‘Die Briten kommen’. British Beat and the Conquest of Europe in the 1960s

Abstract

For centuries high culture has transcended national boundaries. During the twentieth century, and especially in the post-war period, popular culture has also become transnational. Comparative studies of popular culture remain, though, relatively rare, and much of what has been produced is concerned with cinema, as an element in the supposed Americanization of Western Europe. This emphasis is potentially misleading. Cinema is characterized by a particular structure dictated by the heavy capital requirements of the industry, which is consequently dominated by a handful of major companies operating from one world centre. Even independent films require finance at a level beyond the reach of amateurs; there is consequently no significant ‘garage’ sector in film, and cinema’s influence is inevitably a ‘top-down’ one. Popular music is different. The development of the international record industry from the 1960s has been accompanied by the proliferation of amateur performers at every level of competence. The multinational producers who run the industry have always sought — and needed — to draw upon this pool of potential. As a result the music market has always been partly shaped by the artistic preference of performers and the waves of consumer fashion — forces which were in fact interlinked. This was particularly true at the time that the industry first became genuinely transnational in the 1960s.

I am grateful to the helpful and friendly staff of the Archiv der Jugendkulturen in Berlin and to all those who have supplied me with information or helped me to masquerade as a polyglot: Katharina Boehmer, Sunniva Engh, Gerda Frank- Gemmill, Carolyne Larrington, Frieder Missfelder, Roger Pearson, Judy Quinn, Philippa Soeldenwagner, Nigel Townson and Cornelia Wilde.