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Comment by JKCalhoun | Hacker News Reader

Agree, the Great Man Theory puts too little emphasis on time and place.

I feel the Beatles wild success in the United States is linked to the incredible sadness in the U.S. after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. These four English lads were the Pollyannas that the country needed, clung to, to get out of their national funk.

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I think that the success of the 'British invasion' groups in America is that it provided a safe way for mainstream Americans to listen to black musical genres.

The British musicians—who weren't as queasy about it—took R&B, Rock and Blues and played it back to the Americans from a safe distance.

Interesting theory. But isn’t this exactly what white American musicians were doing themselves? For instance, the Beatles started out imitating Elvis, who himself was largely a[n inferior] imitator of black American popular music.

They were imitating Little Richard a lot more than Elvis. In Get Back, they are mocking Elvis in a way that makes it clear that had been making fun of him this way for years.

Ahh, interesting. I’ll have to listen to that again.

The Beatles were inspired and constant fans of Elvis and his music.

https://daytrippin.com/2018/10/08/john-lennons-lifelong-obse...

https://lithub.com/when-the-beatles-met-their-idol-elvis-pre...

(interesting find prompted by other, also interesting, answer)

Not by then. After Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis had their explosive starts in the late 50s (that went into pauses with cousin-marrying and military service), white music was determined to market versions of them with all the implications of blackness stripped out. Instead, you had teen idols and white doo wop groups singing "Mister Sandman, bring me a dream..." White rock and roll is dead until the British invasion, who consisted of people who gleefully mined US race/blues records (and Elvis, and Jerry Lee Lewis), and fed it back to Americans.

That's a bit of what the movie Hairspray was about. The pause, that is.

edit: honestly, rock and roll probably would have died then if it weren't for the British Invastion. The kids were getting into folk.

That makes sense. Thanks for laying it out. (And the Stones: I have the impression that Jagger became a bit of an ethnomusicologist.)

It seems relevant that Jimi Hendrix only made it in the US as a "British invasion" act, after breaking through in the UK and securing the enthusiastic backing of McCartney, Clapton etc.

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