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I’m sorry, I think it really confirms the obnoxious British chauvinism that exists when you try to appropriate Jimi Hendrix to Britain, because he spent two years of his career in Britain.
Hendrix is American, he wrote all of his own songs, and that’s that. He’s American.
It’s a little silly to highlight the fact that Hendrix went to Britain at some point in his career, as if to try to frame the UK as the largest and most influential music market, while simultaneously not bothering to point out that not only did almost all the bands on your list play American styles of music, mimic American accents, sing about American themes and places, and cover or borrow from American songs, but they traveled to America to record, got American band members, writers, and producers, and many based their careers in America.
^These are the facts.
My bff brought me a chalk stone rubbing from Jimi Hendrix grave in Washington state, USA. & my mom took pictures @ Woodstock, lol.
They wouldn’t be, though. That’s an arbitrary claim - some big British rock bands are British, many are American. A couple outliers like The Beatles might be the most famous rock bands, but mostly, it seems it was American rock bands who had a majority share of the Billboard charts. Also, a lot of bands that weren’t popular then are now, and vice versa.
American musicians and bands were generally more plentiful for a lot longer and impacted music a lot more. I don’t understand why The Beatles and The Stones are held above the earlier, still legendary American influences in rock music like Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis, Nina Simone, Sam The Sham and the Pharaohs, Howlin’ Wolf, The Champs, etc…
Well, I suppose it comes down to tastes, but I don't understand why I'm the arbitrary one, and you're not.
When you talk about the BIG rock bands, they're the British bands.
It doesn't mean the Americans you mentioned suck...but except for Elvis, they are BY FAR lesser knowns, to people like the Beatles, The Who, The Kinks, Eric Clapton, Cream, The Birds, The Stones, etc.
This often begins with people musing about the success of a number of British bands in the 60s and 70s, and then claiming things that just aren't true, ie: "the lack of activity in the American music scene" during that time period - in a seeming desire to put down or outdo American culture. But...there wasn't a lack of activity in rock and popular music in the US post 1960?
I've heard people claim that rock music was not found in the US in the early 1960s, and it was the Beatles and the British invasion that came along to revive it. "Why was there no similar flourishing of activity in the American scene at the time"...Really? Genres today known as Experimental rock, Instrumental rock, Jazz fusion, Surf rock, Rhythm and Blues, Pop rock, and Garage rock all existed pre-Beatles in America, with artists ranging from The Kingsmen to The Surfaris to The Ventures to the Scholars, Roy Head and the Traits, and The Beach Boys...
The British Invasion of the '60s definitely saved rock and roll. Yes, there were still lots of American rock bands getting played on the radio in the early sixties, but after an initial creative explosion with the likes of Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Elvis, etc., American rock music was becoming rather stale and "safe."
There were still lots of radio stations in the US that wouldn't play Elvis because he "sounded black." Parents would not allow their kids to listen to Chuck Berry or Little Richard because they were black. Radio stations would play sanitized covers by Pat Boone, who nice guy he may be, is probably still a Top 10 contender for Whitest Man on Earth. Pat Boone was safe.
And THAT is largely why American rock and roll was becoming so stale by the early sixties.
And none of that was true in England. Suburban kids could buy Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Elvis, Little Richard, Lightnin' Hopkins, and Muddy Waters records, and they did. There is the famous tale of the reporter who came up to John Lennon as the Beatles were getting off the plane and asked, "What do you want to do in America?" Lennon replied, "I'd like to see Muddy Waters." The reporter replied, "Where is that?"
So yes, there were still American rock bands in the early sixties, but I can't think of one of them who had the creativity or the edge or sheer rock and rollness of bands like the Who, the Kinks, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, the Zombies, the Animals, etc. And I think the primary reason was that those British kids grew up eating the fruit of rock and roll right off the tree, whereas most of the American bands of that era only got the sanitized, safe version.
By the mid 60's American bands were definitely starting to catch up quite admirably. But that was due largely to the British Invasion smashing down those barriers.
And yes, I know there were exceptions. The Kingsmen and definitely the Sonics come to mind. But those exceptions were few and far between.
