operation of state security.