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Copyright © 2017 by Harold Bronson
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Photos provided from the author’s archive unless otherwise noted.
Cover photos of The Hollies and Manfred Mann: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Design by starling
Set in Minion
epub isbn: 9781945572326
Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data
Names: Bronson, Harold, author.
Title: My British invasion / Harold Bronson.
Description: Includes index. | First Trade Paperback Original Edition | A Genuine Vireo Book | New York, NY; Los Angeles, CA: Rare Bird Books, 2017.
Identifiers: ISBN 9781945572098
Subjects: LCSH Bronson, Harold. | Rhino Records—History. | Sound recording executives and producers—United States. | Sound recording industry—United States—History. | Rock music—Great Britain—History and criticism. | Rock music—United States—History and criticism. | BISAC MUSIC / History & Criticism | MUSIC / Genres & Styles / Rock
Classification: LCC ML3792.R55 B76 2017 | DDC 384—dc23
Contents
Preface
Introduction
My Senior Year
Herman’s Hermits
The Hollies
Manfred Mann
The Yardbirds
The Spencer Davis Group
The Kinks, Ray Davies & Larry Page The Teenage Rage
The Troggs
The History of The Dave Clark Five
Emperor Rosko and the Pirates of Radio
An Hour with Marc Bolan
London 1972
Status Quo Go to Disneyland
London 1973
London 1976
Mike Chapman
Rotten
My Yardley Girl
Granny Takes a Trip
The Zombies Resurrected
Playlists
Preface
Prior to The Beatles, Britain was like a backwater country with little to offer me culturally. There were its authors: H. G. Wells, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and George Orwell were my favorites. And its films: James Bond, Alfred Hitchcock, and Peter Sellers. The British song I was most familiar with was the theme from TV’s The Adventures of Robin Hood, sung by Dick James, later The Beatles’ publisher. The Beatles’ music was different. It was an immediate tour de force of electricity and harmony that, because of the way it was recorded (especially the dominance of the electric guitar), seemed more powerful and exuberant than anything I had ever heard. Records such as “She Loves You,” “I Saw Her Standing There,” and “Twist and Shout,” were exciting, exuding an abandon not heard since the early days of rock ’n’ roll. As a teenager in the 1960s, The Beatles and other artists of the British Invasion sparked my interest in rock music. (Although most pop music fans associate the British Invasion with the large number of British artists who broke through in America during the mid-sixties, the term surfaced in the media five months before The Beatles set foot in America, referring to the numerous Broadway plays that originated in London’s West End.)
It’s acknowledged by those in the know that this mid-sixties period, among both Brits and Americans, produced the best music in the history of the rock era. In a 2003 poll of 271 music industry insiders, myself included, published as “Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time,” seven of the Top 10 albums were from the sixties.
What do you do when you’re too young to hang out in clubs and you aren’t living in London? You play records. In the early 1970s, as a UCLA student, I wrote about popular music for the campus newspaper, the Daily Bruin, and then for Rolling Stone and other rock magazines. Prior to Rolling Stone and a few other magazines that formed in the late-sixties, pop music writers rarely plumbed for depth. The teen magazines, which appealed primarily to girls, were concerned with finding out a musician’s likes and dislikes, what kind of girls he favored, and asked questions along the lines of “do you wish you were more screamed at?” (An actual question.) At the expense of my wallet, my preference was to interview members of bands I liked from the sixties over popular, contemporary acts. I wasn’t interested in talking to members of Santana, Yes, The Allman Brothers, Lynyrd Skynyrd, or Chicago, even though their stories would have been more saleable. I preferred Herman’s Hermits, The Hollies, The Bee Gees, The Yardbirds, Procol Harum, and others. When I visited London, I tracked down performers who rarely came to Los Angeles.
