Music Throughout the Ages

The British Invasion was the term applied by the news media — and subsequently by consumers — to the influx of rock and roll, beat and pop performers from the United Kingdom who became popular in the United States, Australia and Canada. The classic British Invasion period was 1964 to 1967 (roughly bracketed by The Beatles’ appearance on Ed Sullivan and the emergence of Jimi Hendrix as a U.S.-born superstar who had his first success in the UK), but the term has also been applied to later “waves” of UK artists that had significant impact on the North American entertainment market. Lets see which Britain’s lead the pack when it comes to making great music.

Music Legends

The Beatles

The Beatles were a pop and rock group from Liverpool, England formed in 1960. Primarily consisting of John Lennon (rhythm guitar, vocals), Paul McCartney (bass guitar, vocals), George Harrison (lead guitar, vocals) and Ringo Starr (drums, vocals) throughout their career, The Beatles are recognized for leading the mid-1960s musical “British Invasion” into the United States.

Although their initial musical style was rooted in 1950s rock and roll and homegrown skiffle, the group explored genres ranging from Tin Pan Alley to psychedelic rock. Their clothes, styles, and statements made them trend-setters, while their growing social awareness saw their influence extend into the social and cultural revolutions of the 1960s.

After the band broke up in 1970, all four members embarked upon solo careers. The Beatles are one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed bands in the history of popular music and the best-selling musical group in history. In the United Kingdom, The Beatles released more than 40 different singles, albums, and EPs that reached number one, earning more number one albums than any other group in UK chart history. This commercial success was repeated in many other countries; their record company, EMI, estimated that by 1985 they had sold over one billion records worldwide.

According to the Recording Industry Association of America, The Beatles have sold more albums in the United States than any other band. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked The Beatles number one on its list of 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. According to that same magazine, The Beatles’ innovative music and cultural impact helped define the 1960s, and their influence on pop culture is still evident today.

The Rolling Stones

The Rolling Stones (aka ‘The Stones‘) are definitely a British group that comes to mind when speaking about musical legends. They have been together longer than most groups and seem to have a timeless career in music. The Rolling Stones are an English band whose music was initially based on rhythm and blues and rock & roll. Formed in London and having their first success in the UK, they subsequently became popular in the US during the “British Invasion” in the early 1960s.

The band formed in 1962 when original leader Brian Jones and pianist Ian Stewart were joined by singer Mick Jagger as lead vocals and guitarist Keith Richards, whose songwriting partnership later contributed to their taking the leadership role in the group. Bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts completed the early lineup. Ian Stewart was removed from the official lineup in 1963 but continued to work with the band as road manager and keyboardist until his death in 1985.

The band’s early recordings were mainly covers of American blues and R&B songs. Their 1965 single “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” established the Rolling Stones as a premier rock and roll act. The Rolling Stones have released 22 studio albums in the UK (24 in the US), eight concert albums (nine in the US) and numerous compilations; they have had 32 UK & US top-10 singles, 43 UK & US top-10 albums from 1964 and 2008 and have sold more than 200 million albums worldwide. 1971’s Sticky Fingers began a string of eight consecutive studio albums at number one in the United States. In 1989 the Rolling Stones were inducted into the American Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and in 2004 they were ranked number 4 in Rolling Stone magazine’s 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.

Queen

Queen are a British rock band formed in 1970 in London by guitarist Brian May, lead vocalist Freddie Mercury, and drummer Roger Taylor, with bass guitarist John Deacon joining the following year. The band is noted for their musical diversity, multi-layered arrangements, vocal harmonies, and incorporation of audience participation into their live performances.

In 1969, guitarist Brian May, a student at London’s Imperial College, and bassist Tim Staffell decided to form a group. May placed an advertisement on the college notice board for a drummer; Roger Taylor, a young dental student, auditioned and got the job. They called the group Smile and served as a support act for bands such as Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Yes and the original Genesis. Smile were signed to Mercury Records in 1969, and had their first session in a recording studio in Trident Studios that year.

