WI: No 'British Invasion'?

The British Invasion took America completely by surprise. It came out of left field and was totally unexpected. In the wake of the invasion, you have not just new British groups on the music scene, but American labels sought their own answers to the British, which is why you got groups like the Byrds. As a result, you had the formation of what is the 60s sound as we know it, which evolved into the 70s and on.

The British invasion put an end to what can be described as the Dark age of Rock n' Roll, which lasted roughly 1959 to the arrival of the Beatles. This was when the first great era of Rock n' Roll had ended: Elvis was in the army, Buddy Holly and Richie Valens were dead, Jerry Lee Lewis was a pariah for marrying his underage cousin, Little Richard had gone gospel, Chuck Berry was convicted under the Mann act, etc. And you had the payola scandal which rocked the industry. In the wake of that, the industry was increasingly taken over with tight control by big corporations and sanitized and dullified.

I'll quote here:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:af267T9NDU4J:libprofessor.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-history-of-rock-and-roll-1959-1963.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a said:

What they did is basically create a monopoly on how songs were recorded, produced, and marketed. They occupied the Brill Building in in Manhattan, hired songwriters and professional musicians, and then hand-picked which artist they wanted to record a particular song. Of course the driving force was money, so they got the most attractive "ideal-boyfriend" singers they could find, and stuck them behind a microphone (this was also the rise of the girl-group era). The better looking the singer, the more the records would sell, especially now that almost every household had a TV, and millions tuned in daily to watch American Bandstand. Artists had never been more visible.

That's the legacy of this era: most artists didn't write their own music, didn't play an instrument, but could sing well enough and were attractive enough to drive record sales. This is the era that gave us the pinnacle of rock and roll innocence: Frankie Avalon, Bobby Vee, Bobby Vinton, Neil Sedaka, and Fabian, to name a few.

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Now, there were a few positives to come out of the period from 1959-1963. The Everly Brothers continued their success from the late 1950s, and Roy Orbison burst onto the scene in 1960. The Beach Boys started churning out hits in 1962. Peter, Paul, and Mary and The Kingston Trio made folk popular. This era was also the dawn of "sweet soul," which gave us icons such as Ray Charles and Sam Cooke.

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The British invasion came out of left field, took over the scene, and pushed away that previous scene. Which is good as it removed the bad elements of that era, but bad for the good elements and artists that were sidelined in the aftermath. We also don't know how that scene might have evolved had it been left to itself.

So what if there were no British Invasion?

http://www.shsu.edu/~lis_fwh/book/brill_building/Brill-Intro.htm
http://archives.nodepression.com/2005/09/reconsidering-rocks-dark-ages/

Might be a greater division between English and US acts for one... The Beatles remain a major success here? Some form of a British Invasion will happen though. It's impossible to believe that no acts will make it overseas.

How does it happen? If you manage to butterfly The Day the Music Died, some of the "Dark Age" goes with it, & the eager acceptance of Brit bands, too.

Otherwise? What U.S. act in the interregnum could have hit big that didn't OTL? An OTL one-hit band that covers Holly or Valens & gets a second hit not gained OTL? A no-hit band that gets one the same way? A performer or band that accepts a record turned down OTL?

There's a thread here on The Remains. What about them? Too late?

phx1138 said:

How does it happen? If you manage to butterfly The Day the Music Died, some of the "Dark Age" goes with it, & the eager acceptance of Brit bands, too.

Otherwise? What U.S. act in the interregnum could have hit big that didn't OTL? An OTL one-hit band that covers Holly or Valens & gets a second hit not gained OTL? A no-hit band that gets one the same way? A performer or band that accepts a record turned down OTL?

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I can see the point about wondering how Britain cannot invade. It is important to remember, though, that if you were in America in say 1962, Britain really wasn't anything. Even the Beatles couldn't make it on anything more than local American distributor labels, and those without any chart success, before Beatlemania swept Britain to such a degree that it couldn't be ignored as a force. While Rock was brewing in the British isles, it needed a vanguard to hop the Atlantic. That vanguard was the Beatles. You could make the case that it could have been someone else if the Beatles had not come along. I would make the counterargument that it could have fizzled out for want of a force like the Beatles. I reiterate the example of the Beatles not being able to get on an American label except Swan and Vee Jay at first. Not fizzled out in Britain, but the force that crossed it as an "invasion" acrossed the Atlantic could have fizzled out. Instead of the invasion, perhaps you could have much lower key acts which get into the mix rather than defining it.

