It was Fifties America, and we ruled the rock and roll kingdom. Haleys Comets and a handfull of Crickets were ripping the doors of the Hit Parade off their hinges and the crooners and swooners were collapsing faster than a paraplegic trying to walk after taking too much morphine. Doris Day's day was as dead as a Kennedy and Sinatra was replaced by Presley, doing Hound Dog his way. It was Jerry Lee Lewis, Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps, bopping Lula to a be bop beat, Eddie Cochran suffering from too much Summertime Blues and Little Richard was Little Queenie before Little Queenie. Good Golly, it's Miss Molly Penniman.
Meanwhile across the pond, there were four Liverpudlians who were feasting on a steady rock and roll diet of Buddy Holly and Elvis, Cochran and Vincent, Holly and Penniman. American rockabilly and British skiffle were now unknowingly headed on a collison course that would trigger a tsunami of Mop Top Mania and an earthquake and rock aftershock that would swallow a whole generation in it's wake.
John, Paul, George and Ringo were the Fab Four equivilent of the Lewis and Clark looking for a route to the top of the American music charts. The land of Billboard, the bible, the gospel according to the record buying teen public. The Rock God was number one with a bullet and the Virgin Mary was a backup singer in sequins.
The Beatles? Don't you mean the Quarrymen, (good working class title for working class lads) who formed in 1957. By 1960 they had morphed into the Beatles, or at least the first incarnation of the Beatles as back up group for Tony Sheridan and the Beatles. Who the fuck is Tony Sheridan? Not a Fifth Beatle by any stretch. He ain't no Pete Best or Stu Sutcliffe. Speaking of Stu, he was Lennon's best friend at the time, and is the one who proposed the name, "Beetles" as a working band name.
It was borrowed from the black leather jacket punk cinema big screen drive-in film "The Wild One" with Marlon (I'ev Got Real Balls!0 Brando. The story was based loosely on the Hells Angels rampage in Hollister, California in the post-war 1940's. The film also showcased a young real life bad-ass Lee Marvin as leader of one of the gangs, The Beetles. Although they all liked the name, it was John Lennon who suggested the spelling we are more familiar with...The Beatles. Yeah, yeah, yeah..the Beat.
At first they played small clubs in and around Liverpool as well as dingy dive clubs in Munich, most notably the Star Club. Their following began to grow and with Brian Epstein at the helm as manager they got a recording contract and released their first single Love Me Do in the UK, it made it's way to the US and blasted through the roof. Hit after hit followed from She Was Just Seventeen, I Want to Hold Your Hand to the all familiar, She Loves You, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah...there was no stopping them at this point.
The initial Beatles sound was heavy on the pop side of the fence before it got more experimental with the concept album Sgt. Pepper and songs like Norweigian Wood. The early sound according to Lennon was influenced by the Pineapple Princess and former Mouseketeer, Annette Funicello! The studio elements are what the Beatles liked, the beat, the movement of the song and was adopted by them at first, which paid off in hit after hit.
By 1964 a tour was arranged in the US and when they landed at the airport in New York to thousands of sceaming fans to greet them, the boys didn't know it was for them. Lennon asked if the Presidents plane had landed. When it finally hit them it was overwhelming. They knocked 'em dead across the country in stadiums and large indoor venues. While on this first tour, Epstein contacted America's oldest living teenager at the time anyway, Dick Clark. Dick is dead for those keeping track, but for whateve reason, he delcined.
Maybe it was the name - American Bandstand...the Beatles were not American afterall..Dick had spent years with young new artists bent over forwards and treating him like God Almighty, but here was something bigger than Bandstand and Dick knew it, so the next call was to Ed "Really Big Shoe" Sullivan, the anti-Christ of Broadway. The anti-Christ recognized the ratings bonanza and even though he was an asshole in real life, he was also a realist and a showman.
Sullivan was their first "live" appearance on American TV, however taped performances where shown prior to Sullivan on CBS News with Walter Cronkite, the Milton Berle Show and Jack Paar. By the way, in case you didn't know, Dick Clark is dead.
The tour got bigger after the Sullivan show, Beatles hits fired off like bullets from a Gatling Gun taking over the charts as never before mowing down the old guard, and the way was paved for the next British Invasion of the former colonies...it was the age of Mods and Rockers, and it was time for Bobby Rydell and even Elvis to move over and make way. The Redcoats were landing once again on our shores in a vinyl record assault that would rule the AM radio dial and forever change rock and roll and the way we listened to it.
The British Invasion -Part Two
The British Invasion was a musical assault to rival the military precision of the Normandy Invasion. The Beatles acting as Recon cleared the path for the Rolling Stones, the bad boys of rock and roll, grit and blues with middle finger attitude for the middle class, they may not have been getting "satisfaction," but they had balls. While the Beatles merely wanted to hold your hand, the Stones told you to fuck off and get off their cloud. Then there was the Dave Clark Five the one group the Beatles actually felt could knock them off the charts. Lennon in a later interview said, "We felt that if we could last 10 years as muscians we'd be doing good. The only group we worried about was the Dave Clark Five!"
The DC5 had that keyboard sound going with pretty boy Clark in the drummer's seat. The key to the Five was the vocalist, Mike Smith. Blues voice with a raspy edge that cut through the pop bullshit as clean as a machete in a bamboo forest. Along with their pop hits, the additional album cuts were gems, such as the down and out in the wee small hours of the morning urban rendition of "On Broadway" and the party hearty jukin' "Reelin' and A Rockin" with Smiths voice redlining on blues overdrive slamming all four rock and roll gears.
Not all animals belong in a zoo nor are all Eric's a burden, but when Eric Budon and the Animals awakened the charts with the Rising Sun you knew they wouldn't bring you down. The Animals were as unlikely as it got to being chart toppers, but they were a carniverous musical ensemble that attacked the charts with a voracious hunger seasoned with a vicious and raw sound that was just as at home in the Mississippi Delta as it was on Carnaby Street or Picadilly Square.
