British Invasion

The arrival of the Beatles in the US in 1964 marked the start of the British Invasion

The British Invasion was a cultural phenomenon of the mid-1960s, when rock and pop music acts from the United Kingdom and other aspects of British culture became popular in the United States with significant influence on the rising "counterculture" on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. British pop and rock groups such as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Bee Gees, Gerry and the Pacemakers, the Who, the Kinks, the Zombies, Small Faces, the Dave Clark Five, the Spencer Davis Group, the Yardbirds, Them, Manfred Mann, the Searchers, Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas, Freddie and the Dreamers, the Hollies, Herman's Hermits, Chad and Jeremy, Peter and Gordon, the Animals, the Moody Blues, the Mindbenders, the Troggs, Cream, Traffic, the Pretty Things, Pink Floyd, and Procol Harum, as well as solo singers such as Dusty Springfield, Cilla Black, Petula Clark, Tom Jones, Donovan, and Marianne Faithfull were at the forefront of the "invasion."

Quotes about the British Invasion

• For two years after “I Want to Hold Your Hand” topped the U.S. charts in February 1964, the only sound that mattered had a British accent. The Dave Clark Five, Herman’s Hermits, Petula Clark: it was an obsession that went beyond the Beatles—and initially ignored the Rolling Stones.
  • David Kamp of Vanity Fair (February 10, 2014) [1]

• Today, the term “the British Invasion” is usually employed to describe (and market) the triumphal epoch of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and the Who, with honorable mentions to the Kinks and the Animals. In hindsight, and on merit, this sounds about right—these are the best and most revered of the English bands who came of age in the 1960s—but the reality of the British Invasion, which was at its most intense in the two years immediately following the Beatles’ landfall, was somewhat different. Far from being solely a beat-group explosion, the Invasion was a rather eclectic phenomenon that took in everything from Petula Clark’s lushly symphonic pop to Chad and Jeremy’s dulcet folk-schlock to the Yardbirds’ blues-rock rave-ups.
  • David Kamp of Vanity Fair (February 10, 2014) [2]