Staffell was attending Ealing Art College with Farrokh Bulsara, later known as Freddie Mercury, and introduced him to the band. Bulsara soon became a keen fan. Staffell left in 1970 to join another band, Humpy Bong; the remaining Smile members, encouraged by Bulsara, changed their name to “Queen” and continued working together.

The band had a number of bass players during this period who did not fit with the band’s chemistry. It was not until February 1971 that they settled on John Deacon and began to rehearse for the first album. Queen had moderate success in the early 1970s, with the albums Queen and Queen II, but it was with the release of Sheer Heart Attack in 1974 and A Night at the Opera the following year that the band gained international success. They have released fifteen studio albums, five live albums, and numerous compilation albums. Eighteen of these have reached number one on charts around the world. Queen rose to prominence during the 1970s and have sold over 300 million albums worldwide.

New Wave of British Music

The eighties brought a new wave of awesome music from the UK. Such groups like Duran Duran, Wham, Culture Club, ABC and Pet Shop Boys took the eighties by storm in the pop genre of music.

Duran Duran

Duran Duran are an English pop rock band famous for a long series of popular singles, albums and vivid music videos, for which they won two Grammy Awards. Duran Duran was created by Nick Rhodes and John Taylor, with the later addition of Roger Taylor, Andy Taylor, and Simon Le Bon, though none of the Taylors are related. The group has never disbanded, but the line-up has changed to include guitarist Warren Cuccurullo from 1989 to 2001, and drummer Sterling Campbell from 1989 to 1991.

John Taylor and Nick Rhodes formed Duran Duran in Birmingham, UK in 1978, naming the band after the villain “Dr. Durand Durand”, played by Milo O’Shea in Roger Vadim’s science-fiction film, Barbarella. Their first singer was Stephen Duffy. Several drummers and guitarists were subsequently tried, as well as a handful of vocalists after Duffy left Duran Duran.

The meeting of drummer Roger Taylor with Taylor and Rhodes at a party, led John Taylor, who originally played lead guitar, to switch to bass. Guitarist Andy Taylor came from Newcastle to audition after responding to a magazine advertisement, and London vocalist Simon Le Bon was recommended to the band by an ex-girlfriend who worked at the Rum Runner nightclub where the band rehearsed.

Duran Duran was amongst the earliest bands to work on their own remixes. Before the days of digital synthesizers and easy audio sampling, they created multilayered arrangements of their singles, sometimes recording entirely different extended performances of the songs in the studio. These “night versions” were generally available only on vinyl, as b-sides to 45 rpm singles or on 12-inch club singles, until the release of the compilation Night Versions: The Essential Duran Duran in 1998.

In August, the band were booked as presenters at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards, only to be surprised with a Lifetime Achievement Award. They also received a Lifetime Achievement award from Q Magazine in October, and the equivalent Outstanding Contribution award at the BRIT Awards in February 2004.

A selection of the band’s hit singles from the 1980s include, “Girls on Film”, “Rio”, “Hungry Like the Wolf“, “Save a Prayer”, “Notorious“, and the James Bond theme “A View to a Kill”. In the early 1990s, the band released, “Ordinary World” and “Come Undone“, and released “Sunrise”, and “What Happens Tomorrow” in the 2000s. “Falling Down” was released from their 2007 album, Red Carpet Massacre. Since the 1980s they have placed 21 singles in the Billboard Hot 100 and 30 in the Top 40 of the UK Singles Chart, and have sold more than 85 million records.

Culture Club

Culture Club was a British pop group that formed in the early 1980s. The band consisted of Boy George (lead vocals), Mikey Craig (bass guitar), Roy Hay (guitar and keyboards), and Jon Moss (drums and percussion). In 1981, Boy George used to occasionally sing with the group Bow Wow Wow under the stage name “Lieutenant Lush”. After his tenure with the group, George decided to start his own band and enlisted Mikey Craig. Next came Jon Moss, and finally Roy Hay. The group recorded demos, which were paid for by EMI Records, but the label was unimpressed and decided not to sign the group. Virgin Records heard the demos and signed the group in the UK, and Epic Records signed them in the US as Virgin did not have a U.S presence at the time.