Producer and Beatles expert Martin Lewis opened my eyes to the concept that oral histories have to be questioned. We were discussing the ten-hour Beatles Anthology TV documentary that aired on ABC (in the US) and ITV (in the UK) in November 1995. Martin pointed out that many of The Beatles’ recollections weren’t accurate accounts of what occurred, but merely retellings of how they had related the stories through the decades.
The interviews I conducted were closer to the events that transpired than ones done by others decades later, and are probably more accurate given the natural decline in memory with age. I feel I’ve told my subjects’ stories with more veracity, insight, and context than others have.
In film classes at UCLA, I learned that many of the recommended books on the history and criticism of American film came from British and French authors. Similarly, as an American fan, I feel I have a perspective different from those who were participants in an ongoing and vibrant scene. I’ve taken an American viewpoint. The whole British pop scene was thrust on America in a manner that was totally counter to the more leisurely absorption available to the British. This resulted initially in a more intense experience.
The sixties even influenced me in business. The Beatles’ Apple Records inspired the formation of Rhino Records, the label I cofounded with Richard Foos. Launched in August 1968 with high ideals, Apple reflected the quality that fans had come to expect from Beatles’ records: from the graphics and press materials to the initial slate of artists signed—Mary Hopkin, Badfinger, and James Taylor among them. The Beatles press officer Derek Taylor established a distinct writing style in the artist bios and advertising. Unfortunately, the essence of Apple was short lived. Because of the times, the drugs, and their insular environment, The Beatles initiated the large number of naïve, absurd, hubristic, and delusional projects recounted in Richard DiLello’s outstanding book The Longest Cocktail Party. Richard Foos and I did a lot of crazy things at our label, but we always tried to keep our heads on straight.
We couldn’t hope to measure up to Apple: we didn’t have The Beatles’ money, taste, or charisma. Still, there were things we could learn. That Apple wasn’t limited to being a record company, but included films, electronics, and a clothes boutique encouraged us to expand into other areas. In growing our company, we embraced the sixties ethos that anything was possible, but we were also realistic. Although we would have loved to have produced hit records, we discerned early on that it was beyond our expertise. Atypical of record companies, we produced films and published books. We had a few meetings in Las Vegas about a Rhino-themed restaurant, but the project was unrealized. Interestingly enough, ten years after I had interviewed The Monkees, The Turtles, The Zombies, The Spe
ncer Davis Group, and other artists of the sixties as a student, I was reissuing their records at Rhino. Major labels allocated the least amount of money possible to maximize profits from these old masters. We approached reissuing the great music of the past as a reflection of how important the music was to us growing up. Our goal was to provide an excellent package—well-written liner notes and rare photos—and a superior-sounding album, even if it may have cost us more money.
This is my story: the story of a passionate music fan who explored the British music scene and met many of the performers whose music he loved, and in some cases got to know as a journalist, music executive, or even friend. I’ve always been interested in history, and that fueled my desire to learn more about the history of the artists and the music they created. There are chapters on my immersion in London’s rock scene in the early seventies and chapters on significant music-makers from the sixties and seventies, structured somewhat lineally. Although the reader would benefit from reading them in order, as information is introduced, one can also skip around, as each chapter holds up on its own. Rock on!
Introduction
Age is an important factor in providing any cultural movement with added personal significance. Whether it’s a teenage girl cooing over Frank Sinatra in the 1940s or a haggard hippie immersing himself in the political philosophy of Phil Ochs before joining a protest march in the 1960s, one is most impressionable in their teenage years. Or maybe not. One is impressionable as a preteen, too, but soon thereafter one recognizes that many prepubescent fascinations lack the proper intellectual reasoning for a significant, personal choice. Imagine: “Those were the days… The Partridge Family were the best, it was all downhill from there.”
For Americans, life in the Eisenhower years was very safe, which perhaps made it possible for American teenage culture to become more aware of itself and its needs, and of its moral and political feelings. In previous eras, it was broken down to adults and children—there was no separate teenage culture. But World War II brought America out of the Great Depression, and these newly emerged teenagers had money to burn, money to support a commercial market that was aimed directly at them. It was still a conservative, insular world, with domestic life coping with the flux of the family, rock ’n’ roll, and the newfound influence of television.