Other groups that blasted to the top of the rock and roll mountain during the assault included the Swingin' Blue Jeans who put some blue jean ass with hipster class in the Hippy, Hippy, Shake and the Spencer Davis group was telling the world that now I'm a Man and it was time to Gimme Some lovin' all fronted by the voice of a teenage Steve Winwood who would not only define the Spencer Davis sound, but, later would also lead a secondary invasion of Brit artists with the formation of Traffic and Blind Faith, not to mention his own solo career that continues into the 21st Century.
Every invasion needs comic relief and the Brits fielded their version of Jerry Lewis, the group, in the guise of Freddy and the Dreamers who broke through the charts with a song and dance called. Do the Freddy..arms flailing like a spastic in heat, and feet kicking out to the side all on a solid bedrock of pop schmaltz. This was followed by "I'm Telling You Know" with almost the same sound, making them the forefathers of the group Ace of Base where each song is indiscreble from the other and just as forgettable. It's one of those songs I hear, rarely, but when I do..I have to admit, I start singing along, but don't tell anybody...also if you do, don't flail your arms about wildly in public it could get you sedated and institutionalized.
There were other groups too participaing in the invasion such as Manfred Mann who hit the Billboard ground running with a jaunty little ditty called "Do Wah Diddy" and yes, there actually was a Manfred Mann who was a 22 year old South African keyboardist who was raised on rock and jazz. The distinctive vocals and harmonious harmonica riffs were unleashed by Paul Jones who along with Mike Smith and Eric Burdon had a bluesy rasp that resonated full tilt boogie to any song he put his talents too including Hootchie Kootchi Man, Got My Mojo Workin', Bring It To Jerome and Smokestack Lightnin' In a later incarnation the Manfred's became Manfred Mann Earth Band and had another hit on their hands with The Mighty Quinn (Quinn the Eskimo), a Dylan composition.
Justin Bieber? Fuck that! A wimp by any standard...Hermans Hermits with teen front man, Peter Noone rocked! The girls loved him, while some guys wanted to be Mick Jagger some wanted to be Noone..Noone got the chicks, we wanted them too, but, you had to be Noone. From Mrs. Brown You've got a lovely daughter to I'm Henry the Eighth the Hermits conquered the pop charts unlike teen heart throbs David Cassidy, Leif Garrett or gasp, Bieber! Besides watch VH-1 and you can get your Noone fix. I know Peter and have been friends for a few years now and he is the one who first told me that his good friend Mike Smith, vocalist for the Dave Clark Five had lung cancer and wasn't going to make it. I gave to the collection they were taking up and sadly the "voice" that rocked a generation will stilled. Mike is no longer with us, but with friends like Peter he was rich beyond measure. As I write this I am listening to my DC5 vinyl, scratches and all, but man..that voice kicks ass!
The British Invasion - Part Three By Mike Marino
The British Invasion was a decidedly male dominated invasion force of groups, however, there were smaller cadre's of male duos and solo artists. The Duo's in the stable of Brit acts including Peter and Gordon and Chad and Jeremy as the most notable. It was the Simon and Garfunkle factor of lilting harmonies and perfect pitch that propelled these two-somes to the top of the charts.
Peter Asher and Gordon Waller hit big with hits like "Please Lock Me Away" and others that seemed to float effortlessly and lyrically with beatiful harmonies. The Asher name may also be familiar as Peter's sister, Jane Asher was the girlfriend at the time of Paul McCartney. Chad and Jeremy neither of which had a sister that dated a Beatle, rocketed to the top of the pop charts with "That Was Yesterday and Yesterday's Gone," among others.
Sunshine came softly to the Sunshine Superman, who in a live version of Mellow Yellow admitted he was mad about Safron and also 14 year old girls! Donovan Leitch emerged from the British folk scene and brought a "folk you" attitude to the music charts on both sides of the Atlantic. He was generally compared to Bob Dylan, but there were too many differences, including the fact that Dylan sang about politics and social injustice, whereas Donovan gave us a working manual to Wear Our Love Like Heaven.
Dylan was Cold War Doom and Gloom while Donovan was more optimistic and concerned with the innerself, peace and tranquility. Dylan favored working class jeans, workmans cap and boots, while Donovan wore cascading robes and sandals and literally wore flowers in his hair.
Donovan, was a Scotsman, who took folk and blended it with psychedelia, a touch of jazz and pop, and packaged it for the record buy masses. His rise to fame during the British Invasion rocketed after an appearace on Ready, Steady, Go, the Brit version of Bandstand. He now had entre' to the top of the pop mountain and quickly became good friends with fellow folkie Joan Baez, Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. In fact, Donovan taught John Lennon a finger picking guitar style in the late Sixties.
Eventually by the 70's and 80's, long after the British Invasion had lost it's luster, the hipster and the hippie were replaced by the East Coast punks and and the West Coast grunge. Donovan simply faded away to borrow a phrase from General Douglas McArthur...Dylan and Donovan comparison? Well even now it's hard to put the two together. I have many t-shirts with Dylan's image emblazoned on them..but have yet to find even one with Donovan..wearing his love like heaven and chasing down 14 yar old girls.
The male solo acts included a ponytailed Welsh parody of the ultimate Lounge Lizard, Tom Jones who gyrated his way into the hearts of the female species around the globe. He made a hairy chest and tight pants with frontal bulge sexy, probably inducing mastabutory activity among his female fans. These same women would orgasmically toss their underwear on the stage whenever in the front row of one of his concerts. It is still under investigation as to whether these female fans brought an extra pair along to toss or if they secretely removed them while seating and bouncing in their seats. Personally, this would have piqued my own curiosity and attention with all the fervor of a peeping Tom.
Lesser known but quirky solo acts included Ian Whitcomb, an enigma as mysterious as the builders of the pyramids. Originally a member of one of Britains numerous skiffle bands in 1957, he then formed a rock and roll band in 1959. Attending college in Dublin, Ireland he formed one of Irelands first blues bands, Bluesville in the early 60's, but he eventually went solo by 1965 with his hit "You Turn Me On" a raucous tune that including manic piano playing riffs and heavy breathing with Ian pumping hard with 'huh, huh, huh, that's my song!" He was a hot commodity and appeared on pop TV shows in the US such as Shindig, Hollywood A Go-Go and yes, American Bandstand! Clark Caved finally when he saw the writing on the wall and decided to cash in..better late than never Dicko, eh? Whitcomb toured as the opening act with the Beach Boys, The Rolling Stones, and Kinks.
