Who were the British invasion bands?
If the rise of rock and roll in the 1950s created youth culture as we know it, the British invasion of the following decade did something slightly more subtle but just as important. It was the first time that a movement like this evolved. Evolution was critical because, at the time, rock and roll was treated like a fad, a dying one at that, because as difficult to believe as it is today, it essentially was.
By the end of the 1850s, Elvis had joined the military, Buddy Holly was dead, and Little Richard had become a preacher. Seriously, go and have a look at the US charts from 1959; it was a barren wasteland with The Shirelles, Miles Davis, and Chuck Berry doing some serious heavy lifting. People were starting to look for “the new rock and roll”, and that might not have necessarily been music—until the limeys started taking up electric guitars themselves.
The birth of all these bands lay in the skiffle craze of the 1950s. John Lennon, Jimmy Page and David Gilmour formed their first bands playing skiffle music and decided to pursue music careers directly. Once the totemic blues and rock records of the previous decade hit the green and pleasant land, the skiffle scene evolved into a nascent rock scene, with Lennon’s band The Quarrymen becoming the spark that lit the whole British invasion by renaming themselves The Beatles.
Now, the truth is that British acts had reached the US charts prior. There had even been a British act to reach number one on the Billboard charts in the form of Somerset clarinet player Acker Bilk’s one-off hit ‘Stranger on the Shore’. What the Fabs brought, though, was no novelty hit. When ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ reached the top of the charts in January 1964, they established a new paradigm that would lead to several other British acts immediately following them.
So, who came next in the British invasion?
In fact, a couple of spots down the charts from Lennon and McCartney harmonising about holding your hand was living proof this wasn’t a one-off. At number 12 was the debut solo single by Dusty Springfield, ‘I Only Want To Be With You’. Then, barely over a year after this one-two punch, we got the legendary Billboard singles chart of May 8th, 1965, where all but one slot of the Billboard top ten was filled by artists from the British Commonwealth. Truly, this was an invasion, and it hadn’t even peaked yet.
Such was the influence of The Beatles that their impact could be split into two distinct camps: the pop groups and the rock groups. The former included acts like The Hollies, The Zombies, and Herman’s Hermits, who embraced McCartney and Co’s unparalleled gift for melody but stripped away the raw, screaming energy. Unsurprisingly, these were the groups that found immediate success in the wake of The Beatles’ debut, riding the wave of Beatlemania so effectively that the US even attempted to create their own lighter, softer version of Liverpool’s finest in the form of The Monkees.
The truly fascinating development, however, came from those who sought to take The Beatles’ work and turn up the volume. The Dave Clark Five were among the first, scoring a transatlantic smash with ‘Glad All Over’. But the first real challenge to John and Paul’s chart dominance came from The Kinks. After all, it’s only fair when you write one of the greatest rock riffs of all time. ‘You Really Got Me’ propelled the Davies brothers—if only briefly—into the same cultural stratosphere as Lennon and McCartney, becoming one of the year’s biggest hits.
Now, you might be wondering where two other certain acts might be found in all this. Two bands whose unmistakable British identity and boundary-pushing rock and roll make them nailed-on members of the British invasion, right? Well, The Rolling Stones and especially The Who were fairly late to the party. ‘Satisfaction’ became the sound of the summer in 1965 and almost immediately signified a change in direction for the whole British invasion gang.
The sharp-suited, smiling pop acts chasing squeaky-clean mainstream acceptance suddenly became hopelessly passé. The progression of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, alongside The Who storming the US charts in 1967 with the ferocious and atmospheric ‘I Can See For Miles’, achieved what the first generation of rockers couldn’t a decade earlier. They transformed rock and roll from a fleeting teenage craze into the enduring art form we recognise today.
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