The British Invasion was a phenomenon that occurred in the mid-1960s when rock and pop music acts from the United Kingdom, as well as other aspects of British culture, became popular in the United States, and significant to the rising “counterculture” on both sides of the Atlantic. Pop and rock groups such as the Beatles, the Dave Clark Five, the Kinks, the Rolling Stones, Herman’s Hermits, the Animals, and the Who were at the forefront of the invasion. (More from Wikipedia)
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Only last year did I discover that the Premiers were a Chicano band; there was a show on PBS that explained how this band and so many other Latin bands had been chased off the charts by the British Invasion.
(January 2011)
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Back in junior high, I was really enamored with Jan & Dean (not so much with the Beach Boys, but I liked them also), and the various other one-hit wonder surf rock bands of that time period. Jan & Dean were the hosts as I recall of one of the first big rock concert films, The T.A.M.I. Show (it stands for Teen Age Music International). I was starting to tire of the duo though, particularly when they resorted to covering British Invasion songs and started releasing tripe like Jan & Dean Meet Batman.
(July 2011)
You can talk about your pioneers of rock and roll – Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Elvis Presley, James Brown, just to name a few – and you can even bring up your British Invasion greats – the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Animals, the Yardbirds, the Kinks, just to name another few. All of them are already in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and deservedly so. However, you can play a lot of more modern rock records all day long and not really discern more than a hint of their direct influence; no question it’s in the DNA, but actual Elvis Presley-style vocals or Chuck Berry guitar licks or James Brown wails are elusive.
That is not so with Link Wray: His influence is front and center on a good 50% of the records that I play, because he is credited with introducing the “power chord” on electric guitar to rock and roll, a technique whose effect is often enhanced by distortion.
Writing for Allmusic, Cub Koda calls the power chord “the major modus operandi of modern rock guitarists”. I will spare you the technical details – not least because I don't really understand them myself – but Ray Davies of the Kinks (in their classic “You Really Got Me”) and Pete Townshend of the Who (in “My Generation”) helped popularize the power chord in the early years of the British Invasion. When Townshend is performing his famous windmill guitar technique, he is typically playing power chords.
The very earliest power chords are credited to 1950’s bluesmen. Music historian Robert Palmer (not the same man as the 1980’s singer named Robert Palmer by the way) cites Willie Johnson (on Howlin’ Wolf’s “How Many More Years” that was recorded in 1951) and Pat Hare (on James Cotton’s “Cotton Crop Blues” that was recorded in 1954). Anyway, the Brits liked what they heard and launched the British Invasion, and the rest is history.
Not even Communist countries seemed to have problems with instrumental songs: I have two CD’s of quite good rock instrumentals that were recorded and officially released in nations behind the Iron Curtain during the 1960’s; no doubt that there was plenty of censorship in Communist countries, but there was some rock and roll that was made available even there. When the British Invasion hit, even the Russkies had to let in some of the real stuff; this music was recorded before that.
(February 2013)
At the time of the British Invasion that began in late 1963, it wasn’t so hip to be American. However, with a few exceptions – such as Peter Noone, the lead vocalist of Herman’s Hermits – even singers that had heavy British accents in their speaking voices didn’t sound particularly British when they sang. Thus, many bands and recording artists in that period feigned Englishness in hopes of improving their changes of making the charts.
One of the most successful faux-English bands of that period was the Sir Douglas Quintet; although they had a proper British name, the band was actually from San Antonio, Texas, and two of the bandmembers were Hispanic. When their debut album came out in 1966 under the misleading name, The Best of the Sir Douglas Quintet, the band was photographed in silhouette so as to keep the ruse going.
(April 2013)
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The extravagant glasses that Elton John has worn throughout his decades-long career all started when young Reg Dwight began wearing glasses in his teens “not because he needed them, but in homage to Buddy Holly”, as Philip Norman wrote in his biography of the English legend. Lead singer Freddie Garrity of Freddie and the Dreamers is another British star who wore Buddy Holly glasses on stage; in the 1970’s, pub-music star Elvis Costello was doing the same. Allmusic describes Freddie and the Dreamers as “the clowns of the British Invasion” due to their outlandish hits like “Do the Freddie”, but there is a lot more to them than that (though I will have to get into that another time).
