The American band that Britain hated in the 1960s: “Pissed off a lot of people”
The British invasion, while not a particularly long-lasting movement, was one of the few periods in music history where acts like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Who all proved that British bands were the dominant force in pop and rock music, usurping the usually dominant American market.
Historically, the US, largely by virtue of its size and status within the Western world, has been seen as the main exporter of talent, with the UK not necessarily languishing behind, but always trying to play catch-up. Ever since the genesis of popular music in the 1950s, this has largely been the order of things, with a handful of other countries quietly bubbling under these two cultural powerhouses and occasionally threatening to overtake them.
This period in the 1960s saw a crop of British talent manage to crack the American market, and the US’s complacency had to be checked as their own talents were being superseded by imports from the other side of the Atlantic. While British talent has often succeeded on home soil, managing to make an impression in the States has always been a far more exciting prospect, with a large amount of this owing to how lucrative amassing an audience in a much larger country could potentially be.
However, as thrilling as this would have been for both the UK, who were on top for a rare moment, and the US, who were able to see what was happening culturally in another country, it proved to create some tension between the two nations, and a competitive streak that has never really calmed down
The US were suddenly trying to produce their own exports in an attempt to reassert their domination over the UK market, essentially taking features that had worked favourably for their counterparts and trying to do one better than they had.
Although their success was more fleeting than some of the aforementioned titans, The Hollies were another example of a successful British invasion group, but guitarist Graham Nash noticed how tense the relationship was at this time, when the US were feeling artistically and culturally inferior. During this time, he took note of what American artists were doing to get themselves under the noses of British audiences, whether or not these tactics were approved of by the market they were trying to appeal to.
During an interview with Goldmine Magazine, Nash noted how when he and his bandmates made the move from Manchester to London in the 1960s, they were hit by a completely different culture to what they were used to. While this was exciting for a period, Nash himself quickly became far more enamoured by the permutations of the industry in America, befriending a number of American acts, one of whom he would go on to form a formidable partnership with.
“By the time I got to the end of my time with The Hollies, when they refused to record some of my songs, and I’d kind of lost my grip on the reins of that horse, I’d met Cass Elliot, and she’d introduced me to [David] Crosby,” he noted, referencing how he came to be acquainted with his future bandmate, but he said that during this period, Crosby was dealing with some frustrations of his own.
“He’d been in England with The Byrds,” he continued. “The promoter there was touting them as ‘America’s Answer to The Beatles’, which pissed off a lot of people in England, so it was kind of a funky tour.”
The Byrds were obviously good enough to have cracked the UK without pulling such a stunt, but ultimately, this poor choice of slogan by their tour promoter significantly damaged their reputation in the country, and with Crosby and Nash both feeling disenchanted with their respective projects, Nash chose to move over to America where he, his new friend, and Buffalo Springfield’s Stephen Stills would go on to make something completely removed from the ongoing battle between UK and US pop markets.