Everyone knows the story of how, as the 1950s became the 1960s, most of America’s potent rockers had disappeared, whether through plane or car crashes, social ostracism, or lifestyle transitions like Elvis going into the Army. By 1963, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Gene Vincent, and Fats Domino had disappeared from the Top 30, but that didn’t mean that there wasn’t good music. It was just different music. Male and female vocal groups, folk groups, and the rise of the female singer defined the pre-Beatles years.
Over in Britain, there was a flux of another kind. Britain’s bundle of wartime babies was the first generation to be interested in what was going on in America. World War II had a lot to do with that. In Britain there were bombed-out buildings and rubble, but America was untarnished. The visiting, affable GIs planted the seeds of interest, and soon American culture was fervently embraced. The English marveled at the flashy cars, the Western and gangster films, modern appliances, Coca-Cola, and Marilyn Monroe. The mystique was irresistible.
There were reports that when Bill Haley belted “Rock Around the Clock” over the opening credits of the Blackboard Jungle movie, the normal, sedate British kids tore up the theater seats. For the first time they were able to betray their rigid schoolkid uniforms and feel outright liberation! This is what rock ’n’ roll triggered. With young America manipulated to favor the pop singers who appeared on American Bandstand, many of whom lived in Philadelphia where the show was produced, America’s eminent rockers, now considered passé, set their sights on more receptive audiences in Europe, England particularly.
Finally, with an opportunity to see the real thing compared to the pretenders who populated their turf, the English responded enthusiastically, both as fans and as imitators. What an odd phenomenon—scrawny English schoolboys casting themselves as second-generation bearers of rock ’n’ roll and the blues. What could possibly have moved so many timid, pale classroom nebbishes to cast themselves as anguished blues belters in the manner of Ray Charles, or drugged-out cool jazz musicians? Perhaps it was a search to develop a new identity and get as far away as possible from class consciousness, English manners, or just tea and crumpets.
Many, like The Beatles, were inspired by Elvis Presley, Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent, and The Everly Brothers to form rock ’n’ roll combos to further experience the exhilaration. The hippest English music fans responded to genuine rock ’n’ roll figures, like Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, and Buddy Holly, over the less substantial Fabian, Freddy Cannon, and Frankie Avalon. We might note that England’s equivalents—Lonnie Donegan (King of Skiffle), Marty Wilde, Billy Fury, Vince Eager, Duffy Power—were “safe” enough to offer a homebred rock ’n’ roll that was at least acceptable to BBC’s conservative radio.
All the same, Americans couldn’t have cared less about England’s pop stars. Among the handful of Brits who had American hits, there were pop singers Anthony Newley and Frank Ifield; folk singer Lonnie Donegan; folk-pop trio The Springfields; and one instrumental band, The Tornados. Their token chart appearances reflected a lack of interest in sounds from the UK. Even Cliff Richard, the British equivalent of Elvis Presley, at that time invincible in his own land, failed to dent America’s Top 20 until 1976. One thing was evident: as the 1950s spilled into the 1960s, rock ’n’ roll was in desperate need of a shot in the arm.
Prior to the British Invasion, American teenage culture was conventional. Our role models were sports stars, baseball players like Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays. Closer to home, it was he-man, physical stuff embodied by the high school football hero whose girlfriend was invariably a cheerleader. Even Jan and Dean and Brian Wilson, leaders of California’s pre-Beatles surf music craze, had played for their high school teams.
Similarly, regular ads in comic books for Charles Atlas pitched an exercise program with illustrations of a muscular bully kicking sand in the face of an undernourished kid. The program promised “the ‘Greek god’ type of physique that women rave about at the beach.” Cars also fascinated teenagers, especially hot rods, dragsters, and so-called muscle cars. In contrast, I found the cultural stimulation and intelligence offered by The Beatles and their ilk much more appealing than what had passed for American teenage culture. And it didn’t matter that they were skinny, like the kid bullied in the Charles Atlas ad, girls went crazy for them. It also planted the seed that less-than-burly American teenagers could form Beatle-like combos and arouse a similar appeal.