The release of the third single “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?”, a reggae-influenced number, went to #1 in the UK in late 1982 and became an international hit, peaking at #1 in over a dozen countries,and sold 6.5 million copies worldwide. The debut of the band on Top of the Pops caused headlines such as “Wally of the week” and “Mr. (or is it Mrs. ?) Weird” in the tabloids in reaction to George’s androgynous look and eccentric dress.

The follow-up single “Time (Clock of the Heart)”, featuring George’s soulful vocals over an R&B groove, became another Top 10 hit in the U.S. and UK. “I’ll Tumble 4 Ya” also became a Top Ten hit in the U.S. and in Canada. This gave Culture Club the distinction of becoming the first band since The Beatles to garner three Top Ten hits in the U.S. from a debut album. The album sold over two million copies in the U.S., and another three million worldwide at the time of its release, propelling George to international fame.

Their second album, Colour by Numbers, was released in 1983. The first single “Church of the Poison Mind”, featuring backing vocalist Helen Terry, reached the UK and U.S. Top 10, continuing the group’s success. The second single “Karma Chameleon” gave the band its second #1 hit in the UK, where it sold 1.4 million copies and became the best-selling single of 1983 in that country. It also topped the U.S. charts for three weeks,sold 1.3 million copies, and would eventually hit #1 in sixteen countries,and sold 7 million copies worldwide. Colour by Numbers would go on to have more hits, such as “Miss Me Blind” (#5 U.S.), “It’s a Miracle” (#4 UK, #13 U.S.), and “Victims” (#3 UK), (all three singles featuring R&B singer Jermaine Stewart on background vocals) and sold four million copies in the U.S. and another five million worldwide at its time of release. With that album, Culture Club was the first group ever to have a diamond album (10 times platinum) in Canada, for more than a million copies sold. The band also won the 1984 Grammy Award for Best New Artist.

In 1998, the band put their differences aside and decided to do a reunion tour. Kicking off with a performance on VH1 Storytellers. The tour was a major success. A compilation album based around the Storytellers performance was released,and went platinum in uk, which included new songs such as “I Just Wanna Be Loved”, which hit UK #4.

Their 1999 studio album Don’t Mind If I Do peaked at #64 in the UK. Although not a strong seller, it included moderate UK hits in “Your Kisses Are Charity” (UK #25) and “Cold Shoulder” (UK #43). The band went on to tour, then reunited again for a 20th anniversary concert in 2002 at the Royal Albert Hall. This performance was released on DVD the following year. Culture Club then became inactive again, largely due to George’s DJ career.

Wham

Wham! (often written WHAM!) were a pop band formed in 1981 by George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley. Michael and Ridgeley met at Bushey Meads School in Watford, England, UK. At first, they performed in a short-lived rock and roll band called The Executive. They then changed their name and signed with Innervision Records. Soon after a legal victory over Innervision, the duo was signed to CBS, Columbia Records in the United States and Canada and Epic Records for the rest of the world.

George Michael took on the majority of roles and responsibilities within the band— composer, singer, producer, and occasional instrumentalist— but the contribution of Ridgeley as the group’s image specialist and spokesman was crucial to the band’s initial success.

The first record to be released by the band was “Wham Rap!”. It was a double-A side with a Social Mix and Anti-social Mix. Wham! got lucky when Top of the Pops (An important weekly BBC chart show on television) scheduled them. It had to look outside the Top 40 to fill a gap created by an act which had pulled out of recording. Nearest to the 40 mark and still climbing, Wham! was summoned, and a phenomenon immediately began.

By the end of 1983, Wham! was rivaling Duran Duran and Culture Club as Britain’s biggest pop act. Driven by Ridgeley, the duo changed their image, and Wham! returned in May 1984 with an updated, cutting-edge pop image quickly copied by other pop bands. Ridgeley changed the band’s look from “moody in leather jackets” to smiles and fashionable clothing, with an aim to promote themselves more as sex symbols rather than spokespeople for a disaffected generation.