And now that I have mentioned it, I have to show. For sheer fantastic early '60s rock and roll, it doesn't get much better than this.
I wouldn't dare to dream that being "pro-British" is automatically "anti-American".
But if you look at British artists, their influences are overwhelmingly U.S. artists who weren't getting played on popular radio stations. Their influences were American blues, American R&B, American country, British folk (which influenced American country anyway ... ). The Beatles playing in Hamburg weren't covering Pat Boone's middle-of-the-road covers of Little Richard's songs, they were covering Little Richard's original songs. The British Invasion bands took American music, twisted and reshaped it, and gave it back to us.
Nor is it dishonest or "anti-American" to observe the obviously stagnant state of American rock music in the early 60s, before the British invasion. Americans were putting out beach music, girl groups and the Wall of Sound, goofy novelty songs, and middle of the road stuff like Neil Sedaka, Bobby Vinton, and the aforementioned Pat Boone. Not that these artists weren't talented, but they certainly were not exciting (save for some of the beach music). R&B was still pretty much underground in the early 60s, despite earlier successes of Chuck Berry, Little Richard, etc., marketed toward black audiences and played on radio stations catering to black audiences. The Beatles, the Stones, the Who etc. changed all that as well.
Anyway, I can gush on and on about the Stones or New Order and not be anti-American, because I also love R.E.M. and the Ramones. See how that works?
This isn't really a topic I can get worked up over, and for the 60's and 70's I give British bands the advantage. :
XTC
Kate Bush [mostly not really rock, but you have been inconsistently including non-rock in your lists]
Siouxsie & the Banshees
Joy Division
Adam & the Ants
The Fall
The Raincoats
Gang of Four
Elvis Costello
The Smiths
Psychic TV
The English Beat
Roxy Music [did you include them on your list of 70's British bands?]
Public Image Limited
Throbbing Gristle
Killing Joke
The Psychedelic Furs
That's not that long of a list, but I find your list over-inflated with acts I can't take very seriously, such as Kansas and Styx. (Talk about bad taste!) If I were to add British bands of the 80's who were better than Kansas and Styx, I could extend this list. I am trying to limit it to bands/artists that I have produced a fair amount of music I can still stand by.
I think most people (who think about it at all) recognize that America created the foundations for much of what has become popular music globally.
You have the audacity to say the likes of Kansas and Styx are bad taste, but list a bunch of mostly one-hit wonder 80s pop and post-punk bands from the UK as examples of your good taste?
That's ridiculous. Let's tone down the arrogance. I think YOUR list is composed almost entirely of acts I can't take seriously. Throbbing Gristle? Pyschic TV? Elvis Costello? Adam and the Ants? The Fall? None of these are acts worth noting.
You're naming ANY British act at this point.
These American acts at LEAST match those:
Michael Jackson
Suicide
Silver Apples
Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers
Dramarama
The B-52s
The Go Gos
Ministry
The Smithereens
Tom Tom Club
Crime
The Residents
Chrome
Suburban Lawns
Talking Heads
Danzig
Grace Jones
Billy Squier
Faith No More
Berlin
Missing Persons
The Tubes
Sly and the Family Stone
War
Chic
Earth, Wind, and Fire
Kim Carnes
Bruce Springsteen / E Street Band
Beastie Boys
Devo
Black Flag
The Lemonheads
Love Battery
Rain Parade
Guided By Voices
The Del Fuegos
Pere Ubu
Husker Du
Pixies
R.E.M.
Mazzy Star
Wild Cherry
Quote:
I still personally think the British refined rock and took it to new places in a way that surpassed what American rock bands did overall (in the 60's and 70's). The early rock of the 50's and early 60's seems very limited to me.
...they didn't, though. People like you think The Beatles were the only band "refining rock music" in the 60s, which is why you say stuff like this. The Sonics, The Doors, and The Beach Boys "refined music" a lot more than The Beatles did.
