British Invasion
The British Invasion was a cultural phenomenon of the mid-late 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, Bee Gees, Gerry and the Pacemakers, the Who, the Kinks, the Zombies, 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, Shirley Bassey and Marianne Faithfull were at the forefront of the "invasion."
Background
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, "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. Also on the Hot 100, "Manhattan Spiritual" by Reg Owen and His Orchestra" reached number ten in February 1959, Hayley Mills' "Let's Get Together" from The Parent Trap peaked number eight in October 1961, and in 1962, "Midnight in Moscow" by Kenny Ball reached number two in March, the Springfields' version of "Silver Threads and Golden Needles" peaked at number twenty in September, and Frank Ifield's "I Remember You" reached number five in October.
Some observers have noted that American teenagers were growing tired of singles-oriented pop acts like Fabian and the "Bobby"s: Bobby Darin, Bobby Vinton, Bobby Rydell, Bobby Vee etc. The Mods and Rockers, two youth "gangs" in mid-1960s Britain, also had an impact in British Invasion music. Bands with a Mod aesthetic became the most popular, but bands able to balance both were also successful.
Beatlemania
In October 1963, the first newspaper articles about the frenzy in England surrounding the Beatles appeared nationally in the US. The Beatles' 4 November 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 10 December, CBS Evening News anchor Walter Cronkite, looking for something positive to report, re-ran a Beatlemania story that originally aired on the 22 November 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 17 December, 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 26 December, 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 29 December, 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. Indeed a restrained 'Beatles go home' might be just the thing." In the next year alone, the Beatles would have thirty different listings on the Hot 100.
On 3 January 1964, The Jack Paar Program ran Beatles concert footage licensed from the BBC "as a joke", but it was watched by 30 million viewers. While this piece was largely forgotten, Beatles producer George Martin has said it "aroused the kids' curiosity". In the middle of January 1964, "I Want to Hold Your Hand" appeared suddenly, then vaulted to the top of nearly every top forty music survey in the US, launching the Fab Four's sustained, massive output. "I Want to Hold Your Hand" ascended to number one on the 25 January 1964 edition of Cash Box magazine and the 1 February 1964 edition of the Hot 100. On 7 February 1964, the CBS Evening News ran a story about the Beatles' US arrival that afternoon, of which Walter Cronkite said, "The British Invasion this time goes by the code name Beatlemania."
Two days later, on Sunday, 9 February, the group appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. Nielsen Ratings estimated that 45 percent of American television viewers that night saw their appearance. According to Michael Ross, "It is somewhat ironic that the biggest moment in the history of popular music was first experienced in the US as a television event." The Ed Sullivan Show had for some time been a "comfortable hearth-and-slippers experience." Not many of the 73 million viewers watching in February 1964 would fully understand what impact the band they were watching would have.
The Beatles soon incited contrasting reactions and, in the process, generated more novelty records than anyone — at least 200 during 1964–1965 and more inspired by the "Paul is dead" rumour in 1969. Among the many reactions favouring the hysteria were British girl group the Carefrees' "We Love You Beatles" and the Patty Cakes' "I Understand Them", subtitled "A Love Song to the Beatles". Disapproving of the pandemonium were US group the Four Preps' "A Letter to the Beatles" and US comedian Allan Sherman's "Pop Hates the Beatles".
The Beatles held number 1 for a then-record fourteen straight weeks, from 1 February through 2 May, but performed even better on Cash Box, holding number 1 for sixteen straight weeks, from 25 January, the week before, through 9 May, the week after. On 4 April, the Beatles held the top five positions on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart; no other act had simultaneously held even the top four. The Beatles also held the top five positions on Cash Boxs singles chart that same week, with the first two positions reversed from the Hot 100. The group's massive chart success, which included at least two of their singles holding the top spot on the Hot 100 during each of the seven consecutive years starting with 1964, continued until they broke up in 1970.
Beyond the Beatles
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 17 April, British acts accounted for 30 records in the Hot 100, and on 8 May, 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 instead of Gary Lewis & the Playboys' "Count Me In". On 1 May, the British Commonwealth also nearly swept the Cash Box singles chart's Top Ten, lacking only a hit at number six instead of "Count Me In". The British Commonwealth also held down the top six on the Hot 100 on 1 May and the top six on Cash Box singles chart's Top Ten on 24 April. That same year, half of the 26 Billboard Hot 100 chart toppers 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. British Invasion acts also dominated the music charts at home in the United Kingdom.The musical style of British Invasion artists, such as the Beatles, had been influenced by earlier American rock 'n' roll, a genre that had lost some popularity and appeal by the time of the Invasion. However, a subsequent handful of British performers, particularly the Rolling Stones and the Animals, would appeal to a more 'outsider' demographic, essentially reviving and popularising, for young people at least, a musical genre rooted in the blues, rhythm, and black culture, which had been largely ignored or rejected when performed by black American artists in the 1950s. Such bands were sometimes perceived by American parents and elders as rebellious and unwholesome, unlike parent-friendly pop groups such as the Beatles. The Rolling Stones would become the biggest band other than the Beatles to come out of the British Invasion, topping the Hot 100 eight times. Sometimes, there would be a clash between the two styles of the British Invasion, the polished pop acts and the grittier blues-based acts, due to the expectations set by the Beatles. Eric Burdon of the Animals said, "They dressed us up in the most strange costumes. They were even gonna bring a choreographer to show us how to move on stage. I mean, it was ridiculous. It was something that was so far away from our nature and, um, yeah we were just pushed around and told, 'When you arrive in America, don't mention the war! You can't talk about the war.' We felt like we were being gagged."
"Freakbeat" is a term sometimes given to certain British Invasion acts closely associated with the Mod scene during the Swinging London period, particularly harder-driving British blues bands of the era that often remained obscure to American listeners, and who are sometimes seen as counterparts to the garage rock bands in America. Certain acts, such as the Pretty Things and the Creation, had a certain degree of chart success in the UK and are often considered exemplars of the form. The emergence of a relatively homogeneous worldwide "rock" music style marking the end of the "invasion" occurred in 1967.