British Invasion

The tradition & historical record

The British Invasion was a cultural phenomenon of the mid-1960s, when rock and pop music acts from the United Kingdom and other aspects of British culture became popular in the United States with significant influence on the rising "counterculture" on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. British pop and rock groups such as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Gerry and the Pacemakers, The Who, The Kinks, the Zombies, the Small Faces, the Dave Clark Five, the Spencer Davis Group, the Yardbirds, Them, Manfred Mann, The Searchers, Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas, Freddie and the Dreamers, The Hollies, Herman's Hermits, Chad and Jeremy, Peter and Gordon, The Animals, The Moody Blues, The Mindbenders, The Troggs, John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, Cream, Traffic, The Pretty Things, and Procol Harum, as well as solo singers such as Dusty Springfield, Cilla Black, Petula Clark, Tom Jones, Donovan, Lulu, Shirley Bassey and Marianne Faithfull were at the forefront of the "invasion." ¹

The rebellious tone and image of American rock and roll and blues musicians became popular with British youth in the late 1950s. While early commercial attempts to replicate American rock and roll mostly failed, the trad jazz–inspired skiffle craze, with its do-it-yourself attitude, produced two top-ten hits in the US by Lonnie Donegan. Young British groups started to combine various British and American styles in different parts of the United Kingdom, such as the movement in Liverpool known as Merseybeat or the "beat boom". While American acts were popular in the United Kingdom, few British acts had achieved any success in the United States prior to 1964. Cliff Richard, who was the best-selling British act in the United Kingdom at the time, had only one Top 40 hit in the US, with "Living Doll" in 1959. Along with Donegan, exceptions to this trend were the US number-one hits "Auf Wiederseh'n, Sweetheart" by Vera Lynn in 1952 (Lynn also had a lower-charting, but more enduring, hit in "We'll Meet Again"), "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands" by Laurie London in 1958, and the instrumentals "Stranger on the Shore" by Acker Bilk and "Telstar" by the Tornados, both in 1962. ¹

In October 1963, the first newspaper articles about the frenzy in England surrounding the Beatles appeared nationally in the US. The Beatles' November 4 Royal Variety Performance in front of the Queen Mother sparked music industry and media interest in the group. During November, a number of major American print outlets and two network television evening programs published and broadcast stories on the phenomenon that became known as "Beatlemania". On December 10, CBS Evening News anchor Walter Cronkite, looking for something positive to report, re-ran a Beatlemania story that originally aired on the November 22 edition of the CBS Morning News with Mike Wallace but was shelved that night because of the assassination of US President John Kennedy. After seeing the report, 15-year-old Marsha Albert of Silver Spring, Maryland, wrote a letter the following day to disc jockey Carroll James at radio station WWDC asking, "Why can't we have music like that here in America?" On December 17, James had Miss Albert introduce "I Want to Hold Your Hand" live on the air. WWDC's phones lit up, and Washington, D.C., area record stores were flooded with requests for a record they did not have in stock. James sent the record to other disc jockeys around the country, sparking similar reaction. On December 26, Capitol Records released the record three weeks ahead of schedule. The release of the record during a time when teenagers were on vacation helped spread Beatlemania in the US. On December 29, The Baltimore Sun, reflecting the dismissive view of most adults, editorialised, "America had better take thought as to how it will deal with the invasion. ¹

One week after the Beatles entered the Hot 100 for the first time, Dusty Springfield, having launched a solo career after her participation in the Springfields, became the next British act to reach the Hot 100, peaking at number twelve with "I Only Want to Be with You". During the next three years, many more British acts with a chart-topping US single would appear. As 1965 approached, another wave of British Invasion artists emerged. These were usually composed of groups playing in a more pop style, such as the Hollies or the Zombies, as well as artists with a harder-driving, blues-based approach like the Dave Clark Five, the Kinks, and the Rolling Stones. By April 17, British acts accounted for 30 records in the Hot 100, and on May 8, they accounted for eight of the nine British Commonwealth's entries that made a nearly clean sweep of that weekly Hot 100's Top Ten, lacking only a hit at number two, occupied by Gary Lewis & the Playboys' "Count Me In". On May 1, the British Commonwealth also nearly swept the Cash Box singles chart's Top Ten, lacking only a hit at number six, also taken by "Count Me In". The British Commonwealth also held down the top six on the Hot 100 on May 1 and the top six on Cash Box singles chart's Top Ten on April 24. That same year, half of the 26 Billboard Hot 100 chart toppers (counting the Beatles' "I Feel Fine", carrying over from 1964) and the number one position on 28 of the 52 chart weeks belonged to British acts. The British trend would continue into 1966 and beyond. ¹

Outside of music, other aspects of British arts and engineering, such as BSA motorcycles, became popular in the US during this period and led American media to proclaim the United Kingdom as the center of music and fashion. ¹

The Beatles' A Hard Day's Night marked the group's entrance into film. The film Mary Poppins – starring English actress Julie Andrews as the titular character, and released on August 27, 1964 – became the most Oscar-winning and Oscar-nominated Disney film in history. My Fair Lady, released on December 25, 1964, starring British actress Audrey Hepburn as Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle, won eight Academy Awards. and Oliver! released in 1968, won Best Picture, becoming the final musical film to do so until Chicago in 2002. Besides the Bond series that commenced with Sean Connery as James Bond in 1962, films with a British sensibility such as the "Angry Young Men" genre, What's New Pussycat? and Alfie styled London Theatre. A new wave of British actors such as Peter O'Toole, Michael Caine, and Peter Sellers intrigued US audiences. Four of the decade's Academy Award winners for best picture were British productions, with the epic Lawrence of Arabia, starring O'Toole as British army officer T. E. Lawrence, winning seven Oscars in 1963. British television series such as Danger Man (renamed Secret Agent in its American airings), The Saint and The Avengers began appearing on American screens, inspiring a series of American-produced espionage programs such as I Spy, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and the parody series Get Smart. ¹

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “British Invasion”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ¹

British Invasion is cultural phenomenon of the mid-1960s, when rock and pop music acts from the United Kingdom and other aspects of British culture became popular in the United States, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ²

The source record links this tradition to 8 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. ²