Information about British Invasion

The British Invasion was the term applied by media - and subsequently by consumers - to the influx of rock and roll, beat and pop performers from the United Kingdom who became popular in the United States, Australia & Canada. The classic British Invasion period was 1964 to 1967, but the term has also been applied to later "waves" of UK artists that had significant impact on the North American entertainment market.

History

The term "British Invasion" was coined in 1964 to describe the wave of British rock-and-roll and beat artists (primarily groups) whose popularity spread rapidly to the rest of the English-speaking world, especially the United States and Canada. Rock 'n' roll had evolved as an American musical form in the early 1950s and prior to 1963 very few British artists had had success in that musical genre in the USA. The Beatles' breakthrough in America (starting with the success of "I Want to Hold Your Hand" in early January 1964) triggered a large wave of British artists who succeeded in the USA in their wake.

Though generally not credited with starting the "Invasion", Dusty Springfield was one of the first British artists to have significant success in the U.S., with her hit single "I Only Want To Be With You", released in November 1963. She appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show in early 1964 singing the popular hit, and continued to have several U.S. hits through the rest of the decade. A number of songs by British artists reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

However, The Beatles' triumphant arrival in New York on February 7, 1964 (three weeks after they had ascended to the top of the Billboard and Cashbox US singles charts) is widely credited with truly throwing open America's doors to a wealth of British musical talent, and officially beginning what would come to be called—with historical condescension by the willingly reconquered colony—the second British Invasion. Like their transatlantic counterparts in the 1950s, British youth heard their future in the frantic beats and suggestive lyrics of American rock and roll, but initial attempts to replicate it failed, as enthusiasts lacked the indigenous basic ingredients of rock and roll, rhythm and blues and country music. The only sign of life was in the skiffle craze of the 1950s, spearheaded by Scottish-born Lonnie Donegan. Skiffle groups (like The Quarrymen, first forerunner of the Beatles) were acoustic guitar, tea-chest bass and banjo ensembles, similar to jug bands, but unlike jug bands, they mainly had drummers. They most often sang traditional American folk songs, frequently with more spirit than instrumental polish, although early British skiffle was played by highly skilled Trad jazz musicians.

By 1962, encouraged by the anyone-can-play populism of skiffle and self-schooled in the music of Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Eddie Cochran, Buddy Holly, James Brown, and Muddy Waters, some British teens developed a real feel for the rock-and-roll and American blues idioms. Blending that with such local traditions as music hall, pop, and Celtic folk, they formulated original music they could claim, play, and sing with conviction. Young groups with electric guitars began performing and writing up-tempo melodic pop, fiery rock and roll, and Chicago-style electric blues. The rebellious tone and image of American rock and roll and blues musicians also deeply resonated with British youth in the late 1950s, influencing all the British Invasion artists.

Liverpool became the first hotbed of the so-called "beat boom." As Britain's major Atlantic seaport, Liverpool merchant seamen often sailed to the U.S. and returned with the latest American rock-and-roll hits, often before they were made widely available in Britain. With The Beatles, other exuberant male quartets such as The Searchers, The Fourmost, and Gerry and the Pacemakers, plus the quintet Billy J. Kramer and The Dakotas launched Merseybeat, so named for the estuary of the River Mersey that runs alongside Liverpool. The Beatles first reached the British record charts in late 1962 (shortly after The Tornados' "Telstar", an instrumental smash that sent word of what was in store by becoming the first British record by a group to top the American singles chart); the rest joined the hit parade in 1963. Not all acts prominent in Britain by the early 1960s necessarily managed to develop a profile in the U.S. Cliff Richard, who remains popular in Britain and active today, has only rarely had chart successes in America.

Rock swept Britain. By 1964, Greater London could claim The Rolling Stones, The Yardbirds, The Who, The Kinks, The Pretty Things, Dusty Springfield, The Dave Clark Five, Peter and Gordon, Chad and Jeremy, John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, and Manfred Mann. Manchester had The Hollies, Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders, Freddie and the Dreamers, Davy Jones of The Monkees, and Herman's Hermits; Newcastle was home to The Animals; and Birmingham had The Spencer Davis Group (featuring Steve Winwood) and The Moody Blues. Bands sprang up from Belfast (Them, with frontman Van Morrison), to St Albans (The Zombies), to Essex (The Tremeloes), with more inventive artists arriving to keep the syles moving forward, including The Small Faces, The Move, The Creation, The Troggs, Donovan, and John's Children. While the beat boom provided Britons relief from the postimperial humiliation of hand-me-down rock, the Beatles and their ilk brought the United States more than credible simulations. They arrived as foreign ambassadors, with distinctive accents (in conversation only; American and British singers sounded generally similar), slang, fashions, and personalities. The Beatles' first film, A Hard Day's Night (1964), further painted England as the center of the (rock) universe. American media took the bait and made Carnaby Street, London's trendy fashion center in the mid-1960s, a household name.