But where were the Birds, or in English, not Brit mod pop, the girls? We had the Ronettes, the Crystals, the Supremes, and a ton of solo female acts blasting the charts on this side of the Atlantic. The British Invasion did have a female side to it that was as sexy as a pair of see through knickers and a large pair of knockers...taek for example..Busty Dusty Springfield!
Busty Dusty Springfield: Warrior Princess of the British
The Birds Are Coming! No, not another "Alfred Hitchcock" oedipus laden film of a young man and his overbearing mother who rules his life and this time seagulls attack from another planet. In the heady pop and roll, mods and rockers days of the British Invasion..birds were simply put, "girls" in plain old English without the hipster slang attached to it like a Carnaby Street carbuncle. Imagine if that term found favor in America, the Beach Boys would've had to sing "Two Birds for every Boy!" I guess though everybody's heard, that here was a "Surfing Bird" so now I am confused. Then of course where would we be without the folk rock Roger McGuinn and the 12 string sound of the Byrds? Roger that, amigo.
The British Birds ( hey, when in Rome, or London in this case..do as yadda, yadda, yadda...yeah, yeah, yeah..do wah diddy diddy) did take wing and dive bomb the charts with the fury of the fire bombing of Dresden during WWII, you know..the Big One! The Birds in this case hit direct bulls-eyes and if anyone of them stands out as wing commander and Warrior Princess of the Bird Brigade it has to be Dusty Spingfield. She was Mae West with a deep, throaty sound that set in a place a phallic phalanx of male worshippers from the era of the Brit beat to the Pet Shop Boys in the 90's. What has she done to deserve this? Answer: talent, beauty, energy, a fearsome beehive hair-do every boy wanted to get lost in (and a few girls two), and an uncompromising erotic erection erecting sultry steamy sex appeal that erupted from her deep throat ( no pun intended, or was it?)
Dusty was born, (ready?) as Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien. in 1939 in West London. West End Girls and East End Boys? Today, though passed on to the great recording studio in the sky, she is a member of both the UK Music Hall of Fame and the US Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
In 1962 Dusty was a member of a folk trio called The Springfields, (think Peter, Paul and Mary) along with her brother Tom and and a third singing partner, Tim Field. The hit the Billboard target in '62 with their release of "Silver Threads and Golden Needles" but success eluded them after that and the group disbanded in 1963 when Dusty went solo. She took the stage name "Springfield" after the name of the group, and recorded and released, "I Only Want To Be With You"..she was now in the vanguard of the female troops of the British Invasion as the first British girl singer, remember Bird? to conquer the US charts along with the Beatles, Stones and other male heavyweights.
She was also a fan of US pop music, especially the female singers, and more especially, American Soul. She was hosting a UK TV show of new artists in 1965 and used this venue to introduced many of the top Motown soul sister singers for the first time to British audiences. She herself at the time was the best selling female singer in the world.
By 1969, Dusty's star began to fade and flicker, and for almost two decades her career was on the skids. By the Eighties Dusty was working in the studio on a series of duets. Then one day, the fickle finger of fate fingered Dusty, (again, no pun intended but a lovely visual to my minds eye) when two young musicians Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe, (the Pet Shop Boys) got up the nerve to contact what they regarded, as a Goddess of blue eyed soul. They worship at the Springfield Temple of Busty Dusty and were allowed access to the forbidden city and granted an interview with her.
They proposed a musical collaboration that appealed to Dusty and the result, "What Have I Done to Deserve This" shot to the top of the US Charts. She teamed up with Pet Shop Boys to produce an album of Dusty Solo Singles called "Reputation" and it fed more hits to the charts nearly three decades after she first achieved musical success.
She died in March of 1999, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame three days later. Dusty may have sang, You Don't Have to Say You Love Me (just because it's true) but damn Dusty...you rocked and still rock today..and goddamn it..we do love you..we always have.
During the Sixites it was at one point the dawing of the age of Aquarius, and in the world of the British Invasion it was also an invitation to go "Downtown" where you could loose all your troubles and cares and a worry or two would go up in smoke by some miracle.
The Queen of the "Downtown Era" was Petula (Pet) Clark, not a angst ridden teen or twenty something at the time, she was already over 30, in an age when the battle cry was "Don't Trust Anyone Over 30," she had somehow snuck in the backdoor. Pet had already had a career as an entertainer during WWII, the Blitzkrieg Era brought to you by those madcap Nazi madmen, and was now embarking on pop stardom she never envisioned. War is hell, arms manufactures make a killing making machines for killing, but song and dance entertainers don't make a dime. "Downtown" by the way was released in four different languages a the same time and popped the lid off of every chart on the planet and Mars as well.
In 1942 at the age of nine she traveled to entertain the troops with another child actor of the day, Julie Andrews. Clark was so endearing that she became known as the British Shirley Temple. Why Shirley Temple wasn't referred to as the American Petula Clark is as much a mystery to me as it is to you.
She lacked the "look" of the times as well. Big hair was in style, thick eye-liner layered so deep you'd swear the bird was a female impersonator..hot looking but an impersonator nonetheless. Pet Clark on the other hand reminded one of a librarian more comfortable on the set of "Little House on the Prarie" than Albert Hall opening for Eric Burdon and the Animals. I kept waiting for her to appear on Sullivan as the Virgin Mary, ascend to heaven on high after having a Virgin Birth, or better yet, giving birth to a virgin, preferably one around 17 or so.
So now what in downtown Albany, New York the Street Business Assocition needed a name for a mascot for a new section of downtonw being being developed. The mascot was the logo of a blue lark, yep, a Bird!! A poll was unanimous naming the mascot Petula Lark!
So I wasn't impressed with her at first, but what the fuck do I know...she sold over 68 million records in her career!
When you think girl groups you generally think Motown or Phil Spector, but the Brits did have one standout girl group, granted a one hit wonder an only one girl member, but, I did have the album and it was a driving sound that kept the beat thanks to their female lead drummer, Honey.