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More than a few British rock groups adopted band names in tribute to Buddy Holly. The Beatles in part took their insect-oriented name from that of his band the Crickets. One Manchester band of the British Invasion period simply called themselves the Hollies. Yet another British Invasion band, the Searchers took their name from the John Wayne movie of that name, The Searchers, where the Duke often said, “That’ll be the day”; the catch phrase had been adopted by Buddy Holly as the name of one of his first hits, “That’ll Be the Day”.
(June 2013/1)
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When the British Invasion came along and seemed to sweep away the surf music scene, Brian Wilson masterminded a response album in 1966 by the Beach Boys that matched the Brits in every way: Pet Sounds. The hit songs from the album – “Wouldn’t it be Nice”, “God Only Knows” and “Sloop John B” – don’t begin to convey how well Pet Sounds works as an album. The record was hugely influential and (in a nice twist) was an even bigger hit in England than it was in the USA.
(June 2013/2)
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Part of the reason has to do with the Liverpool music scene in the 1960’s: Other than you-know-who, most of the big British Invasion bands came from somewhere else. The Beatles’ early competitors on the American charts were the Dave Clark Five; their first big hit song “Glad All Over” hit the Top Ten in February 1964, though the Five wouldn’t make #1 until “Over and Over” came out in November 1965. The Dave Clark Five were from North London and were being promoted as the progenitors of the “Tottenham Sound”.
The Rolling Stones were from London, as were the Kinks, the Who and the Yardbirds. The Animals came from Newcastle, an industrial backwater like Liverpool, though on the opposite coast. The Hollies were formed in Manchester, though the bandmembers came from East Lancashire. The Moody Blues were from the Birmingham area; Birmingham, Alabama (one of the first major industrialized cities in the American South) is named for the British city.
Though only one of the big acts came from there, other 1960’s bands were based in Liverpool. Gerry and the Pacemakers is likely the best known; like the Fab Four, this band was managed by Brian Epstein, and their records were produced by George Martin. Their American hits include “Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying” and “Ferry Across the Mersey”, a reference to the Mersey River that runs by the city – in case you are wondering why there has always been so much “Mersey” talk surrounding the Beatles.
The Searchers is another Liverpool band that had numerous hits in the U.K., though they were less successful in the U.S.; their biggest hit songs here were remakes of “Love Potion No. 9” and “Needles and Pins”. The Swinging Blue Jeans barely missed the U.S. Top 20 with their cover of “Hippy Hippy Shake”, which was also recorded by the Beatles. Others include the Cryin’ Shames (not to be confused with the Cryan’ Shames, an American band from the same time period), the Merseybeats, the Hideaways, the Koobas (also known as the Kubas), and one of the first all-female rock bands, the Liverbirds.
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Much to my surprise, in the Rip Chords, I finally found a rock band that did not have a listing in Wikipedia with a genuine hit song; their single “Hey Little Cobra” was one of the biggest hit songs in surf music, making it to #4 in early 1964, even though the surf scene was already in significant decline following the recent arrival of the British Invasion.
(July 2013)
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After a few albums of (more or less) pure country, Linda Ronstadt perfected her sound when she connected with one of the top producers of the 1970’s, Peter Asher; he was also Ronstadt’s manager for several years. Peter Asher and Gordon Waller performed as Peter and Gordon, a British duo who enjoyed several years of success, particularly with their #1 hit in 1964, “A World Without Love”. The song was written by Paul McCartney but credited as Lennon/McCartney as was all of his music and that of John Lennon in the British Invasion period.
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The Goldie and the Gingerbreads 1964 recording of “Can’t You Hear My Heartbeat” made it to #25 in the UK. Here in this country, Herman’s Hermits released “Can’t You Hear My Heartbeat” two weeks earlier; the heavy promotion of that song cut them out of the U. S. charts. After meeting Eric Burdon and the Animals, Goldie and the Gingerbreads was signed for a European tour, where they performed with the Who’s Who of the British Invasion: the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Animals, the Yardbirds, the Hollies, the Kinks, and others.