You had a music industry of a much larger scale in the US at the time, and the garage rock explosion pre-dates the Beatles - at the same time, you have American bands and musicians creating genres like Surf rock, Jazz fusion, Psychedelic rock, Soul, Folk rock, Blues rock, Boogie rock, Psychedelic rock, Funk and Funk rock, Acid rock, Hard rock and Soft rock, and eventually Punk rock and Heavy metal. You had some British acts participating contemporaneously in these new trends - but you're just erroneously claiming that British acts alone "refined" rock music and "took it to new places". Well, that's not true. That's a ridiculously Anglophilic re-writing of music history.
You're assigning rock music innovation post 1960 entirely to Britain ("the British refined rock and took it to new places"), which is pointedly ridiculous. The British didn't do this. Can you even try to justify your attempt to claim they, alone, did? It doesn't seem so. Other than completely over-valuing British bands like Roxy Music and...Throbbing Gristle? Gang of Four are a relatively obscure post-punk group on par with American acts of the time like Tuxedomoon and Flipper.
Can you give an explanation as to how the British, alone, "refined rock music". Siting explicit examples of how, and not just casually ignoring or ignorantly talking down the American scene at the time to force that conclusion...
What American rock bands did "overall" in the 60s and 70s was evidently more significant than what a few British participators in American trends did. Come on now...
Last edited by blanketstate; 09-06-2022 at 05:34 PM..
Well, I suppose it comes down to tastes, but I don't understand why I'm the arbitrary one, and you're not.
When you talk about the BIG rock bands, they're the British bands.
It doesn't mean the Americans you mentioned suck...but except for Elvis, they are BY FAR lesser knowns, to people like the Beatles, The Who, The Kinks, Eric Clapton, Cream, The Birds, The Stones, etc.
This is insane
Acts like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones hardly have more name recognition than the likes of Elvis and The Beach Boys.
The rest of the bands you list: The Who, The Kinks, solo blues artists like Eric Clapton, and Cream, are not "BY FAR" more popular than ANY American bands listed.
Eric Clapton was not a novelty. He was a blues rock guitarist. America already had those by the time he became popular.
The Byrds are an American band. Are you talking about The Yardbirds? Who aren't particularly famous at all?
There are at least a dozen American bands and musicians on my list that are just as or more popular than them. The Who is not more popular than Aerosmith or Nirvana, and I wouldn't say they are "by far" more popular than the likes of Jefferson Airplane, The Monkees, ZZ Top, or The Stooges. How is Cream more popular or significant than Janis Joplin, Canned Heat, Grateful Dead, or Mountain? They really aren't.
It really seems like British chauvinism in music is a problem, because these posts are just mindless.
Last edited by blanketstate; 09-06-2022 at 05:40 PM..
there were still American rock bands in the early sixties, but I can't think of one of them who had the creativity or the edge or sheer rock and rollness of bands like the Who, the Kinks, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, the Zombies, the Animals, etc.
By the mid 60's American bands were definitely starting to catch up quite admirably. But that was due largely to the British Invasion smashing down those barriers.
Cutting out the fluff
All of this is completely revisionist history.
Highlighted by the fact that you call The Who, The Animals, and The Rolling Stones "early 60s bands" when their popularity began in the mid-to-late decade, well after the American innovation in rock music (garage rock, jazz fusion, surf rock, instrumental rock, experimental rock) had started to hit the UK. Surf rock came before any of this, THAT is what inspired the rock music explosion - Experimental rock, Instrumental rock, Jazz fusion, all of this existed in the US from the late 50s.
Quote:
And yes, I know there were exceptions. The Kingsmen and definitely the Sonics come to mind. But those exceptions were few and far between.
...And somehow The Beatles and The Rolling Stones aren't the exception for their own national music scene?
You can't claim that British bands, playing covers of American songs, in styles that sounded identical to American blues and rock music, were innovating anything - period.
Quote:
And I think the primary reason was that those British kids grew up eating the fruit of rock and roll right off the tree, whereas most of the American bands of that era only got the sanitized, safe version.
They weren't getting "the sanitized safe version", this is complete anti-American cultural revisionism. Rock and roll and blues were American genres. It's a redundant point to claim that Americans were getting a supposedly sanitized/safe version of a culture we created. That's the insane, twisted logic of these kinds of "brit revisionist history of music" posts. You're just arbitrarily claiming that British copies of American culture were more instrumental in influencing culture than American culture. It's almost comedic.