The Honeycombs hit monster proportions with one song, "Have I The Right" with a driving drum beat that was over powering. Honey was a cosmetologist, and along with Martin Murray, her hairdresser partner in a salon in London, both had music in their blood. The group, origianlly called the Sheratons was later renamed The Honeycombs, after Honey and one of the tools of the beauty parlor trade the comb. The driving beat of the drums was supplemented in the studio by the rest of the band stomping their feet on the wood floor, an effect used by the Dave Clark Five on the song, "Glad All Over" and to some degree by Phil Spector in some recordings.
The Honeycombs started their descent soon after three more releases but never charted after that in the UK or US, but a Japanese Tour was different they were as revered there as Jerry Lewis is in France. They even produced a "live" album called "Live in Tokyo" for the Japanese fans. The group went through many changes after that and Honey took over as lead singer and Viv Taylor, of the group, Pretty Things took over drumming duties.
Mary Quant the Queen of Mod
The British Invasion was also an assault of style and fashion that captured the pop culture imagination of designers and the public at large It created fashion statements that are alive and well today and hair-styles that set the tone of the mod days and nights. Fashion designers worked over time and hair stylists used the inspiration and inhibition that heated their creative juices to concoct fun fashion with a flair that blasted the hinges off the doors of the staid Eisenhower years of the Fifties. Madras was dead, long live the Mod!
The capital of the world of all things Mod in the Sixties was a pedestrian shopping section of the Soho District in London. The area, though small was a cornucopia of colorful clothing boutiques, fashion stores and being the Sixties in London, it was also a hive of live entertainment venues and small clubs. Haight Ashbury in San Francisco,Greenwich Village in New York and Carnaby Street in the UK were a daily passing parade of young people that had been transformed into human peacocks, strutting around in the latest youthful fashions. The trendsetters of London, and the trans-atlantic jet setters all found their way to this "brave new world" of high style and fashion.
The Brit groups the Small Faces, the Kinks and the Who are perhaps the most examples of what the well styled Mod was sporting that season, or as Ray Davies wrote, they were indeed "dedicated followers of fashion" Look at a photo of Who drummer, Keith Moon perched on his beat keeping throne sporting the signature bulls-eye shirt.
Mods came from all over London, a mounted cavalry of style riding into town mounted on Vespa Scooters, birds on back holding on tight with scarves flying with a rakish and jaunty flow in the wind around their supple necks, reminiscent of World War One flying aces looking for the Red Baron, and doing it with not only daring do but fashionalbly as well. To paraphrase Billy Crystal, "They Looked Mah-velous!" Well heeled girls, and high heeled boys with a low spark, all in an age with Mod was God.
Every kingdom needs it's royal heads, and in the fashion world of London in the Sixties the Queen was Quant. Mary Quant! Having a degree in art and design, and having spent an apprenticeship as couture milliner, (yeah, I had to look that one up too) she opened her own shop of fashion and design in 1955 called Bazaar that offered a meager and acceptible line of accessories to brighten up black dresses. Exciting, eh? She soon designed a range of what she call "mad house pajamas" with bright and fun designs that would brighten up bedtime in ways that she hoped would loosen up the inhibitions and lead to a more, well, creative almost Kama Sutra side of bedtime.
By the Sixties, Quant was quite obsessed with allowing women to show more leg and less skirt, as were the males of the species. Hell, we'll take it where we can get it. The result, was the Mini-Skirt, which according to Sonny and Cher, was the "current rage, uh huh" Of course as in all cases of invention and design there are disputes as to who really is responsible for long legs and short skirts, however, my money is quite on Quant. Not disputed is the fact that she also designed the floral and colorful stockings that went with the mini-skirts as a fashion accessory. Bold Mod colors and designs perhaps the forerunner of today's need to tattoo every inch of flesh by the ink crowd. She is also responsible for the sweater dress, and other fashion statements with bold designs and colors.
You can also thank your Daisy Duke Lucky Stars as Quant is also responsible for the development and marketing of Hot Pants. The pants effects on the male of the species, and some females was to create a fire down below with one glance, and they did. Daisy Duke had hot pants, hot legs and plenty of power under her hood to rev anybody's engine and overheat.
Later years found Quant involved in design for one of the British Invasions most endearing pop phenomenons, the Mini Cooper! The sassy little car that was a favorite of George Harrison and Peter Sellers had the quaint touch of Quant added to it in 1988 on the interior. The car had black and white striped seats with red trim. The Quant Logo was prominent on the interior and the steering wheel had the signature Quant daisy and the hood had the Mary Quant Logo and name prominently displayed. It came in only two colors, jet black and also in white. Hell, even the Model T only came in black.
The Unisex Cockney
Carnaby Street, Mods, Mary Quant and Mini-Coopers..all part of the heritage that we know as the British Invasion. As you can see there was much more to it than the music, although it was the catalyst, or in effect and not demeaning the music, but the music was the rich manure that nutured a garden of fashion and style and set the tone for things to come...including the super model of the day, pencil thin Twiggy who rose above the crowd in a world dominated by Sophia, Bardot and Gina...French and Italian buxom beauties with large knockers and full tilt boogie knickers.
Lesley Lawson...better known as Twiggy set the covers of fashion magazines ablaze around the world, not to mention a look, an adrogynous look that was sexy, not sexless, and overnight. skinny was in. With a 31-23-32 figure, not big and meaty big and bouncy by any stretch, at the age of 16 her comet began it's journey through the universe of pop culture and international fame. Twiggy was born in 1949. and by the age of 16 in 1965 was a part of the London scene. Mods, hippies, hipsters, rockers, bankers, models along with wannabe's on the fringe of the fringe.
London was buzzing with fashion designers and high style hairdressers at the time, and Lesley Lawson was dating one of the promising young stars of the salon. He suggested that she go visit super star stylist Leonard, who was a friend of his. Seems Leonard had an idea for a new look called the "crop cut" and wanted to try iy out on aspiring models to test consumer reaction.