For the purposes of this discussion, the point is to take the scene as it was, and project it forward as whatever it may have been or become without that unexpected and unplanned force of the British Invasion. I would probably prefer that we don't change the plane crash that killed Holly, Valens and the Big Bopper. Keep in mind, though the point of the discussion isn't that the scene has to be locked perpetually in 1959-1963 forever. The point is to just discuss how the music scene would be and evolve without the British Invasion. It could get out of the rut of 1959-1963, if you classify it as one. It could change and evolve in various ways, good or bad and good and bad. We just have to discuss what that status and evolution would be.

Who could hit bigger? Maybe Roy Orbison? Maybe Elvis would have an easier time when he got out of the army, if he didn't want to become a movie start.

I know I may bring this up every time a 60's music pod comes up but american bands in the early 60s are very overlooked. The Beach Boys were the band the Beatles had to dethrone and for a few years there was a real battle going on. Brian Wilson was already exploring where pops direction was going in Today! In 65. American bands will continue to develop without the Brits. The dark age will not continue any longer just cause British bands don't make the transition early. The real loss won't be felt u til the late sixties and early 70s

Emperor Norton I said:

I can see the point about wondering how Britain cannot invade. It is important to remember, though, that if you were in America in say 1962, Britain really wasn't anything. Even the Beatles couldn't make it on anything more than local American distributor labels, and those without any chart success

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I'll confess considerable ignorance, here, but I have no problem with that: a "British infiltration" rather than an invasion, in effect.

Emperor Norton I said:

You could make the case that it could have been someone else if the Beatles had not come along. I would make the counterargument that it could have fizzled out for want of a force like the Beatles.

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This is the kind of "why" I was wondering about. Is it a stronger U.S. scene? Weaker British? Weaker Beatles promotion over here? Some other form of music catching on & knocking R&R out entirely? I have no problem believing it can happen. I'd just like to hear why it might.

Emperor Norton I said:

The point is to just discuss how the music scene would be and evolve without the British Invasion.

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What seems most likely to me, if it's not simply a U.S. performer or band getting bigger & "shading" the Beatles (if not quite eclipsing them), is a different Brit band coming over & catching on a little, not scoring big but giving a kickstart to a U.S. band that would otherwise have been small, or unknown.

It's also possible, of course, for it to be a cover act taking a Beatles minor British hit & remixing it so it's more attractive here.

Of course, given the degree of mixing in this era, somebody like, say, Marty Robbins taking a rock song & putting a rockabilly/country spin on it & getting a big hit is perfectly possible. (I think of Sammy Kershaw's cover of "Angie", which IMO is better than the Stones' version.) Say, "Jailhouse Rock" or "Hound Dog"?

Also possible, of course, for a rock artist to adopt Mexican sound (following on Richie Valens), a bit like Johnny Cash did on "Ring of Fire". Roy Orbison? IDK.

Not saying I necessarily believe this but just to send some love out to the Motor City (and if anyone is listening, my best trip to Berlin was a music tour, and if someone did that for Detroit I'd be over there before you could say I Wanna Be Your Dog)

anyway
Somewhere in this awesome BBC4 doc on the Detroit music scene

Motor City's Burning - From Motown To The Stooges

In the background there is footage of MC5 draped in the stars and stripes to identify themselves as a home ground local band (despite having members joining the "White Panther" party!)

Iggy Pop is lamenting the difficulty of fighting against the British invasion in the mid-sixties...

...and just begining to talk about George Clinton and P-Funk

"It was the only music around that sounded better than the damn English music, which was so very good - but the blacks still sounded better!.. they trumped it"

so maybe there was enough latent creativity at the time to cover anything not appearing from abroard.. god knows we are still discovering bits of music from that era now.. maybe The Animals would be Sixto Rodriguez in another ATL

http://corben-dallas.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/sixto-rodriguezs-time-machine-to-1970s_27.html

Some notions.

The Dakotas turn down Brian Epstein's suggestion they back up Billy Kramer.

