The band David Crosby called a “horror show”
The British invasion was a huge part of music history. Initially pioneered by The Beatles, it marked a period in music where everyone in the UK and the US wanted to play in a band and try to replicate what the Fab Four were doing. Like all trends in music, it didn’t last forever, and while a few different aspects contributed towards the halting of the British boom, a rise in the popularity of folk music was a big part of it.
Guitarist Steve Van Zandt once spoke in more detail about this, saying how he remembers how long the British invasion lasted and what eventually brought it to an end. “It was nothing but British invasion for a year and a half,” he said, “The floodgates opened until the summer of ’65, when the Americans took the charts back with the folk rock of The Byrds and Bob Dylan.”
Folk singers became incredibly popular throughout America. Not only did they have harmony and melody embedded into their sound, which was a lot of The Beatles’ appeal, but they used their music as a mirror, holding it up to the world around them and being entirely honest with that which was reflected. It touched a lot of people and was a new turning point for music.
Bruce Springsteen once praised Bob Dylan for pioneering this attitude to music and called him the “Father of my country” as a result. Springsteen acts as a representation of a lot of artists from that time who also wanted to write something truthful with their music. “The idea that something was revealed to them that was fundamentally true and essential,” he said when discussing how he wanted people to react to his music, “And gave you a view of your world, your country, your town, your neighbours, your family.”
Another artist who was inspired by Dylan and the new folk movement that was sweeping America was David Crosby. You can hear it in his music, the desire to be honest and truthful in every word he commits to a melody. It’s almost impossible to imagine him doing anything else, and yet that’s precisely what he ended up doing when he played in Les Baxter’s Balladers, an experience which he has since described as a “horror show”.
“I was there and so was my brother. He was playing bass, and myself and Bob Ingram, and another guy named Mike Clough, and it was really pretty pathetic,” he said, “It was imitation Christy Minstrels, if you can imagine such a thing. That’s really pretty far down the line.”
The problem with the band wasn’t the music—with a line-up like that, they’re never going to sound bad. The issue came with the band’s inauthenticity and the fact that they were made to act and write in a way that wasn’t a true reflection of themselves. This was miles away from how Crosby wanted to be considered as an artist, and he hated the entire experience.
“Well, we needed money. We were trying to live. We needed to have some money for food. And they dressed us up in little pegged pants – black pants – and little red bellboy jackets. It was pathetic,” he said, “I hated being dressed up like a monkey. They were trying to make us be a lounge act. And that was a horror show for us, because we were folkies and we wanted to be like Bob Dylan […] That’s where we came from. And that had nothing to do with bellboy jackets.”
Never Miss A Tale
The Far Out Bob Dylan Newsletter
All the latest stories about Bob Dylan from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.