Fittingly enough, these changes propelled the next single (a pop standard) to the top of the charts around the world. Wake Me Up Before You Go Go, a song Michael wrote from a note left to him in his hotel room one night by Ridgeley. The note was mistakenly written by Ridgeley as “don’t forget to wake me up up before you go go, George”. Since he accidentally wrote the word “up” twice, Ridgeley decided to compound the error and write “go” twice. It became their first UK #1 and rose to the top in the USA, capped by a memorable video of the duo.

The next single “Careless Whisper” was issued as a George Michael solo piece, yet it was co-written by Ridgeley. The song quickly reached #1. In the autumn of 1984, Wham! came back as a duo with “Freedom”, another chart-topper. In November, they released their second album, Make It Big, which coasted to #1 on the album charts.

George contributed to the Band Aid project, releasing Last Christmas and Everything She Wants as a double A-side record. “Everything She Wants” was written from the angle of a man rapidly approaching desperation at the material demands of his partner which seem to be coming to a head, despite the amount of work he did to keep them. In a twist, the second verse took the story a step further by revealing that the woman was pregnant but the man could not find any happiness in the announcement because of the extra pressure a baby would put upon him.

The presence of the Band Aid project meant that the double A-side peaked at number two in the UK singles chart, although in the process it became the biggest selling record not to get to number one. However, in the USA, the song did reach the summit of the Billboard Hot 100, and became the third number-one song in a row from 1984’s Make It Big album. Wham! would go on to have two more number-one hits in the UK before splitting at their height in 1986.

ABC

ABC was formed in 1980 in Sheffield, England after Martin Fry, a music journalist, interviewed the band Vice Versa, members Mark White (guitar) and Stephen Singleton (saxophone) for his fanzine (fan club publication), Modern Drugs. They adopted Fry as lead vocalist and changed their name to ABC.

The band is known for its rhythmic use of the synthesizers while also incorporating a funk and soul sound in its compositions. In 1982, the band released their debut album The Lexicon of Love. Heavy on rhyming couplets and tales of unrequited love, the album was a big hit, reaching number one in the UK album charts. The first single, “Tears Are Not Enough”, made the UK Top 20 in 1981. Soon afterwards, David Robinson left the band and was replaced by drummer David Palmer. The band had three Top 10 hits during 1982: the singles “Poison Arrow”, “The Look of Love (Part One)” and “All of My Heart” and shot high-concept music videos that captured a suave Great Gatsby-meets-James Bond aesthetic. “The Look of Love (part 5)”, issued only to club DJs, was perhaps the first pop song to be remixed with scratching (courtesy of Trevor Horn, producer).

David Palmer left the band before Beauty Stab, the second ABC album, was released in 1983 and Stephen Singleton retired from the band in 1984. Now a duo of Fry and White, augmented by two non-performing band members the 1985 album How To Be A…Zillionaire! marked another change of style, in this case toying with mid-1980s dance beats and samples. Keith LeBlanc from Tackhead programmed much of the beatbox work for the album. While the group did score its first American Top 10 hit with the infectious “Be Near Me”, at home in the UK it failed to break the Top 20. The album also featured the hits “How to Be a Millionaire”, “Vanity Kills” and “Ocean Blue”.

ABC was one of the first bands to do “video scratching” for several videos from the How to Be a… Zillionaire album, including the video for “Be Near Me.” Video Scratching is a video editing technique used within the music industry. It is a variation of the audio editing technique scratching, typically used in either music videos or live performances, with one or more individuals manipulating a video sample to make it follow the rhythm of whatever music is playing.

Following a hiatus while Fry was treated for Hodgkin’s disease, ABC returned to the studio to record Alphabet City, which they thought might be their final album. Best known for “When Smokey Sings”, a tribute to Smokey Robinson. Fry still tours as ABC, often in conjunction with other 1980s nostalgia or revival acts. Following a tour of the United States in May and June 2006, Fry and Palmer, together with keyboardist Chuck Kentis, put together a new ABC album with the title of Traffic. It was released on 28 April, 2008. Gary Langan, who worked on The Lexicon of Love and Beauty Stab, mixed and produced the album. The first single, “The Very First Time”, debuted on BBC Radio 2 in January, was added to the station’s “A” playlist for the week beginning 29 March, and was released as a download track on 1 April.