When The Beatles stormed the American shores in February 1964, they opened the doors for an onslaught of similarly attired Englishmen who sang and played guitars and drums and who came to dominate the American pop music scene. But The Beatles and the other groups might not have happened if it hadn’t been for the revision of the National Service Act, similar to the US draft that required young adults to serve in the armed forces. Brits born after September 1939 were no longer called for service, freeing them to follow their rock ’n’ roll passions.
Although the sound of the bands that made up the British Invasion was different, the influences were invariably American. The more discerning English fans embraced American blues and rhythm and blues artists whose honest and emotive approach many found more appealing.
Imagine these Englishmen able to see past America’s early-sixties stars to get to the real thing: bloodshot, bourbon-drinking, sinister-looking Negroes who played a simple, sexual rock ’n’ roll—a music too threatening for the mass American audience. Young British musicians were attracted to their authenticity and poetic imagery. They made efforts to find records by bluesmen such as John Lee Hooker, Slim Harpo, Bo Diddley, Muddy Waters, and Jimmy Reed. When The Rolli
ng Stones and The Animals toured America, teenagers received their first dose of American blues in this second-hand manner.
One can use Slim Harpo as an example. The sleepy-eyed Louisianan was almost unknown among white Americans. But this didn’t stop the English from embracing him, with the result that most of the songs on his first album were covered by top English groups: The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, The Who, Them, The Pretty Things, and The Moody Blues, who even took their name from one of his songs. The lyrics were often deeper than cutesy boy-girl relationships. Sexual innuendo and references to voodoo were commonplace. Many times it was life and death on the line; Slim Harpo sang of having one foot in the grave in “This Music’s Hot.” The musicianship, especially the blues guitar, was adventurous by pop music standards, and, again, proved an instrumental inspiration.
These smitten English rockers were on a mission. They played the music because they were enamored of it, and wanted to spread “the gospel,” as it were, not because they ever thought they could be successful. No one performing this music had ever broken through before. If one wanted to be successful, he had to mold himself into a Cliff Richard or Tommy Steele and be a solo singer.
When the music of sinister-looking American Negroes proved saleable, it gave rise to the concept of the anti-star, the ones who broke all the rules and didn’t look like well-groomed pop stars with slicked back hair, shiny smiles, and polished shoes. The Rolling Stones were the trend’s poster boys. Here’s a particularly unkind assessment by Bill Whitworth in the New York Herald Tribune: “One of them looks like a chimpanzee. Two look like very ugly Radcliffe girls. One resembles the encyclopedia drawings of pithecanthropus erectus. The fifth is a double for Ray Bolger in the role of Charley’s Aunt.”
While American kids were reeling under the metal weight of orthodontic braces, along came the British, who not only made it acceptable to sport less-than-perfect movie star smiles, but whose crooked teeth lent an aura of distinctive character to their faces. George Harrison’s timid personality was enhanced when his smile revealed vampire-sized canines. Peter Asher’s cute overlapping incisors and unhip, black plastic-framed glasses inspired Austin Powers’ look decades later. A Rolling Stones’ fan could keep score as Keith Richards kept losing teeth. (Do you think I’m kidding? Bob Kirsch was interviewing Keith for Billboard when one of his teeth came out. Keith unceremoniously dropped it in an ashtray, not breaking stride with the interview.) New standards were set. No longer did one have to look like Troy Donohue to be a star. (Donohue, an uncommonly handsome film and TV star of the fifties and sixties, provided the inspiration for The Simpsons character Troy McClure, and is mentioned in a song from Grease.) It didn’t matter if one wore glasses, had a misshapen face, or sticks for legs.
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