Publication date:
29 December 2017Length of book:
204 pagesPublisher
Rowman & Littlefield PublishersISBN-13: 9780810895041
Before The Beatles landed on American shores in February 1964 only two British acts had topped the Billboard singles chart. In the first quarter of 1964, however, the Beatles alone accounted for sixty percent of all recorded music sold in the United States; in 1964 and 1965 British acts occupied the number one position for 52 of the 104 weeks; and from 1964 through to 1970, the Rolling Stones, Herman’s Hermits, the Dave Clark Five, the Animals, the Kinks, the Hollies, the Yardbirds and the Who placed more than one hundred and thirty songs on the American Top Forty.
In The British Invasion: The Crosscurrents of Musical Influence, Simon Philo illustrates how this remarkable event in cultural history disrupted and even reversed pop culture’s flow of influence, goods, and ideas—orchestrating a dramatic turn-around in the commercial fortunes of British pop in North America that turned the 1960s into “The Sixties.” Focusing on key works and performers, The British Invasion tracks the journey of this musical phenomenon from peripheral irrelevance through exotic novelty into the heart of mainstream rock. Throughout, Philo explores how and why British music from the period came to achieve such unprecedented heights of commercial, artistic, and cultural dominance.
The British Invasion: The Crosscurrents of Musical Influence will appeal to fans, students and scholars of popular music history—indeed anyone interested in understanding the fascinating relationship between popular music and culture.
In The British Invasion: The Crosscurrents of Musical Influence, Simon Philo illustrates how this remarkable event in cultural history disrupted and even reversed pop culture’s flow of influence, goods, and ideas—orchestrating a dramatic turn-around in the commercial fortunes of British pop in North America that turned the 1960s into “The Sixties.” Focusing on key works and performers, The British Invasion tracks the journey of this musical phenomenon from peripheral irrelevance through exotic novelty into the heart of mainstream rock. Throughout, Philo explores how and why British music from the period came to achieve such unprecedented heights of commercial, artistic, and cultural dominance.
The British Invasion: The Crosscurrents of Musical Influence will appeal to fans, students and scholars of popular music history—indeed anyone interested in understanding the fascinating relationship between popular music and culture.
Spearheaded by the Beatles, British musical performers dominated the American pop charts in the middle 1960s. Philo analyzes this phenomenon in a chronological account of popular music on both sides of the Atlantic starting with World War II through the 1980s. After an introductory survey of pop music in Britain during the 1950s, the Beatles dominate the narrative. Other successful early Invasion groups are briefly discussed, but the emphasis is on the musical and cultural impact the Beatles had on American music. American artists Brian Wilson (the Beach Boys) and the Byrds are covered, as is The Monkees TV series. The book discusses how important the Beatles film A Hard Day’s Night (1964) was in spreading British influence. In 1967, the British Invasion shifted into a psychedelic phase (Pink Floyd, Cream) and then to an American roots–inspired sound. The political and social turmoil of the late Sixties was reflected in influential albums such as the Rolling Stones’s Let It Bleed, the Who’s Tommy, and the Beatles’s Abbey Road. By 1970, new acts—Led Zeppelin, the Moody Blues, Jethro Tull, and Elton John—prevailed . . . [T]his is a popular social history . . . VERDICT Beatles fans and baby boomers who listened to the music of the 1960s will find this title appealing. Philo offers a fresh consideration of the British impact on American music during this period and beyond.