The Dakotas see more of their music covered by The Ventures.

The Dakotas, seeing they've been covered by The Ventures, decide to cover, frex, "The Lonely Bull", "Walk, Don't Run", or a (non-instrumental?) version of "Ghost Riders in the Sky".

Yeah, this isn't really addressing the U.S. side...

The Shaggs would get more attention

Was there a chance Eddie Holland had a bigger hit(s)?

Or of his records being covered & becoming hits? Say by...The Remains?

Seeing how The Remains opened for The Beatles, is there a chance they might open for, & tour with, a smaller British band (The Dakotas?), & thereby get the break they didn't get OTL?

On the topic of chronoscrewing the Beatles, there are multiple ways. The Beatles success was based on evolving in Hamburg, being discovered by Brian Epstein and made sellable, getting a contract with a nurturing label and producer, hiring Ringo Starr and producing some early hits. You also have things even earlier than that: if Lennon never met McCartney, then McCartney would never have been in what became the Beatles, and neither would his friend George Harrison. There's a lot of room to chronoscrew.

If we go with the assumption of things going all the same up to Hamburg or thereabouts, you could do a variety of things. You could have them signed up to contract whilst with some label Allen Williams is still their manager, and one which doesn't foster anything and perhaps drains them of any career opportunity they have. They could get caught up in a contract with some label that sticks them as a backing group. You could have club owner Bruno Koschmider, who owned the club(s) they were contracted to play at and was probably a gangster (and if not, he was a sleaze who had gangsters at his club he could call on), take retribution on them for going to play at rival outlets, breaking their legs or fingers or possibly making them disappear. You could have them go to Hamburg and come back to Britain to find the scene had changed too much for them and not have them able to adapt to it, as was somewhat of an issue in the OTL (many in Liverpool thought they were German), and was an issue for Pete Best when he tried for a career after the Beatles and played the US and returned to Britain.

After Hamburg, you have possibilities as well. You could have Epstein not manage them, with Epstein being a major reason for their success. They could get discovered by an incompetent or a devious manager out to rip them off, which was very likely the case in those days. They could stick with Allen Williams and Mona Best and go nowhere. They could get signed by a bad label, and go nowhere even if they do have some hits. You could have them fail to get signed to any label, which was a problem they were running into until one of the last there was, Parlophone/EMI, signed them. You could have them fail to get a hit whilst signed to Parlophone long enough to have the label drop them.

And there's more possibilities than that. From any of those, they could go onto success in music from there; it'd just be different from the usual template Beatles 'what ifs' lock into. Those are some strong prospects for them to just go nowhere, though.

If the Beatles get taken out, you've also very possibly taken out the Rolling Stones since George Harrison was the one who influenced them to get signed by Decca (who was seeking to making up for losing out on the Beatles and to have an answer to the Beatles). And you've risen Rory Storm and the Hurricanes up in the ranks, and one of the bigger problems with said band is that Rory Storm has limited range. You also have the strong possibility of Ringo Starr following through on his idea to move to Texas, which he joined the Beatles instead of doing. Rory Storm isn't, in my opinion, going to make for a mania in Britain, and if he does, it won't be anything of substance and I don't see him really doing all that well outside of Britain.

Someone lost in the discussion shuffle has been Bob Dylan. Dylan was on the music scene well before the Beatles in America and cannot be overstated as a major player starting with "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan" in 1963. People were inspired by Bob Dylan, he was interpreted by the youth as their spokesman, and his songs are all too often covered by other artists. Without the British Invasion, he will continue regardless. There is a question of what direction he might take without the British invasion and the American music scene that changed and reacted to it, which birthed new American Rock groups such as the Byrds and influenced existing groups such as the Beach Boys.

Would Dylan go electric in this universe? I don't know. The Byrds were the grandfathers of Folk Rock, inspired by the Beatles, infusing Folk music with Rock n' Roll. You may have very well sunk those influences in the members enough that such a thing does not come about. Without them and without the music scene of the invasion and post-invasion, maybe Dylan would not have gone beyond Folk, or maybe he'd have gone beyond it in a different way. Whatever the case, it would have a major impact on American music. The British invasion is also what sank the folk revival. Without it, who knows what would have happened (please tell me), but the folk scene could have continued on and evolved in varying ways.