(October 2013)
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The Mamas and the Papas are another band featuring both men and women that had enduring popularity throughout the British Invasion years.
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Patti Smith began performing rock music in 1974 – another year that popular music changed irrevocably, much like 1963 with the Beatles and the rest of the British Invasion – with music archivist and guitarist Lenny Kaye. While not actually inventing the term “punk rock”, he had popularized it in his liner notes for the first compilation album of garage rock and psychedelic rock music, Nuggets, so this was most appropriate.
(February 2014)
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Many of the songs in the English Freakbeat Series were by musicians that became famous in later bands or in other contexts. The real attraction for the English Freakbeat, Volume 3 CD reissue though are three songs by a band called the Ravens; their bandleader Dave Davies and his younger brother Ray Davies were later in the Kinks, with Ray being the frontman and main songwriter for that stellar British Invasion group. Ray Davies was supposedly not involved in the Ravens at all according to the band’s official history; however, the CD liner notes as well as the review by Allmusic notes that some of these songs bear Ray Davies’ stamp and might have been sung (if not written) by him.
(March 2014/2)
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David Crosby met Graham Nash of the British Invasion band the Hollies when the Byrds toured England in 1966; when the Hollies came to L.A. in 1968, they reunited their acquaintance. At a party given by Nash’s then-girlfriend Joni Mitchell in July 1968, Stephen Stills and David Crosby performed a new Stills song called “You Don’t Have to Cry” with harmony vocals added by Graham Nash. The three realized that they had a unique chemistry, and Crosby, Stills & Nash was born.
(April 2014)
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Returning to the topic of making new rock bands out of old ones, the English band Cream was a juggernaut that, first, burned out too fast; also, was the first and probably the greatest power trio in rock music; third, marked a new contingent of British hitmakers beyond the original British Invasion; and lastly, spawned numerous other bands and artists.
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The Yardbirds was one of my very favorite British Invasion bands. Casual rock music fans might know the band as successively including within its ranks three of the greatest rock guitarists of all time: Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck,, and Jimmy Page. That is, after Eric Clapton left the Yardbirds, he suggested Jimmy Page as his replacement; but Page was highly successful as a session guitarist in this period and instead recommended Jeff Beck, who played his first gig with the band just two days after Clapton left. Jimmy Page later joined the Yardbirds after Jeff Beck moved on.
As with many of the British Invasion bands, the Yardbirds initially played American R&B and blues songs rather than their own compositions. As reported in Wikipedia, during their days at the Crawdaddy Club: “They drew their repertoire from the Chicago blues of Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley, Sonny Boy Williamson II, and Elmore James, including ‘Smokestack Lightning’, ‘Good Morning Little School Girl’, ‘Boom Boom’, ‘I Wish You Would’, ‘Rollin’ and Tumblin’’, and ‘I’m a Man’.” In fact, Eric Clapton left the Yardbirds in March 1965 as a protest when the band finally got a hit single with a song that did not come from this milieu, “For Your Love” (written by Graham Gouldman, later a member of 10cc).
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As was often true throughout the British Invasion, the British and American releases of Fresh Cream were different. “I Feel Free” is not on the U.K. version even though it was the band’s first single in Britain, while “Spoonful” is omitted from the original American release – happily it is included on my copy, since it is one of my favorite Cream tracks. “Spoonful” is also a standout, extended live track on Wheels of Fire.
(May 2014)
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Manfred Mann was one of the original British Invasion bands, but they deserve more State-side success than they had, so allow me to quote Bruce Eder’s article in Allmusic to give an overview of the band’s history: “An R&B band that only played pop to get on the charts, Manfred Mann ranked among the most adept British Invasion acts in both styles.”
Manfred Mann always had a chameleon quality and, unlike the top-flight British Invasion bands like the Beatles, the Who and the Rolling Stones, had frequent changes in their line-up. As I noted last month, Jack Bruce, later of Cream was a member in the mid-1960’s.
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Another important British Invasion band, Fleetwood Mac had a major change or two in direction over their career. Like Manfred Mann, they started off as an important blues-rock English band; after several line-up changes – including the addition of two women, Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks – Fleetwood Mac evolved into a best-selling pop-rock band.