Twig, (childhood nickname) agreed to try something new and placed her thin frame in the stylists chair and letting Leonard loose with scissors and blow dryer. Afterwards a photographer friend of Leonards came by to take Twig's photo for placement on the salon wall as a form of an in-house advert. Now Twig was enshrined in silver nitrate, hung high on the wall, gazing down on what would soon be her domain...the World of Fashion and Style.
The plot thickens at this point. Leonard's was visited one day by a fashion journalist for one of the London mags who wanted to do a feature story on King Leonardo. While killing time in the salon, he noticed Twig's photo perched on the wall of hairstyle fame. The journalist inquired about her. and asked if he could "meet this Cockney kid."
Leonard arranged for the fateful meet that would in time be the face, and the look that would launch a thousand fashion ships. It wasn't long before her modeling career was in gear and guided at first by her hairdresser boyfriend, who also suggested she change her working name now to Twiggy. She did, and the paparazzi were in a feeding frenzy. She modeled and appeared on fashion magazines around the world from Europe to Asia to America. She graced the covers of Vogue, and by 1966 she was named The Face of 1966 by the Daily Express in London, as well as the British Woman of the Year.
It was the year of the Uni-sex look where boys will be girls, and girls will be boys ,just like la-la-lov'ly Lola in the Kinks song of the same name. Men were wearing bright colors, carrying purses, ok, man-bags for you homophobes, and women were donning three piece double breasted suits with Fedora's ala Marlene Dietrich, while on the other side of the Atlantic, Rudi Gernreich had blasted the top off of the bathing suit world with his invention of the topless bikini and even a version with a window in the crotch to show off Madame's pubic hair as though a new show premier on the telly looking for a ratings boost, or a boost of some sort. Nehru Jackets, jumpsuits from outer space and a plethor of pubic patch swimsuits were taking over the "look", I mean even Dion and Sinatra sported Nehru Jackets, both looking uncomforably out of place in the new age of youth. Sinatra, especially so, but he did get Mia Farrow who not surprisingly at the time had a crop hairstyle very familiar on the world stage by now thanks to that skinny littleCockney girl with big eyes and eye lashes so long you she could tickle you on the streets of Glasgow while she was standing in Soho.
Pop Goes the Mini Cooper Culture
The British Are Coming! The British Are Coming! Those madcap ale drinking, pub hopping bloody Brit Redcoats ain't just figments of the imagination Mate! Nor are they strangers in a strange land to the landscape of American history. Over 200 years ago, a perplexed Paul Revere rode deep into the bosom of the dark of the midnight countryside to warn of imminent peril and invasion by the forces of King George, by George! In due time, another George, ours, who went by the name of Washington, took careful aim for the royal jewels, gave them a swift kick in the royal cahones, and sent them packing north to Canada, eh, and back across the big pond to Jolly Olde England.
The Americans, now victorious in revolution, would not fear nor suffer another British Invasion ever again...well, that is until the British Invasion of Mods, Rockers and Pop Culture hit our shores like a behemoth tidal wave with a rock n' roll backbeat in the 1960's! Yeah, Yeah, Yeah!
The Fab Four...The Rolling Stones...The Who! Who? British Music and moptop haircuts sucker punched American youth culture with powerful pop culture blitzkrieg and brought it to it's sociological knees with a style of dress and a new code of conduct that would propel us into a whole new universe. A pop universe of James Bond, shaken, not stirred. Carnaby Street and Mary Quant, Dusty Springfield, Mods splenty and Pussy Galore. We were high on hiked up mile high mini-skirts and jazzed on jacked up go-go bootsl. Our hearts pumping in overdrive, and without question, London proved, once and for all, that indeed, England swings like a pendulum do!
John, Paul, George, and Ringo, the Four Horsemen of the Beatles Apocalypse, made an indelible impression on all of us, similar to a tire iron being raked across the skull of some hapless victim in a dark alley in Detroit. However, it was an unlikely little motoring machine that not only came to personify that era more than anything else, but also flexed t's design muscle and became a major bonafide pop icon. A chrome-magnon pop star in it's own right with a cult following to match that of the Grateful Dead. That major, was a mini. A Morris Mini to be exact.
The red-dread, dread-of-Red ideological ice age that defined the meltdown nuclear Cold War era had produced a politicaly unstable behemoth of a glacier that was advancing and laying waste to everything in it's path. That same instability would eventually knock stability off it's pedestal and produce a plethora of petrol panic at the gas pump. The growing, out of control crisis in the Suez Canal region in the later part of the decade was to become the bravo-British-bravado version of the shootout at the OK Corral in the American Wild Child Wild West. This time those madcap Earp's and Clanton's were replaced by mysterioso shrouded-in-mystery Egyptians and pip-pip-cheerio stiff upper lip and all that Brits. Plain and simple, the sixshooter of oil consumerism had run out of bullets, and gas rationing, once again, was becoming a British way of life. Clearly, a petrol saving, more miles to the gallon messiah of a car was needed to meet this crisis headon and to preach the gasoline gospel, and it was the vehicular virgin birth of a BMC classic that rose to the challenge. In 1952, two separate motor companies, Austin and Morris, merged in a marriage of metal to form the British Motor Corporation. BMC raced to meet the design needs of the growing gas crisis, and by 1958 had test driven and sent to production the design that would come to symbolize British Culture in the 1960's.
The underwraps mini wonder wagon was unleashed in 1959 in two separate versions. The Austin factory in Longbridge gave birth to the Austin Seven, "The Incredible Austin", while the Morris plant in Cowley delivered the Morris Mini, "Wizardry on Wheels". Both destined to evolve into the singular, all powerful and rally race fashionable Mini-Cooper by 1961.
Power and muscle were not hallmarks of the original design under the motor meister, Sir Alec Issigonis. Born in Turkey in 1906, Issigonis went to work at Morris Motors in 1936 after studying engineering in his new adopted homeland, England. His idea was simply to design a car that was safe for the public and affordable for the masses, following in the footsteps of the vehicular visionary, King Henry the Ford, and his immensly popular Model T, and also the popular German Volkswagen. According to legend, the original sketch of the Mini design was drawn on a restaurant table cloth.
