| Beat | |
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| Stylistic origins | |
| Cultural origins | Late 1950s – early 1960s, United Kingdom |
| Derivative forms | |
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| Freakbeat | |
| Regional scenes | |
| Other topics | |
Beat music,British beat, orMerseybeat is a Britishpopular musicgenre had developed aroundLiverpool in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The genre melded influences fromBritish andAmericanrock and roll,rhythm and blues,skiffle,traditional pop andmusic hall. It rose to mainstream popularity in theUnited Kingdom and Europe by 1963 before spreading toNorth America in 1964 with theBritish Invasion. The beat style had a significant impact on popular music andyouth culture from 1960s movements such asgarage rock,folk rock andpsychedelic music.
The exact origins of the terms 'beat music' and 'Merseybeat' are uncertain. The "beat" in each, however, derived from the drivingrhythms which the bands had adopted from their rock and roll, R&B and soul music influences, rather than theBeat Generation literary movement of the 1950s. As the initial wave of rock and roll subsided in the later 1950s, "big beat" music, later shortened to "beat", became a live dance alternative to the balladeers likeTommy Steele,Marty Wilde, andCliff Richard who were dominating the charts.[1] The German anthropologist and music criticErnest Borneman, who lived in England from 1933 to 1960, claimed to have coined the term in a column inMelody Maker magazine to describe the British imitation of American rock'n'roll, rhythm & blues and skiffle bands.[2]
The 'Mersey' of 'Merseybeat' refers to theRiver Mersey. Liverpool lies on the eastern side of the river's estuary.
The nameMersey Beat was used for a Liverpool music magazine founded in 1961 byBill Harry. Harry claims to have coined the term "based on apoliceman's beat and not that of the music".[3] The band the Pacifics were renamed the Mersey Beats in February 1962 byBob Wooler,MC at theCavern Club, and in April that year they becamethe Merseybeats.[4] With the rise ofthe Beatles in 1963, the terms Mersey sound and Merseybeat were applied to bands and singers from Liverpool, the first time in British pop music that a sound and a location were linked together.[5] The equivalent scenes in Birmingham and London were described asBrum Beat and theTottenham Sound respectively.[6]
The most distinctive characteristic of beat music was its strong beat, using thebackbeat common torock and roll andrhythm and blues, but often with a driving emphasis on all the beats of 4/4 bar.[7] The rhythm itself—described byAlan Clayson as "a changeless four-four offbeat on the snare drum"—was developed in the clubs inHamburg, West Germany, where many English groups, including the Beatles, performed in the early 1960s and where it was known as themach schau (make show) beat.[8] The 8/8 rhythm was flexible enough to be adopted for songs from a range of genres. In addition, according to music writerDave Laing,[8]
"[T]he chord playing of the rhythm guitar was broken up into a series of separate strokes, often one to the bar, with the regular plodding of the bass guitar and crisp drumming behind it. This gave a very different effect from the monolithic character of rock, in that the beat was given not by the duplication of one instrument in the rhythm section by another, but by an interplay between all three. This flexibility also meant that beat music could cope with a greater range of time-signatures and song shapes than rock & roll had been able to".
Beat groups usually had simpleguitar-dominated line-ups, withvocalharmonies and catchy tunes.[9] The most common instrumentation of beat groups featured lead, rhythm and bass guitars plus drums, as popularised bythe Beatles,the Searchers, and others.[1] Beat groups—even those with a separate lead singer—often sang both verses and choruses inclose harmony, resemblingdoo wop, with nonsense syllables in the backing vocals.[10]
In the late 1950s, a flourishing culture of groups began to emerge, often out of the decliningskiffle scene, in major urban centres in the UK like Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and London. This was particularly true in Liverpool, where it has been estimated that there were around 350 different bands active, often playing ballrooms, concert halls and clubs.[3] Liverpool was perhaps uniquely placed within Britain to be the point of origin of a new form of music. Commentators have pointed to a combination of local solidarity,industrial decline, social deprivation, and the existence of a large population of Irish origin, the influence of which has been detected in Beat music.[11] It was also a major port with links to America, particularly through theCunard Yanks,[12] which made for much greater access to American records and instruments like guitars, which could not easily be imported due to trade restrictions.[11] As a result, Beat bands were heavily influenced by American groups of the era, such asBuddy Holly and the Crickets (from which group the Beatles derived their name, combining it with a pun on the beat in their music),[13] and to a lesser extent byBritish rock and roll groups such asthe Shadows.[14]
After the national success of the Beatles in Britain from 1962, a number of Liverpool performers were able to follow them into the charts, includingGerry & The Pacemakers (who achieved a number one hit in the UK before the Beatles),[15]the Searchers, andCilla Black.
Outside of Liverpool many local scenes were less influenced by rock and roll and more by therhythm and blues and later directly by theblues. These included bands from Birmingham who were often grouped with the beat movement, the most successful beingthe Spencer Davis Group andthe Moody Blues. Similar blues influenced bands who broke out from local scenes to national prominence werethe Animals fromNewcastle[15] andThem fromBelfast.[16] From London, the termTottenham Sound was largely based aroundthe Dave Clark Five, but other London-basedBritish rhythm and blues and rock bands who benefited from the beat boom of this era includedthe Rolling Stones,[17]the Kinks andthe Yardbirds.[18]
The Beatles' appearance onThe Ed Sullivan Show soon after led to chart success.[19] During the next two years,the Animals,Petula Clark,the Dave Clark Five,[15] theRolling Stones,[17]Donovan,[20]Peter and Gordon,Manfred Mann,Freddie and the Dreamers,The Zombies,Wayne Fontana andthe Mindbenders,Herman's Hermits, andthe Troggs would have one or more number one singles in America.[21]
Freakbeat is a subgenre ofrock and roll music developed mainly by harder-driving British groups, often those with amod following during theSwinging London period of the mid to late 1960s.[22][23] Freakbeat bridges "British Invasion mod/R&B/pop andpsychedelia".[24] The term was coined by English music journalistPhil Smee.[25] AllMusic writes that "freakbeat" is loosely defined, but generally describes the more obscure but hard-edged artists of theBritish Invasion era such asthe Creation,the Pretty Things orDenny Laine's early solo work.[26] Other bands often mentioned as Freakbeat arethe Action,the Move,the Smoke,the Sorrows, andWimple Winch.[27]
By 1967, beat music was beginning to sound out of date, particularly compared with the "harder edged"blues rock that was beginning to emerge.
Most of the groups that had not already disbanded by 1967, like the Beatles, moved into different forms ofrock music andpop music, includingpsychedelic rock and eventuallyprogressive rock.[28]
Beat was a major influence on the Americangarage rock[29] andfolk rock movements,[30] and would be a source of inspiration for subsequent rock music subgenres, includingBritpop in the 1990s.[31]
Während der fünfziger Jahre schrieb ich eine wöchentliche Spalte in der englischen Musikzeitschrift 'Melody Maker'. Um den englischen Imitationen der amerikanischen Rhythm-and-Blues, Rock-and-Roll und Skiffle Bands einen Namen zu geben, erfand ich das Wort 'beat music', das sich mittlerweile in vielen Sprachen eingebürgert hat.
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