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 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 & 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 lackluster 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 favor 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-organization 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.
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