The Mini, at first was merely a "housewifes car" fit only for toodling to the grocery or scooting about town. In 1961 it got a high performance injection of John Cooper vroom and zoom, and it was, not only off to the races, but also well on it's way to becoming the fashion accessory of the decade! The Mini sold a respectible 20,000 units in 1959 B. C. (Before Cooper), but by mid decade in 1965 it had topped the 1,000,000 mark milestone for units sold! Rolls Royce? Forgettaboutit! Sure the rich and famous owned one or two of them but the prestige piston pumper of choice by a veritable who's who was the delightful Mini. Peter Sellers had a wicker side paneled model the Pink Panther would have been proud of, and Ringo Starr had a hatchback Mini.
Imagine! John Lennon owned one, as did George Harrison. Harrison was a huge fan of racing and rally events and his Cooper had a psychedelic paint job resembling a lava lamp on wheels that was also featured in the film "Magical Mystery Tour". According to an early interview with Harrison, he and Lennon took their first acid trip and drove around London in Georges Mini! Monkee Michael Nesmith drove his Mini to Clarksville and even the King of Cool, Steve McQueen motored in a Mini. On the dark side of the Mini moon, it was Marc Bolan of T-Rex Bang a Gong fame who crashed into a tree in 1977 in his purple Mini killing him instantly in West London.
John Cooper had a formidable background in high performance motoring. Born in 1923, John and Cooper, Sr. formed the Cooper Car Company in the aftermath and shadow of WWII, and by 1948 were building serious rear engine racing monster mo-sheens. The 1950's were the definitive age of the Chrome-magon. Racing was taking the world by the short hairs, and Cooper & Co. were making machines that were leading the perfomance pack on the racing circuit and in short time made it the must have car of the speed loving motoring public. John had already made a high octane impact on the autoworld, but the heavy metal planets were all in perfect alignment, and the best was yet to come when he put his expertise to work on the marvelous Mini. It was from this fornication of form and design that the pre-eminent rally sportser of the times would emerge...The Psychedelic Petroleum Prince of the Proletariat...The Legendary Mini Cooper!
The decade of the 1960's saw the super duper Cooper take on and kick asphalt in a variety of key races that proved her metal once and for all. The Mini Cooper won consecutive Monte Carlo Rally's, the Tulip Rally's in '62 and '64, the Alpine Rally in '63 and 25 other prestigious races out and about the European continent. The original Cooper's came with a 4 speed tranny, go from 0-60 in 12.9 seconds, 0-100 in 20 seconds and best of all, got an amazing 30 MPG! Racing Coopers however, along with the pedigree led a hard life on the circuit and many had to be reshelled continually.
The Cooper also had a low center of gravity for cornering, and the Cooper S of 1963 - 1967 had wider wheels than a stock Cooper. The Rally Rear Package came with straight through exhaust, mini lite wheels, roll bar, twin fuel tanks and a lightweight stick on lisence plate. Other inclusions where woodrim moto-lita steering wheel, Halda trip meter, tachometer, stop watches, map light and a fire extinguisher!
Mods needed rods and that damn little Cooper fit the bill and soon anyone who was anyone was sporting a Mini Cooper, from The Beatles to Peter Sellers. Michael Caine even drove one into the realm of fame and infamy in the film "The Italian Job" in 1969. The Mini Cooper was king, and as anyone knows, it's good to be the King!
As the Psychedelic Sixties began to fade away in a bag of seeds and stems, there were efforts afoot (Gadzooks!) to kill the little Mini beastie, but it kept selling in spite of those efforts. Cries of "It's Alive" could still be heard loud and clear at the car dealerships and showrooms, as the resiliant little creature refused to go down without a fight. Until the '80s.
As the decade of "Me" dawned on the horizon the Mini began to decline into it's own sunset on the automotive horizon, but a new company that was now producing the Mini was trying to keep itself afloat on the horsepower ocean and not sink like the ill-fated Titantic. That company, Rover, came out with themed editons to tap into the reigning motherlode of nostalgia and by 1990 Japan was eating them up like Godzilla beast-feasting on nuclear power plants!
Sir Alec passed on to piston paradise in 1988 and John Cooper crossed the quarter mile into horsepower heaven in the year 2000 at the age of 77. In 1994, Rover was acquired by BMW and today they produce and export three different models to the motoring masses. It might be a Mini but you can't judge a book by it's cover...the Mini Cooper Slogan sums it up best...
"You Don't Need A Big One To Be Happy!"
The British Invasion - Mods and Rockers & Teddy Boys and Teddy Girls
You can blame the whole bloody mess on Billy Eckstine!
The British Invasion had a dark side to it's moon that manifested itself in widespread violence that swept the island nation with the fury of a Viking raid of fierce Norsemen hellbent on pillage and plunder. This dark side resulted in scattered confrontations, and often bloody gang battles over the two decades of the Teddy Boy Fifties and the Mod and Rocker Sixties. Mods, Rockers and Teddy's. A trio of street violence. turf warfare, and bloodshed. The British music and youth sub-culture scene was a Jekyll and Hyde hybrid that resulted in bashed in heads, broken faces, broken bones and blood red battles at beachside resorts, not to mention racial attacks on immigrants from the West Indies and others.
The Brits do have a violent reputation, let's face it. Take soccer for example. Soccer games on the international stage usually have the Brit fans in the stands rushing to the field to pummel the other teams players and fan base. They get so violent in fact that they are referred to derogatorily as "Lagerheads" and have a pent up penchant for violence that must be similar to an orgasm. This blown inner fuse by wannabe arm chair athletes is not confined to the soccer fields or Britain alone. Just look at parents at a Little League baseball game in America where the "adults" get out of control, not in all cases of course, but often enough. It's a fucking game people, that is all, sports is a game..not life and death. I can see Ghandi now challenging the British Empire to a soccer game to decide if the Brits stay or leave...North Vietnam challenging Team Nixon to a round of golf (there's a fucking dull game that I hestitate to even call a sport!) to decide which ideology will survive jungle warfare and boobytraps. It is the armchair quarterback syndrome of wannabes who never will be the hero on the field and have to live potbellied on the sidelines watching..forever watching and not participating..in effect the penis has been cut off at the pass and will never score a cheerleading goal.