Why is anti-American cultural revisionism so popular nowadays? It's like the constant framework that tells you "Europe is better" results in these hairbrained attempts to discredit and disvalue American culture, and overvalue derivative European copies of American culture.
Seriously, The Zombies were more "rock and roll" than any American band? What an insulting, historically ignorant thing to say.
They were a pretty bad psychedelic rock band that became popular in the US at the time The 13th Floor Elevators were releasing their first music. Come on.
The Rolling Stones were playing covers of American blues songs as late as 65.
The only British band to receive significant success in the 64-66 time period was The Beatles - outside of that, you had smaller acts, like The Kinks. At that time, in America, you had popular activity from The Beach Boys, as well as some regional successes by the likes of The Sonics, The McCoys, The Surfaris, The Nightcaps, Blues Magoos, Dean Carter, The Monks, The Rockin' Ramrods, The Electric Prunes, The Trashmen, and many, many more:
Any of these bands were as instrumental in influencing rock music as their British contemporaries, who certainly numbered less, and appeared contemporaneously with them - they didn't predate. That's not even getting into the late 50s influences on the trends of the 60s.
Plus, if British musicians were alone more influential in the 60s, where are SOLELY British genres of music? Because I can't find any.
Glancing at Wikipedia, the consensus seems to be that American influence was still notable when it comes to 60s musical developments like:
Pyschedelic rock (US)
Jazz rock and Jazz fusion (US)
Hard and Soft rock (US / UK)
Blues and Boogie rock (US)
Proto-Prog and Progressive rock (UK / US)
Acid rock (US)
Garage rock (US)
Surf rock (US)
Pop rock (US)
and more. Britain is given only partial credit on some of these genres. The US gets credit on all of them.
And music journalism doesn't seem to think the British Invasion led to any significant innovations, by itself:
People are putting their fandom for bands like The Beatles and The Who above an objective observation of music history. To claim that these bands alone are responsible for all the musical innovation that occurred in the 1960s is ridiculous and a completely redundant point when you consider the fact that their music sounded identical to what was being produced in America even before their time.
Last edited by blanketstate; 09-06-2022 at 05:30 PM..
Let's compare musical output in the 60s in the US vs the UK:
UK:
Donovan, The Small Faces, The Moody Blues, Spooky Tooth, The Move, Procol Harum, Caravan, The Troggs (US), Foghat, The Rolling Stones, The Creation, Soft Machine, Mannfred Mann (SA), Marianne Faithful, The Pink Fairies, The Pretty Things, Traffic, The Animals, The Zombies, Van Morrison, Jethro Tull, Cliff Richard + The Shadows, Stealer’s Wheel, The Beatles, The Kinks, The Yardbirds, Fairport Convention, The Who, Spencer Davis Group, Mott The Hoople, Dave Clark Five, Stone the Crows, Herman’s Hermits, Ten Years After, Van Der Graaf Generator, Them (US), John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers
US:
The Walker Brothers, The Electric Flag, Goldenrod, New Colony Six, Fifty Foot Hose, The Invictas, Johnny Winter, The Groupies, Every Mother's Son, Mad River, Curt Boettcher + The Ballroom, The Frost, Phafner, The United States of America, Frijid Pink, Lotti Golden, Fever Tree, Grateful Dead, Road, The Outsiders, The Electric Prunes, Nazz, Little Feat, The Archies, The Lollipop Shoppe, Blues Image, The Blues Project, Bulbous Creation, Dragonwyck, Bubble Puppy, H.P. Lovecraft, Wizard, The Deep, The Beau Brummels, The Poor, Sopwith Camel, It’s a Beautiful Day, Ultimate Spinach, The Peanut Butter Conspiracy, Fresh Blueberry Pancake, Carly Simon, Carole King, Christopher, Rare Earth, The Red Crayola, Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Roy Head & The Traits, The Tornados, Freddy Cannon, The Music Machine, The Droogs, The Doors, Johnny and The