It's time for Britain to rock again

We’ve never kept our age a secret here at Garagerocktopia – were in our early ‘50s. The only reason that’s even relevant – we’re not going to say interesting, because it’s not – is that rock has always been a generational genre, and age, in our opinion, defines how one receives rock and roll. 

This whole post may be based on a fawlty premise -- that rock has suffered without a powerful British presence.

For our generation – OK, maybe just us, we don’t know – The United Kingdom ruled rock and roll for three decades. You couldn’t go more than a few songs on rock radio without hearing British artists, some so ubiquitous that they formed double-digit percentages of radio station playlists.

In a few short years, rock would go in the '50s from being dominated by artists from the American South – most notably, Mississippi’s own Elvis Presley to in the '60s being increasingly ruled by artists from a relatively small island nation in the North Atlantic.

The Elvis generation probably never even considered the idea of rock stars from Britain, or for that matter, anywhere else. This would be understandable, since rock was new and was largely a Southern American phenomenon. How would guys from London, or Manchester, or Liverpool have the faintest idea what rock and roll was, or even more, how to create it? 

Of course, we know that ships carried American music around the world. But you do have to say that British artists caught on very quickly.

Do we really need to tell you who this is?

Oversimplifying a bit – quite a bit, less that 10 years after Elvis, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and so many others would make British rock, in many ways, the gold standard of rock and roll, a circumstance that would last a good 25 years. And let’s be clear – when we say “British” we’re also referring to all the amazing artists from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

 

In fact, the change would be abrupt and discomforting, especially to Elvis, who at one point offered to fight the influence of the Beatles – all of whom idolized Presley – for the Nixon Administration, ratting them out for drug offences, as if the Beatles disappearance would catapult the King back to the top. 

 

Only he could do that, as he did for a short time in that memorable 1968 TV concert. But we digress.

Or who this is?

From the arrival of the Fab Four in New York in 1964 to the MTV-fueled dominance of bands like Duran Duran and the Eurythmics through the mid ‘80s, it was almost as if anyone with a British accent just couldn’t miss in the U.S.A. The list of seminal British acts would be almost like trying to rewrite the phone book, but that one nation could produce the likes of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Cream, David Bowie, Elton John, The Sex Pistols, and on and on and on, is truly amazing.

In an interview, Monty Python’s John Cleese made a crack about Britain once mattering in the world. We are huge fans of Cleese, but we couldn’t disagree with that comment more. 

 

While the Yardbirds or the Kinks may not have conquered large swaths of Africa or Asia, culturally they were hugely influential around the world. And no doubt, they all probably generated massive tax revenues for the UK in the process.

The Jam

Not every great British act conquered North America, of course. Our friends the Pretty Things inexplicably had only a cult following here, and some other great bands and artists – Cliff Richard and the Jam come to mind – were never able to commercially reproduce what they did on the other side of the Atlantic in North America, though all had their devout followings, ones which include us here at Garagerocktopia.

By the ‘90s, though, something happened. There were still a few bands and artists who made an impact – Blur, Oasis, Seal to name a few – but the dominance of the UK on the American charts came to a screeching halt. These days, the number of UK acts who have a presence on the top-anything charts is a small one.

What happened, and why does it make a difference?

We’re not going to pretend to be experts here – we can only speculate as lifelong fans of British rock (and rock in general). But the absence of a solid British presence on the American charts has not been a good thing, harmful, we think, on both sides of the puddle.

As we see it, Rock in general had a big decline in the United States starting in the ‘90s, and British acts were caught in that whirlpool.

Garth Brooks

Part of it, as we see it, was the fragmenting of the rock audience. By the early ‘90s, rap was the ascendant music form. A whole book could be written on this, but while African-American music had always had, in sheer numbers, a large white audience, rap became enormous. While many kids listened both to rap and rock, rap’s market share grew dramatically, and the growth was in part fueled by kids whose interest in previous years would have leaned way more towards rock.

