Welcome to week four of the The History of Rock Part One.
This week we're going to talk about the British Invasion, that means the music of
The Beatles The Rolling Stones, and that whole group of musicians that that got
really, really popular in the United States in the period starting around
1964. So let's just review a little bit of what
we talked about last week as a way of setting up the British invasion.
Because in many ways, the British invasion was a real disruption of what
had been happening in the American popular music industry.
So it's important for us to understand what it was that the British invasion
upset. So just let's just very quickly review
what we did, what we talked about last week.
The overall picture was that after that first wave of rock and rollers, of which
Elvis was the the, the biggest, most successful, the biggest representative.
That first wave from 1955 through 59. After that, the music business was kind
of taken over, by the music business people themselves, rather than
independent labels and, and sort of a very independent and strong willed
performers. So, the, they had, they had discovered
that there was a fantastic and very lucrative youth market for music for, for
teens in 55 through 59 and they've tried to figure out ways to, to, to mine that,
exploit that really and create new product.
The whole idea during that period was to look for the next Elvis, the next big
sensation. So a lot of different styles, were, were,
were laid out. Critics disagree, as we said at the end
of the last, last week, on what the value of this music was.
Was it, you know, music that was sort of dumbed down, cynical, all the rough edges
rubbed off, sort of without the edginess and excitement of the first wave of rock
and roll. Or, was it a kind of golden era where a
lot of new things started to happen and maybe are going to be cut short here by
the British invasion that we're going to talk about this week.
If you were someone who liked that music, the styles you celebrated were sweet
soul, girl groups, the rise of the producers and surf music maybe.
All the stuff that we talked about, last time.
When people have got a negative view, one of the things they tend to focus on are
the teen idols, the dance craze, the twist.
Mostly because of their superficiality and their seemingly cynical exploitation
of the teen market. Other styles that we talked about were
the con, contin, continuation of rockabilly, I call it the rockabilly
postures out of the that first period 55 to 59.
And also, the importance in the emergence of the folk revival which really for the
first time split the teen market in the United States into teenagers and an older
sort of college students who, who sort of went for the folk music.
but as much as they looked for the next Elvis during that period, it turned out
that the next Elvis was none of these things.
The next Elvis came from some place nobody really expected it to come from.
The next Elvis came from the UK and in the next video we're going to talk about
what the scene was in the UK that made it possible and prepared the way for groups
like the Beetles and the Rolling Stones.