Hurricanes, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Strawberry Alarm Clock, The Flying Burrito Brothers, Sam and Dave, Frumious Bandersnatch, Johnny Nash, Gladys Knight + The Pips, Gandalf, The Turtles, The Four Seasons, Fanny, The Universals, Ike and Tina Turner, The Oxford Circle, Merry Clayton, Roy Orbison, The Arrows, The Buckinghams, The Standells, The Banshees, The Prophets, The McCoys, Truth and Janey, The Seeds, The Fabulous Wailers, The Chocolate Watchband, The Lemon Pipers, Moby Grape, The Rascals, Country Joe and The Fish, The Charlatans, Dick Dale + The Surfaris, Johnny Jenkins, Love, James Brown, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, Philip Glass, Neil Diamond, The Box Tops, Soul Survivors, Vince Guaraldi, Otis Redding, Three Dog Night, Joan Baez, Sir Douglas Quintet, The Supremes, The Monkees, Max Frost and The Troopers, The Ronettes, Ray Charles, The Temptations, Neil Young and Crazy Horse (CA), ? and The Mysterians, The Youngbloods, Clear Light, The 13th Floor Elevators, The Kingsmen, The Lovin’ Spoonful, Blood, Sweat, and Tears, Buffalo Springfield, Booker T and The M.G.’s, Lyme and Cybelle, Redbone, Haystacks Balboa, The Left Banke, Lincoln St. Exit, Paul Revere and The Raiders, The Sonics, Count Five, Simon and Garfunkel, Coven, Nancy Sinatra, Tower of Power, The Monks, The Mystery Trend, Golden Dawn, Tony Bennett, MC5, Vanilla Fudge, Mountain, Cromagnon, Yesterday’s Children, The Mothers of Invention, Blue Cheer, Bloodrock, Iron Butterfly, Marvin Gaye, Bob Dylan, Big Brother and The Holding Company + Janis Joplin, Canned Heat, Aretha Franklin, Blues Magoos, Grand Funk Railroad, Jimi Hendrix, Steppenwolf (CA), Bread, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Amboy Dukes, The Beach Boys, The Velvet Underground, The Byrds, Tommy James and The Shondells, Larry and The Blue Notes, The Knickerbockers, The Mamas and The Papas, The Stooges, Jefferson Airplane
Yeah, it looks like America won the 60s, not Britain.
If you need to down talk every American band I listed, while boosting British bands like The Who and Cream, let alone The Fall and Public Image Ltd, you clearly have an Anglophilic mindset that is clouding your rationality.
If The Who or The Fall were American, they wouldn't be popular - by dins of them being American and not British, because it seems the only thing it takes for people on the Internet to laud a band with ridiculously uncalled for acclaim and historical importance is British nationality.
Britain nation-brands their music scene, America doesn't, ergo, the latter is increasingly taken for granted. Especially by people with bad taste in music.
I listed major America bands across multiple decades that outnumber the major British acts from the same time periods. The responses have mindlessly, incorrectly, and completely dismissed them all, because you need to establish a British dominance of rock music that doesn't exist. It's abundantly clear that that's how this narrative exists, a refusal to acknowledge points of comparison in the American scene, where all this music came from. It's ridiculous. There's no excuse for that. It's the largest music market on earth.
Last edited by blanketstate; 09-06-2022 at 07:24 PM..
Nor is it dishonest or "anti-American" to observe the obviously stagnant state of American rock music in the early 60s, before the British invasion. Americans were putting out beach music, girl groups and the Wall of Sound, goofy novelty songs, and middle of the road stuff like Neil Sedaka, Bobby Vinton, and the aforementioned Pat Boone. Not that these artists weren't talented, but they certainly were not exciting (save for some of the beach music). R&B was still pretty much underground in the early 60s, despite earlier successes of Chuck Berry, Little Richard, etc., marketed toward black audiences and played on radio stations catering to black audiences. The Beatles, the Stones, the Who etc. changed all that as well.
Nope, completely inaccurate:
American rock music wasn't "stagnant" in the early 1960s, and there was no "British invasion".