On the topic of the music scene, you have Country/Western, Rock n' Roll and Pop, Doo Wop, Soul, R&B, Folk, and Traditional Pop. Those are the ones I can think of as the big ones around the early 1960s. I may be forgetting a few, though. In Rock and Pop, the music scene had suffered from the payola scandal and most of the biggies of the first era of Rock n' Roll being taken out for one reason or another, and had gotten controlled by the big corporations. All too often, it produced shallow hits to quickly take teenage allowances. There was also a trend of proto-boy bands were some manager or producer would find a bunch of guys and throw them together, or find one guy who could appeal to teenage girls, and have them crank out some songs some of their writers had written. Rock and Pop of that era and before was also generally about basic feel good dance music. There wasn't anything too deep about it.
That's where Folk comes in. Folk was the genre with substance and deeper meaning, and which thumbed it's nose at Rock n' Roll as being shallow. It was the genre that wrote the protest songs and the topical songs. You did have some popier groups, but that's the basic gist.
Country/Western is a genre related to Rock n' Roll and Folk. It's origins are partially in older folk music, and it frequently covered deep topics and stories. It was also a partial origin of Rock n' Roll, and many of the Rock artists were in between or crossing those two worlds (Rockabilly), such as Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, and so on. And many people who liked Rock also liked country, such as the Beatles.
I don't know much about Doo Wop, Soul and R&B. I do know that they could cross over into Rock. I do know that Doo Wop was a genre many White singers and groups were doing. I have heard that Doo Wop artists seem to think that were it not for the Beatles, they'd have gone on forever. I attach Soul and R&B here because so far as I know, these are the Black artist genres. I can't think of any White artsits of the era involved in those genres. So far as I know, those genres were listened to by White people but were separated from other genres with much less crossover. The only White Soul song I can think of is "Unchained Melody". I really don't know much about the genre of Blue-eyed Soul.
And you had Traditional Pop, which was artists like Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Bobby Darin and so on. So far as I know this did have success outside of just older listeners, but was more the genre preferred by parents and middle aged people than anything else. And it did begin to feel the weight of Rock n' Rolls popularity by the late 50s and early 60s. While this genre easily had an influence on various people in other genres, I really can't see any crossover or potential fusionism with any other genres.

Taking into account that outlined music scene, I wanted to mention fusionism in music. That's a very important topic, since it is how music evolves. Music doesn't just come out of nowhere: it evolves from genres merging in various ways and influencing artists in various ways, and from those new genres and portions of genres further merging with others and creating out influences and being influenced into turn. It's mixing all sorts of elements in various ways, looking at what comes out, and mixing some more in a constant evolution. Music is extremely dynamic. So the topic for where music goes from the POD has to take into account fusions. It'd be good to look at the musical evolutions and fusions that seemed to be emerging before the British invasion, and which went into the music scene in the wake of the British invasion, and measure how things could have turned out without it.

Germaniac said:

I know I may bring this up every time a 60's music pod comes up but american bands in the early 60s are very overlooked. The Beach Boys were the band the Beatles had to dethrone

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In terms of record sales, surprising though this might be to some people today, Herb Alpert & His Tijuana Brass were also serious competition.

An aside: does anybody think the name change from The Quarrymen made any real difference in their success?

phx1138 said:

An aside: does anybody think the name change from The Quarrymen made any real difference in their success?

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Maybe. I've theorized that the name "Beatles" may have contributed subconsciously to their success: close to the beginning of the alphabet, and thus easy to quickly find in a record store (hastening record sales by even a minute amount of time), while not being the first letter and thus not coming off as presumptuous or egotistical in the environment of Beatlemania, thus maintaining the image of being average guys who made it big. And evocative of Buddy Holly and the Crickets, which had ended a few years before and was the last part before of that "dark age" of Rock music.

Emperor Norton I said:

Maybe. I've theorized that the name "Beatles" may have contributed subconsciously to their success

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If true (& I tend to agree; plus, it's easier to say), there's another way to screw their career: they decide not to change it.

Btw, without the Beatles, there is no -mania suffix.