About the same time, country music also grew, thanks to acts like Garth Brooks who brought a definite rock sensibility to country that attracted another giant chunk of its audience.

I know for a fact, having interviewed some of the stars at the time (both Tracy Byrd and Tracy Lawrence, I found out, were huge Led Zeppelin and Van Halen fans) that rock – mostly arena rock – was in their blood. The rise in country music also was, in some ways, a reaction to the rise in hip hop and may have had a political component to it. Interpret that as you will.

Other genres, though not huge as far as numbers of CDs sold, nibbled at the edges of the rock audience, from “smooth jazz” to so-called “world music” to many others too numerous to name.

But perhaps the biggest factor was rock’s own lack of innovation. More and more, new bands sounded like old bands, even to the point of a heavy reliance on covers, rather than writing their own music and toiling to create their own style, their own stamp. And that partly was the result of rock radio, owned by huge conglomerates, who valued numbers over creativity, looking more at moving units than imaginations. We’ve gone over this part other posts, so we’ll not say more here.

Coldplay

But back to British rock. What happened there? The word we’ve gotten in talking to friends in the UK is that British bands tried to hard to sound like American bands,  many of whom themselves were inspired by British bands. The result has been that Coldplay has been the UK’s biggest rock music export to the U.S. Again, interpret that as you will.

But here’s our interpretation of why all this matters. First. Let’s acknowledge that there’s great rock and roll coming from all corners of the Earth. But then, it’s probably not controversial to say that that music to varying degrees is inspired by the Beatles, the Who, Led Zep and others.

We’re not sure what made Britain so dominant. Certainly, the art schools made a giant difference, but did they create the spirit of a John Lennon or a Ray Davies? Almost certainly not – these geniuses would have found a way to do what they did anyway. And a fair number of great British artists never darkened the doorway of an art school or college of any kind. There was something deeper going on here, something that made British rock the force it was. What that was, we don’t know. We just wish it would come back, if such is possible,

Perhaps the same forces of commercialization and subsequent homogenization that has rendered commercial radio unlistenable here is also at work in the UK and in other places. And, we wouldn’t be surprised that, like in the U.S., there actually is a lot of great music that’s just not bubbling to the surface.

Ray Davies

But as creative and dynamic as American music has been, it has never existed in a vacuum. It always took the best from other parts of the planet then fused it together to make something amazing – and something American. Case in point: the Blues, the fusion of African music handed down by generations of blacks, which was gradually fused with British Isles folk traditions.

Then, those blues, which begat jazz and had a strong influence on country music, would morph into rock and roll, which we know inspired many across the world.

But the British brought their appreciation of that music, along with their interpretation of it, and the circle of creativity continued again. Really, what was Garage Rock in the ‘60s but American kids trying to sound like British kids who tried to sound like African-Americans?

When Britain was kicking on all cylinders, rock was, too. Was there an amazing amount of music from the U.S. and other places? Hell yeah. But in so many cases it was British bands who sparked that creativity, and without the Brits in the game, the game just isn’t as much fun anymore. 

Because we’re geezers here at Garagerocktopia, and maybe because we’re a little goofy, when we see a Union Jack, we can’t help but remembering all the great British rock and roll.

Before we get too carried away referring to British rock as something that doesn't exist anymore, there are still bands cranking out great rock and roll in the grand UK tradition. Check out our post on Headline Maniac for further details.

Postscript: And, as we have found out in the years of doing this blog, we have discovered that, in fact, bands all over the British Isles are making fantastic rock and roll. We should know -- we've profiled many of them. In listening to internet radio, in perusing YouTube, in catching whiffs here and there on social media and checking sites like Mixcloud, we have found out there is more great music in the UK than we'll ever have the chance to find out about. So the UK is still rocking like crazy, from Brighton to Aberdeen and all points in between. And we'll do our best to let you know about it!

And you can start to catch up by checking out a few of our recent posts, such as our feature on The Deep Six; or Thee Moot; or the Ego Ritual; or one of the greatest of the late '70s-early '80s Mod Revival bands, The Chords UK.