Research by a group of London academics focuses on musical patterns in the US pop charts from 1960 to 2010, using data analysis to pinpoint the year in which trends appeared in the charts and measure their duration. The study’s findings may come as a shock to fans of the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, as its authors believe there is no musical evidence to suggest that the “British invasion” of the early 60s caused a revolution in the US charts at all. Rather, the music style those bands displayed – measured by properties such as chord changes and tone – was already established in the US charts before they arrived.
And if you look at the Billboard charts, throughout the 1960s, it was American bands and musicians that dominated, not British ones. So how do you justify your Anglophilic cultural revisionism?
"The British Invasion" marketing ploy is an attempt to give Britain more cultural relevance in the 20th century than it actually had by co-opting American culture as its own.
This is very easy to observe, but you refuse to observe this, because you're overvaluing The Beatles and The Stones, who became popular in the US at the same time US-grown trends like Garage rock, Surf rock, Experimental rock, Jazz fusion, Instrumental rock, Pop rock, and Electric Blues were giving rise to genres like Psychedelic rock, Hard and Soft rock, Acid rock, Folk rock, Electronic rock, and more, which produced 10s of thousands of bands across the US, many of whom released music and became popular contemporaneously with The Beatles and The Rolling Stones (The Beach Boys, Jefferson Airplane, The Doors, The Byrds, The Four Seasons). You're arbitrarily dismissing these American acts to claim that The Beatles and The Stones existed in some kind of vacuum, they did not. They took influence from American artists and changed very little about American music, if anything - the British were not like the Jamaicans, who added their own indigenous instruments like the steel drum to create a distinctly Jamaican sound - no, they copied American styles. You can't refute this claim, because that is what they did.
And stop racializing American music culture - R & B was not "underground", and Chuck Berry and Little Richard were widely available to white audiences - early rock and roll was originated by various white American ethnic groups, from the Urban Italian Americans to the Appalachian Scotch-Irish, as much as it was African Americans. You're trying to delegitimize American culture by painting it as "bad/racist" and legitimize British culture by painting it as more open and accepting. You're racializing American culture because you have no other argument against it - guess what, black musicians are still American. And they don't exist in a vacuum either. European American culture influenced American music just as much, and this stupid cultural revisionism that attempts to claim America didn't embrace rock and roll in the 1950s is just ****ing ridiculous. Shut up.
You're commenting on music, and yet you're offhandedly dismissing extremely important musical innovations like "the Wall of Sound", which changed music more than anything the British have ever "invented"? Will you guys just admit you're wrong, and that the American music scene is obviously the primary force in musical innovation, including rock music - not Britain? The only tactic you've used to attempt to argue against this fact is the frenzied rejection of any and every American band, musician, and music genre I name - it makes you look delusionaly pro-British and anti-American.
Bottom line: The cultural precedence of popular music development is owned by the US, not Britain - Rock music is American culture. It is not British culture. Blues, and R&B, and Jazz, and Skiffle, and Pop, and Doo-wop are the American roots. The electric guitar is American. The British did not "refine" rock music, they helped develop subgenres contemporaneously with their American counterparts (that you people are attempting to ignore). This is why they had to remarket British pop rock bands under the "Britpop/Britrock" label in the 90s - America didn't have to nation brand and attach a nationality prefix to "rock" and "pop" because, as much as you people loathe to admit, 1) those are American genres and 2) American bands and musicians had been so ubiquitous that they were taken for granted. We didn't need to nation brand. We don't have a national insecurity complex about our music scene, like the Brits obviously do, considering they lashed out against Grunge and American music in general in the 90s, and gloat about their music scene all over the internet in a way Americans do not.
Your Beatles fandom should not come before a more rational, objective observation of music history. We can acknowledge that The Beatles and The Rolling Stones are two of the most famous bands ever, while also acknowledging that the US has produced the most famous bands. Both countries have produced famous bands and musicians, and yet the narrative on the internet consistently overrepresents British involvement in music history, usually by ignoring or downplaying American involvement.
Why is Euro/Anglo butthurt about American cultural influence so severe? Has there ever been a more arrogant culture than British/European culture, believing yourself so important that you have to wrest claim for the development of American culture that you're jealous of?
Last edited by blanketstate; 09-06-2022 at 08:08 PM..
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