From 1964 to 1966 the United Kingdom sent a stream of hits across the Atlantic. Behind the conquering Beatles, Peter and Gordon ("A World Without Love"), the Animals ("House of the Rising Sun"), Manfred Mann ("Do Wah Diddy Diddy"), Petula Clark ("Downtown"), Freddie and the Dreamers ("I'm Telling You Now"), Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders ("Game of Love"), Herman's Hermits ("Mrs. Brown You've Got a Lovely Daughter"), the Rolling Stones ("I Can't Get No Satisfaction" and others), the Troggs ("Wild Thing"), and Donovan's ("Sunshine Superman") all topped Billboard's singles chart.

More than a decade following the first invasion, the largely English based punk movement of the late 1970s, resulted in a fresh influx of raw, iconoclastic British bands and artists, such as Sex Pistols, The Clash, and Elvis Costello and the Attractions. While punk had a lasting influence on the US popular music scene, it never broke through in the US at the time to the same extent as in the UK. However the various cultural sources that punk and new wave took their inspirations from, especially cinema and television, would stand them and subsequent acts in good stead in the next decade.

For a time in 1980 and 1981 it seemed that apart from a few exceptions such as The Police, Queen, and The Psychedelic Furs, British acts and musical movements such as New Wave, New Romantics and Synthpop were being bypassed in favour of homegrown soft rock and heavy metal.

This changed in 1981 with the formation and influence of MTV. Needing videos to broadcast, the channel used a disproportionately large number by British acts, whose videos were generally more image conscious and entertaining than their American counterparts at the time. This brought various distinctly British acts to the attention of American audiences such as Def Leppard, Duran Duran, A Flock of Seagulls, The Fixx, Naked Eyes, Thompson Twins, Eurythmics, Culture Club, Spandau Ballet and later Depeche Mode, Tears for Fears, OMD, Pet Shop Boys, The Cure, New Order and others. Once again, British acts came to dominate American charts, this time to an even greater degree than in the first British Invasion. The high point of this second invasion was in July 1983 when over 50% of the Billboard Hot 100 was accounted for by overseas artists.

Subsequent Years

This second invasion of the 1980s remains (to date) the most recent major upsurge of British talent on the American charts. The continued splintering of the music market into different genres makes a follow up, mass-appeal movement such as the British Invasion currently unlikely.

Following the highwater years of 1983 to 1985, success by British acts gradually dwindled to such a degree that at one point in May 2002 there were no British artists on the US singles chart, the first time this had occurred since 1963.

The reasons for this are many and varied. One can argue that the success of the acts in the second British invasion was partly down to the needs of MTV who needed a pool of videos to fill their programming, at that time the most distinctive and most available were by British acts.

Since then tastes in the US and UK had diverged, the schism occurring most markedly in the late '80s and early '90s. In the UK Dance music became hugely popular, a movement which was by and large ignored in the US, partly as a hangover from the Disco sucks campaign of the early '80s but also due to other social and cultural factors. There was a brief mini-invasion in 1991 with the success of Soul II Soul, Jesus Jones and EMF, but this was a blip in a downward trend only mitigated by the unexpected success of Morrissey's Your Arsenal (1992) which yielded him a moderated cult success in the States.

In addition the rise of glam metal in the late '80s, grunge and most notably hip-hop in the '90s meant that British acts would struggle in the U.S. The Britpop movement of the mid-1990s, which could be seen as a stylistic continuation of the original British Invasion of the 1960s, mixed with music of the 70s and 80s, failed to catch America's imagination, coming across as too parochial and backward-looking though some acts, notably Oasis, Elastica, Radiohead, and Blur, achieved niche success in the American market.

By the late '90s British acts were struggling to break through in America with the most successful acts being long established artists such as Sting, Elton John and Eric Clapton. The most notable breakthroughs at that time were the Spice Girls, Seal and Charlotte Church.

Since the start of the millennium, new artists from Britain have started to establish themselves in America, while not yet a third invasion, it is the most successful period for British acts since the early 1990s. The most successful of these are probably Coldplay, who broke through in 2000 with their debut album Parachutes. Subsequently other acts have followed in their footsteps.