How does this visceral violence translate to aesthetics fostered and promulgated by The British Music Invasion? It was about music and fashion, right? Carnaby Street meets Seville Row, right? However, if you went diving in the pop culture dumpster of the times, you would have seen a decapitated head or two, figuratively speaking of course, (quite possibly literally too!) that was severed during a sociological gang rape of epic proportions. The youth culture of Sixties England was in full bloom, a virgin waiting to have her cherry popped by a Prince Charming. Instead she was thrust hard to her knees, mouth wide open and forced into giving head to a vulgar beast. A two headed, two sided, two faced, yinned-yanged beast of angelic good and pure evil. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde had split their own atom, and had sprung to life as a youth sub-culture ensconced in a society gone quite mad, not to mention, quite Mod and quite off it's Rockers!
The two heads of the beast were exact opposites. Mr. Hyde, was evil and bloodthirsty, Dr. Jekyll was quaint Quant paisley daisies, mop tops and pop music! The times were "fab" and "birds" were "gear" but there was an under current, an oceanic undertow of fear that Stanley Kubrick would encapsulate in the futuristic horror noir (if there is such a term, and if not, there is now) film "Clockwork Orange. The main character, Alex and his Droogies, were the direct offspring and bastard children that had crept from the afterbirth of the Mods and Rockers of the British Sixties, and the Teddy Boys of the British Fifties.
The film, Clockwork Orange, like the book by Anthony Burgess, was rampant with rape and beatings as a gang of Kubrick-Burgess Droogies break into a couples home, kick and beat the husband near to death as his wife is held helpless in the clutches of a gang of Droogie youth hellbent on penetrating her one after the other as her husband is forced to watch the macabre scene unfold before him. She is raped repeatedly and forced to commit sexual acts on all the members of the gang with with a plethora of penis penetration in every oriface, her body bruised and beaten, her vagina numb to the ongoing assault. The room is filled with the scent of animal sex and is awash in bruised breasts and thighs, damaged psyche's and an overflowing vagina of sexual lava left deposited by a gang of belligerents, that now drips and pools on the floor between her middle class, middle aged outstretched legs glistening with liquids deposited inside of her in great volcanic volumns of teenage orgasms.
The whole effect of the film was violence for the sake of violence, to make us cringe, as we, the audience were cinematically layered with gang rapes and beatings. The viewer, as helpless onlooker (and voyeur), beomes uncomfortably numb and is overwhelmed by it's basic base theme, yet, excited, emotionally and sexually, places touched in corners hidden in us in a deep well that we didn't know existed...the violence becomes a mere backdrop as we wiggle in our theater seat during the rape scene, excited..the Jekyll/Hyde thing again I suppose. The book-The film was supposed to reflect the future..instead it was a mirror reflection of the past, the past of the Mod and Rocker Sixties, not to mention Teddy Boy violence of the Fifties. The past was presented in a futuristic almost expressionist style that made the past very real, very violent, and oh so British.
The Rockers on the one hand, and the Ted's on the other, were junkies addicted to the heroin of Haley and the Comets, and the cocaine of Cochran, Eddie that is. Other influences included the film that help defined delinquency for the times, "The Blackboard Jungle," along with the music and fashion style of ..gasp! BillyfuckingEkstine! No shit..Billy Ekstine, not Ozzie Osbourne, not Charles Manson, but Billy Ekstine! What the fuck?
The Ted's first, and the Rockers and Mod's later, were a part of the youth culture that ignited a violent explosion and clash of cultures in Britain for over two overlapping decades. The demarcation line of Beat and Hip were blurred in a slurry, and from the anthropological chemistry emerged three groups that were as different as day and night, where the street whore and the Virgin Mary had a lot in common as black leather hoods on Marlon Brando motorcycles and Edwardian Dandies on scooters mixed it up to a British beat reinforced with riots, bicycle chains, wooden clubs and razor blades and knives..slice and dice time,...Yeah, Yeah, Yeah! Give Peace a Chance for Christ sakes.
Mods and Rockers were at complete opposite ends of the youth sub-culture universe in the Sixties. Mods had their roots in the beatnik era of the 1950's. More bohemian at first, with art and poetry as their aesthetic gravity. The term Mod was derived from the term "modernist" with heavy doses of jazz infused with existentialism. The coffee bars were attractive the Mods for a variety of reasons, but primarily, the traditional British pubs closed at 11 p.m. while the coffe bars were open well into the wee small hours of the morning with live entertainment of jazz and blues, all influenced by American pop culture. The Mods were also a product of London at the time, while the Rockers were more a product of the north of the county, Liverpool in particular.
The Rockers had their roots in American Rockabilly, and while the Mods preferred to scoot around on scooters (Vespa), the Rockers preferred motorcycles, rolled up Levi's, peg pants, black leather jackets and sported towering Empire State Building pompadour high rockabilly hair-do's in imitation the juvenile delinquent look and fashion of the 1950's..instead of jazz, the Rockers preferred rock and roll. Mod's on the other hand lived a lifestyle centered around fashion and music, wore suits and preferred soul and rhythm and blues.
It was only a matter of time when the sub-culture atom would split igniting a near atomic reaction of cross cultural violence in brawls and fights with a variety of weapons designed for one purpose to maim or kill. Switchblades and chains, brass knuckles and razor blades were used to draw copious amounts of blood and to inflict broken bones and faces.
At first the melees were scattered and among small groups protecting their supposed turf. Most of these occured at seaside resorts and of course, in true British lagerhead fashion, after football games! Media coverage only added gasoline to the fire of tension that was building among the two groups. Some of these outbreaks make the Hells Angels rampage in Hollister appear to be a social tea by comparison.
British working class people enjoy their time off and it was customery to head to the coast for long holiday weekends. On one such weekend, during Easter of 1964 the conflict came to a head in two towns, Clacton and Brighton as thousands of Britons, as well as legions of Mods and Rockers arrived for the holiday. Soon fighting broke out and mods and rockers were using every available weapon in sight. The worst violence ocurred in Brighton where the battling raged for over two days and spread to Hastings also on the coast. The media had a frenzied field day over this and referred to in true British fashion in blazing headlines as "The Second Battle of Hastings. At one point with police standing idly by, a group of trapped Rockers were overwhelmed and beaten to a bloody pulp by hordes of Mods.
