British Invasion Was Early Rock N Roll Craze
The rebellious tone and image of American rock and roll and blues musicians became popular with British youth in the late 1950s. Early attempts to replicate American Rock and Roll failed. The skiffle craze with its “Do-it-yourself” attitude was imitated by several British acts that would later be part of the “invasion”. Young British groups started to combine various British and American styles. This coalesced in Liverpool during 1962 in what became known as the “beat boom” for its Merseybeat sound.
On December 10, 1963 the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite ran a story about the Beatlemania phenomenon in the United Kingdom. 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 December 17 James had Albert introduce I Want to Hold Your Hand live on the air, the first airing of a Beatles song in the United States. 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. On December 26 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 America. On January 18, 1964 I Want To Hold Your Hand reached number one on the Cash Box chart, the following week it did the same on Billboard. On February 7 The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite ran a story about The Beatles’ United States arrival that afternoon in which the correspondent said “The British Invasion this time goes by the code name Beatlemania”. Two days later (Sunday, February 9) they appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show. Seventy five percent of Americans watching television that night viewed their appearance. On April 4 the Beatles held the top 5 positions one the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, the only time to date that any act has accomplished this. The groups massive chart success continued until they broke up in 1970.
During the next two years, Chad & Jeremy, Peter and Gordon, The Animals, Manfred Mann, Petula Clark, Freddie and the Dreamers, Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders, Herman’s Hermits, The Rolling Stones, The Troggs, and Donovan would have one or more number one singles. Other acts that were part of the invasion included The Kinks and The Dave Clark Five. British Invasion acts also dominated the music charts at home in the United Kingdom.
The British Invasion artists played either blues based rock music, or a guitar driven hybrid of rock and pop music. A second wave of the invasion occurred, featuring acts such as The Who and The Zombies, that were influenced by the invasion’s pop side and American Rock music.