In early 2006, James Blunt reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 with his single "You're Beautiful", the first British artist to do so since Elton John with Candle In The Wind in 1997.

In 2006, acts such as KT Tunstall, Muse and Keane have achieved success in the US. Newcomer Corinne Bailey Rae achieved acclaim for her self titled album which debuted at #17 in the U.S. Snow Patrol also broke through, reaching the US Top 10 with the single "Chasing Cars", and more recently Amy Winehouse reached the US top 10 with her single Rehab.

Natasha Bedingfield enjoyed success in the United States in 2005 & 2006 with singles like "These Words", which reached #17 in the U.S. charts and "Unwritten" which peaked inside the U.S. top 10 at #5 and became the second most played song on U.S. radio in 2006, her Album also reached #26.

Early British Invasion artists

British artists which reached number-one on the Hot 100, 1964-1966

• The Animals
• The Beatles
• Peter and Gordon
• Cilla Black
• The Dave Clark Five
• Petula Clark
• Donovan
• Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders
• Freddie and the Dreamers
• Herman's Hermits
• Manfred Mann
• The New Vaudeville Band
• The Rolling Stones
• The Troggs

British artists which "only" reached the Top 10 of the Hot 100, 1964-1966

• Shirley Bassey
• Chad and Jeremy
• Marianne Faithfull
• Gerry and the Pacemakers
• The Hollies
• The Honeycombs
• The Kinks
• The Mindbenders
• The Searchers
• The Spencer Davis Group
• The Who
• The Yardbirds
• The Zombies

Other British artists who were successful in the USA

• The Bee Gees
• Dave Berry
• The Birds
• Black Sabbath
• Cream
• The Creation
• David Bowie
• Deep Purple
• Led Zeppelin
• The Downliners Sect
• Fleetwood Mac
• Genesis
• Georgie Fame
• Graham Bond
• Humble Pie
• The Jeff Beck Group
• Jethro Tull
• Davy Jones (actor) of The Monkees
• Elton John
• King Crimson
• Billy J. Kramer with The Dakotas
• Long John Baldry
• Lulu
• The Mockingbirds
• The Moody Blues
• The Move
• The Nashville Teens
• Peter and Gordon
• Pink Floyd
• The Pretty Things
• Procol Harum
• Cliff Richard
• Crispian St. Peters
• Sandie Shaw
• The Seekers
• The Shadows
• Cat Stevens
• Slade
• The Small Faces
• Dusty Springfield
• Status Quo
• The Swinging Blue Jeans
• T.Rex
• Them
• The Tornados
• Traffic
• Tom Jones
• The Tremeloes
• Unit 4 + 2
• Uriah Heep
• The Walker Brothers
• Yes

Later British Invasion artists

• A Flock of Seagulls
• ABC
• Adam Ant
• Amy Winehouse
• Arctic Monkeys
• Asia
• Badfinger
• Bananarama
• Big Country
• Billy Idol
• Blur
• Buggles
• The Clash
• Coldplay
• Culture Club
• The Cure
• The Darkness
• Dead or Alive
• Def Leppard
• Depeche Mode
• Duran Duran
• Echo & the Bunnymen
• Elvis Costello
• Emerson, Lake & Palmer
• Eurythmics
• Fine Young Cannibals
• The Fixx
• Funeral for a Friend
• Gary Numan/Tubeway Army
• Gorillaz
• Go West
• Heaven 17
• Howard Jones
• Human League
• Imogen Heap
• Iron Maiden
• James Blunt
• Jamiroquai
• Joe Jackson
• Joss Stone
• Judas Priest
• Lily Allen
• McFly
• Muse
• Natasha Bedingfield
• Oasis
• Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
• Paul McCartney (Solo)
• Pet Shop Boys
• Placebo
• The Police
• The Pretenders
• The Proclaimers
• Queen
• Tigertailz
• Radiohead
• Sade
• Seal
• The Sex Pistols
• Simple Minds
• Spandau Ballet
• Spice Girls
• Squeeze
• Tears for Fears
• Thompson Twins
• Ultravox
• Wang Chung
• Wham!
• Whitesnake
• Yaz

Other British invasion personalities

In 1964 films featuring James Bond portrayed by Sean Connery became popular in America as did Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins. British television shows such as The Avengers (TV series) that delibertely emphasised being British were also popular. Carnaby Street fashions became fashionable in the USA.

References