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He phrased it odd, but I'm guessing what he means is that for most Americans British rock begins with the Beatles. They could not name anything before and paid no attention to it before. (Looking it up "Apache", originally by the Shadows, did become a hit in the US but the version that became a hit in the US was not their version and they had little success in North America) So for many Americans it's like "the Beatles started UK rock" even if on some level they/we were aware some rock group must have existed before them in the UK.
The only song that charted from the UK in the top 10 before the Beatles was "Does your chewing gum lose its flavour", a throw-back British Dance Hall ditty, so prob speaks for itself...
He essentially founded nothing of the sort, though he did figure out early and often how to exaggerate the Stones' layabout presentation into an image of danger (even if the Pretty Things---founded by a former Stone, Dick Taylor---ended up making the Rolling Stones look and sound like wimps, at least on their first two albums, which were maximum R and B long enough before anyone heard of the Who). The Rolling Stones were a going concern for at least a year and a half---first as Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys, then as an adjunct of sorts to British blues legend Alexis Korner (who'd hired Mick Jagger as an alternative lead singer for certain numbers and often invited Jagger, Keith Richards, and Brian Jones to sit in with Blues Incorporated, from whom the nascent Stones recruited Charlie Watts), while forming their own full time band and beginning to gig around London---before Oldham and his then partner Eric Easton got a look at them in London, though the lineup Oldham and Easton discovered took a while to solidify. As a matter of fact, it was reading a review of one of the Stones' performances at the Crawdaddy Club (possibly a semi-legendary piece by Norman Jopling of Melody Maker, who was an early and often advocate of the Stones), while they were managed under a handshake deal with Crawdaddy impresario (and future Yardbirds manager) Giorgio Gomelsky, that prodded Oldham to seek them out in the first place.
Oldham got what turned out to be his big break when Brian Epstein hired him as a part-time publicist. It was while working that job that he bumped into the Rolling Stones, and his connection to the Beatles paid off richly enough when, in 1963, he bumped into John Lennon and Paul McCartney while the Stones were in sessions for a followup to their first single and unable to decide on a choice for the second. The two Beatles suggested to Oldham that they had a couple of songs close enough to finish that were more up the Stones' street than the Beatles and joined the Stones in the studio to finish and give them "I Wanna Be Your Man." It became the Stones' first Top Ten British hit (Brian Jones played the slide guitar on the track); it turned up on the flip of their first U.S. single, "Not Fade Away," in 1964.
Oldham eventually formed one of England's best remembered and most influential independent labels, Immediate. (The roster included, among others, John Mayall---whose "I'm Your Witchdoctor" single, his first recording with a guitar comer named Eric Clapton, appeared on the label, before Mayall returned to the Decca stable---the original Small Faces, P.P. Arnold, the Nice, Rod Stewart (barely known at the time; this was before he was invited to join the original Jeff Beck Group), Savoy Brown (the original Savoy Brown Blues Band, who cut a couple of singles for the label before they were signed to a bigger deal with Decca), Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac (the only Fleetwood Mac that really mattered, in my opinion, though they pretty much came and went on Immediate's Hot Pink subsidiary before signing with Blue Horizon), Chris Farlowe, Nico (an early post-Velvet Underground single), Amen Corner, Michael d'Abo (before he joined Manfred Mann in time to sing "The Mighty Quinn"), the McCoys (Immediate landed the British rights to "Hang On, Sloopy" and "Fever"), and Humble Pie (whose first two albums were Immediate releases), before the label went bankrupt in 1970. The label even released an album by the Aranbee Pop Symphony Orchestra, Today's Pop Symphony, produced and directed by Keith Richards in possibly his first non-songwriting project outside the Rolling Stones.
A senior partner in the operation is said to have embezzled millions from the label at a time when the label struggled to promote some of its roster and, allegedly, withheld or otherwise squandered royalties due some artists, especially the Small Faces, whose members and/or heirs eventually won legal judgments for royalties from the incumbent holders of the recordings' rights in 2000.
I really enjoy your posts, Whistler...frankly, I'm just learning about Andrew for the most part, reading his bio, "Stoned", a really great read into 60's swinging London music and fashion....ALO was in many ways apparently a hanger-on, and a bullsh*t artist, but one of the highest order, bringing the same to an art form...pretty much bullsh*tted his way throughout London society, born illiigitimate and poor, raised by a single mum, and supported by a man who had a long-term affair with the mum....ALO did have a singular sense of fashion and trends, and ingratiated himself when and where he saw fit....
So much of the music industry relies/relied on individuals like Epstein/colonel parker/ALO and such.....these folks were all con/bullsh*t artists, but, regardless of how you wrap it, and what bows you put on the package, the music industry always had a seedy side to it....and those who were brazen, hence the bull artists, could make a huge difference, just by having those connections....
Question..could great groups have gotten the music out without the bull artists....no way..absolutely, affirmatively no....Musicians, for the most part, don't want to deal with all that...either too busy making music, too stoned/drunk, too sensitive, too simply not wanting to be bothered with all that....for every Gene Simmons who takes complete control from the getgo, there are 99 others who want/need someone to make those connections for them(and take their pound of flesh}. Per payola, record companies, radio, media, and such, and the fact that most rock was laid down before the internet, that was the way the game was played, and ALO and the other impresarios took advantage of that....simple as that...
Just one question, and believe me, i stand corrected per ALO, as I have not got to the part where he manages the stones in the book(don't know anything about him but the liner notes he wrote for some of the early stones albums)....per the Whistler, are you getting this from books like myself, or WIKI, like I occasionally do as well, or were you on the London scene back then? I would def love to hear some stories if you were around "Swinging London" back then....what an exciting place that city was in the 60's, per the brit invasion thing, the fashions, the movies, the tv shows...wow...
I think there were a couple Brits in the 1950s who managed to have hits, but in other genres. Acker Bilk's "Stranger on the Shore" is the main one coming to mind.
right, forgot about that....that and "does your chewing gum lose its flavour"....and on the american side, buddy holly, elvis, chuck berry, little richard, jerry lee lewis, fats domino, the everly bros, and gang....now do you see what i'm taking about?....Rock was 100% coming from the American side till about '64 or so, per the beatles...and even then, at the height of the brit invasion, the top 40 was never more than 30% brit...was never less than 70% US generated....
US music is fairly dominant. I thought before the 1960s maybe the British also mostly just listened to their own, but looking up British number-one singles for the 1950s Americans look pretty dominant. Here are some musicians that had songs be number one in the UK for multiple weeks.
Slim Whitman - US
David Whitfield - British
Al Martino - US
Frankie Laine - US
Eddie Calvert - British
Paul Anka - Canadian-born (I think he did alright in the US, but he lived here after about 16)
Doris Day - US
Perry Como - US
Tennessee Ernie Ford - US
Johnnie Ray - US
Tab Hunter - US
Elvis Presley - US
Harry Belafonte - US (I thought he was born in the Caribbean, but I guess not)
The Everly Brothers - US
Guy Mitchell - US
Ronnie Hinton - British
Connie Francis - US
Cliff Richard - British
Emile Ford - St. Lucia, but it was then a British territory.
The Stargazers - British
Winifred Atwell - Trinidad, but then part of Britain.
Pat Boone - US
Lonnie Donegan - British
I'm going to stop there as it's getting long. Still Americans outnumber British people a fair amount and probably like 2-to-1 if you discount Caribbean people who lived in British colonies that later became independent.
Still a few British singers I think had success in the US. Vera Lynn doesn't seem to have made it to the hits list in the US, but I think "White Cliffs of Dover" and "We'll Meet Again" were fairly known in the US.
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