Music of the 1960s
 Elvis,
Motown, the Surf
Sound, the British Invasion,
Psychedelia,
Woodstock,
Hendrix, Bob Dylan and
The Monkees. All
set against the backdrop of a new permissiveness, Free Love and a
war we couldn't win. Turn on, tune in and drop out!
In Britain we
had The Beatles, The Rolling
Stones, Merseybeat and Pirate
Radio,
but we also had Freddie and The
Dreamers, Acker Bilk and Ken
Dodd! - The golden decade of British music . . .
The Sixties started without a bang. If rock fans expected the new
decade to bring fresh excitement they were in for a big
disappointment because we were waist-deep in the soggy middle
ground between Rock & Roll and The
Beatles, who at this point
were about to visit Hamburg for the first time, having just
completed a lacklustre tour of Scotland backing Johnny
Gentle.
In
the company of Vince Eager, Dickie
Pride, Duffy Power and his
biggest acts Tommy Steele and Marty
Wilde, Johnny Gentle was a
transitory inmate of Larry
Parnes' "Stable of Stars" -
all of whose names were said to have been selected as an
indication of their sexual characteristics! Gentle was destined to
remain in obscurity.
In America, no pretenders had threatened Elvis Presley as King
of Rock & Roll. The month after his army release in March
1960, Stuck On You bolted to Number One to be followed by It's Now
Or Never and Are You Lonesome Tonight? later in the year.
In London the first rock groups began to emerge, but most of
them sounded pretty weak and unimaginative compared with the
Americans. Some even had hits: Nero and The Gladiators experienced
five minute stardom with Entry Of The Gladiators and In The Hall
Of The Mountain King. Shane Fenton and The Fentones scored with
I'm A Moody Guy and Mike Berry and The Outlaws found favour with
Tribute To Buddy Holly - an early success for independent producer
Joe Meek.
Eventually, the British pop scene of the Swinging Sixties was
bursting with vocal groups, solo artists and instrumentalists. But
at the outset, teenagers had to listen to the latest hits on the
café jukebox or a basic record player. Their only other lifeline
was a nightly dose of music from Radio Luxembourg or Alan
Freeman's Pick of the Pops on BBC radio on Sunday afternoons.
 Then in 1964 came the offshore
pirate radio stations - Radio
Caroline and Radio London, which broadcast from ships anchored
just outside British waters - but in 1967 the government closed
them down as a risk to shipping. In the re-organisation of BBC
radio into Radios 1,2, 3 and 4, Radio 1 became the new station for
pop music and ex-pirate DJs like Tony Blackburn and
John Peel.
By
1964, for the first time in rock history, America was looking up
to Britain, and the rampant Beatlemania at Kennedy Airport
heralded a full-blown British
Invasion.
The curious counterpoint to such a rich outpouring of great
Rock & Roll music in the 60s was a parallel boom in
middle-of-the-road pop. So for every My Generation and You Really
Got Me there seemed to be an equal number of drippy ballads
selling in vast quantities, like Ken Dodd's Tears,
Val Doonican's
The Special Years and The Bachelors singing Marie.
So the
soundtrack of the 60s was in many ways a curious mix of Soul
music, British Beat, psychedelia, R&B, romantic schmaltz and
records by British comedians, wholesome vocal groups, cheeky
chappies, pretty young girl singers and male heartthrobs who were
also actors. |