(June 2014)
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The Rolling Stones were the “bad boys” of the British Invasion. They played around with Satanic themes and imagery, most famously with their hit “Sympathy for the Devil”, and also their under-rated psychedelic album that had the unfortunate title of Their Satanic Majesties’ Request. (From Wikipedia: “The album’s title is a play on the ‘Her Britannic Majesty requests and requires ...’ text that appears inside a British passport.”)
But even the Stones came up with a religious themed song a while back, or at least Mick Jagger did: “God Gave Me Everything” was co-written by Mick and Christian rocker Lenny Kravitz (who also performed on the recording) and was included on his 2001 album, Very Best of Mick Jagger. I remember seeing the video many years ago back when you’d see those on MTV from time to time.
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Rod Argent was the keyboard player for the Zombies; they were an English rock band but somehow stood apart from most of the other British Invasion bands. After the Zombies broke up, he formed the band Argent in 1969. They are best known for their million-selling song “Hold Your Head Up”, which was included on their third album All Together Now (1972).
(November 2014)
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"Popsicles and Icicles" by the Murmaids reached #3 on both the Billboard and Cash Box record charts in January 1964. Additionally, the song was ranked #1 on the Record World charts for the week of January 18, 1964; since the next Number One song on the Record World charts was “I Want to Hold Your Hand” by the Beatles, “Popsicles and Icicles” is often cited as the last Number One song of the pre-British Invasion era.
(January 2015/1)
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The first album by the Crawdaddys, Crawdaddy Express – recorded in monaural; talk about looking back! – came out in 1979 as the initial LP on Voxx Records. Allmusic gives the album 4½ stars and states in the review by Matt Carlson: “The Crawdaddys started their recording career properly, releasing a record with nothing but ’60s R&B, British Invasion, and blues standards (in addition to two original compositions).”
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By September 1963, the Rolling Stones had outgrown the local club scene and had begun to tour; their replacement at the Crawdaddy Club was another of the major British Invasion bands, the Yardbirds, whose line-up at that time included Eric Clapton. Other major bands and artists who performed at this club include Led Zeppelin, Long John Baldry, Elton John, and Rod Stewart.
(January 2015/2)
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Like many of the British Invasion bands, the Rolling Stones primarily played and recorded R&B classics and were slow to begin writing their own songs. By contrast, the Beatles were recording mostly new material, and this seemed to be more popular at least with American audiences – the Fab Four scored one #1 single after another over here, beginning with “I Want to Hold Your Hand” in February 1964.
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Unlike several other recent posts of mine where Allmusic really had almost nothing to contribute on the band that I was writing about, there is a long article about the Primitives by Bruce Eder – maybe the longest that I have seen on Allmusic for any of the UARB’s and UARA’s over the years. The opening remarks make it clear how great Eder thinks the band was:
“The Primitives were never, ever exactly a household name, even in Oxford, where they had a serious following as a club band – and that’s a reminder that some things in life and history, and even music, are just so unfair as to be unsettling. The Primitives [were] signed to Pye Records in 1964 [and] never found even a small national audience in England. . . . Castle Communications issued their catalog on CD in 2003. That CD was a delight and a vexation; it proved in the listening that these guys deserved a lot better than cult or footnote status, but it also brought home the unfairness inherent in their status. Even in their second, slightly more pop-oriented incarnation, when they were allowed to cut loose and be who and what they really were – a loud band without a lot of subtlety but power to spare and the sincerity to put over their music – they rated a place near the top of Pye Records’ roster and in the upper reaches of the British Invasion pantheon. Listening to the CD, this reviewer found himself pained, to the point of shedding a tear, over the fact that this band only got to leave 24 songs behind from its prime years. . . .
“[T]heir sound was very similar to the Pretty Things, rooted heavily in American R&B, and [lead singer Jay] Roberts was a serious, powerful shouter who could sound seriously, achingly raspy, rough, and growly, while the others played with virtually none of the niceties or delicacy that usually marred British attempts at the music.”
(May 2015)
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