Is there anyone more knowledgeable in the area of the impact of the British Invasion, or knowledgeable in areas I may not be concerning that impact? The reason is that I'm struggling with what exactly the music scene will turn into. I know it can't remain stagnant, but what it could go into is something I'm not exactly sure of. And one of the questions that comes up is whether it will evolve into something "legitimate" as it did starting in the OTL mid-60s. But that also brings up the question of what "legitimate" actually means, and how much of that classification is opinionated and not objective, etc. It's an academic mess because it calls into question everything of neutrality vs value judgements, which is the sin of all music history. (That is to say, what I like and value I declare good and shine focus on, and what I dislike, I will drag through the mud or underplay).

Music evolution is also very dynamic. And it is a constant going back and forth. X will influence Y, which leads Y to go out and do something, and then that influences X, and then X goes out and does something based on that influence, influencing Y, ad infinitum. That's a very simplistic outline, but you probably understand what I mean. A good example of that is the Byrds and the Beatles. The Beatles influenced the Byrds and influenced their sound, and Roger McGuinn says the Beatles created Folk Rock. The Byrds sound influenced the Beatles, which is especially evident on "Rubber Soul". And it should be noted that as much as the Beatles are often said to be the ones that made all these changes happen and created them, they were also adrift in the changes with everyone else. You could argue that they really didn't create anything, and just took part in overall trends. I do wonder if the serious scene in music for the growing up Boomers would still come, thus.

Anyway, that dynamism makes music alternate history a fair bit hard. This topic is no exception. And it requires figuring out who influenced who and what, boiling it down to the basic dynamics of what those influences are, and figuring out how things would be different if you moved things around, added things, and/or removed things. That makes it all the harder.

I'm curious whether a group like the Doors could still come into existence. The Doors are very deep and "legitimate", were American, and you can hear the influences of West coast Rock and Surf Rock if you look deep enough. That could point the way for what would have been possible regardless of the Beatles.

Emperor Norton I said:

Is there anyone more knowledgeable in the area of the impact of the British Invasion, or knowledgeable in areas I may not be concerning that impact? The reason is that I'm struggling with what exactly the music scene will turn into. I know it can't remain stagnant, but what it could go into is something I'm not exactly sure of. And one of the questions that comes up is whether it will evolve into something "legitimate" as it did starting in the OTL mid-60s. But that also brings up the question of what "legitimate" actually means, and how much of that classification is opinionated and not objective, etc. It's an academic mess because it calls into question everything of neutrality vs value judgements, which is the sin of all music history. (That is to say, what I like and value I declare good and shine focus on, and what I dislike, I will drag through the mud or underplay).

Music evolution is also very dynamic. And it is a constant going back and forth. X will influence Y, which leads Y to go out and do something, and then that influences X, and then X goes out and does something based on that influence, influencing Y, ad infinitum. That's a very simplistic outline, but you probably understand what I mean. A good example of that is the Byrds and the Beatles. The Beatles influenced the Byrds and influenced their sound, and Roger McGuinn says the Beatles created Folk Rock. The Byrds sound influenced the Beatles, which is especially evident on "Rubber Soul". And it should be noted that as much as the Beatles are often said to be the ones that made all these changes happen and created them, they were also adrift in the changes with everyone else. You could argue that they really didn't create anything, and just took part in overall trends. I do wonder if the serious scene in music for the growing up Boomers would still come, thus.

Anyway, that dynamism makes music alternate history a fair bit hard. This topic is no exception. And it requires figuring out who influenced who and what, boiling it down to the basic dynamics of what those influences are, and figuring out how things would be different if you moved things around, added things, and/or removed things. That makes it all the harder.

I'm curious whether a group like the Doors could still come into existence. The Doors are very deep and "legitimate", were American, and you can hear the influences of West coast Rock and Surf Rock if you look deep enough. That could point the way for what would have been possible regardless of the Beatles.

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I'm by no means expert, but IMO, the dynamics are really unchanged by the absence of The Beatles, to a certain extent. That is, they weren't creating the dynamics, they were amplifying them, & eclipsing others, by being popular. That is, what did they focus on? What got attention because they covered it? Because they liked it? What bands were never heard of because of them? And what were their influences?

So, if you've kept out the Brits, have you offered opportunities for, frex, The Beach Boys or Dick Dale or Jan & Dean? Or Johnny Cash? Or some tejano artist nobody OTL has ever heard of?