On the lighter side of the Mad Mods was the colorful clothing as they gravitated to Carnaby Street to drape themselves in velvet jackets, ruffled shirts that had a pirate panche to them, tight fitting pants and and boots. To the Mod..the wethead was indeed dead, and the bushy long haired dry look was in. Perhaps the three most prominent Mod bands were the Small Faces, the Kinks and of course, the Who with Keith Moon leading the Union Jack "My Generation" fashion parade. It was London, it was the Sixties and the Kid's Were Alright!
While the Rockers stayed with Rock and Roll, the Mods went through a transformation in the mid to late Sixties. The music at first that signifies the Mod sound was upbeat, driving drums and blasting guitars with a hint of Motown. As the Sixties began it's Caraby Street beat descent, the Mods began revolving around the British garage-psychedelic sound which in time would be known as "freakbeat" while another faction went hip as the hippie phenom grew like a magic mushroom. Today the Mods have come full circle and there is a Mod retro movement afoot in the UK including a resurgence in vintage shops schlepping Mod clothing and sales are booming for Vespa and Lambretta motor scooters!
The Rockers have always been a fixture and even with many layers of societal evolution, there is a rocker underground that has re-surfaced, although it has never gone away. The UK has paid tribute to it's Rocker Roots of Rock and Roll with the establishment of the Rockabilly Hall of Fame that includes such American pioneer rocksters as Narvel Felts, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis. There are rockabilly festivals and films and the Rock and Punk Bands of the 70's and 80's can claim rights to the Rocker Gene Pool. Most natably, although American, is Brian Setzer and the Stray Cats who pack the houses in the United States and the Rockabilly Garden of Eden in the United Kingdom
But...before the Mods...before the Rockers...before the Punks...there were the Ted's! Rock and Roll spawn of the first R n' R generation the Teddy Boys emerged in the Fifites in England, at first to skiffle and ska, and ultimately with Rock and Roll. Once the film "Blackboard Jungle" hit the British silver screen in 1955 the Ted's began their rise to sub culture prominence and the new dieties were Elvis Presley, Bill Haley and Eddie Cochran.
The Ted's were the fashion pre-cursors to the Mods a decade later. They donned the Edwardian Period Duds of the Edwardian Dandy Dudes. Preening peacocks in in a rock and roll lather. One of the stranger fashion features included a high-necked loose collared white shirt known as a "Mr. B. because it was worn by jazz musician Billy Eckstine, whose music the Teds also liked among the avalanche or Rock and Roll..go figure. The hairstyles were greased up pompadours with the familiar duck ass or duck tail in back and cut square in the back. Strangely enough, my hairstyle today is loosely based on that look that was also popular in America at the time. No, my hair is not Setzerian in height but the back is duck assed and squared off at the nape. Somethings just wear well with time, eh?
The Ted's began in 1950 and were a somewhat quiet subculture, until 1955 when "Blackboard Jungle" was shown in London. The audience, primarily Teds in attendance began to riot, rip up the seats in the theater, and then, holy shit..they began dancing in the aisles! The stage was now set and every place in England that showed the film experienced the same violent outbreak...The Ted's fought with each other as they formed rival gangs, and in 1958 Ted's launched an especially violent attack on the local West Indian community.
If the Teddy Boys were baddass, then the Teddy Girls were hardly Doris Day. They were referred to as "Judies" and affected the rolled up jeans look, lots of velvet clothing, tight ass fitting toreador pants and yep, those awesome ponytails that wiggled and wagged in the breeze. The Ted's by an large were working class, not to mention high school drop-outs, (ok, another thing I have in common with them) The Teddy Boys and Teddy Girls would drop out of school by age 14 or 15 (15 in my case) and work at jobs all week and party hard all weekend long.
The Teddy Boys and Teddy Girls, Mods and Rockers, Skiffle to Rockabilly to Punk..it was all part of the British Invasion..the violent side of the invasion with self inflicted sociatel wounds and enough blood and violence that was the real Clockwork Orange, but you can't blame the violence of the times on Alex or Droogies or Burgess or Kubrick..hell..blame it all on Billy Eckstine!!
Pussy Galore gets Goldfingered!
(The British Invasion) Part 9
The Invasion was on..it was D-Day, and the troops were storming the beach..Fortress Billboard had been breached and the charts were now securely in the hands of four lads from Liverpool, and others from Tottenham, Mersey, London, and all points of the compass that pointed to every corner of the United Kingdom. The Mini Cooper's and Mini Skirt's were rev'd up and hiked up with ample horsepower and plenty of leggy flesh to tantalize and titillate. The lubrication had been applied and British pop culture went into full gear, and over the top, adding to the tsunami of all things Union, Jack!
The music and the fashion were the first wave of the youth culture assault that absorbed America's young like a hungry beast straight out of a sci-fi flick. America was hungry for more, and could not get it's fill. More, more, more...it was high tide, (and a little green grass) ..it was time for the next phase..Phasers on "stun" Scottie" .."Aye Captain"
The Beatles detonated the whole Brit big bang boom shebang and it didn't let up with just music. They put the Beatle music to Beatle films strategically in the middle of the eye of the hurricane of Beatlemania. The movies were unleashed on the silver screen into a world of screaming teenage female fans in an orgasmic masturbatory frenzy that would would drown out the films sound track through the sheer volume of sexual abandon in their screams.
The films themselves, though not as deep as Shindler's List or the English Patient, thankfully, depicted the Fab Four basically clowning for the camera and included lots of close ups of Pauls face (Scream!!!) and Ringo's arse (More Screams)! Basically the first two films, Hard Days Night and Help were more existential in form from an artistic standpoint. They did have one thing in common..the music of the Beatles. The narcotic of choice for hormones setting a course for a head-on collision with puberty on a rampage!
These films made for some of the first rock and roll soundtrack albums and quite frankly were the forerunners of MTV and VH-1 Video's decades later that owe their existence to the British Invasion and it's parentage. Up to that point rock and roll groups would lip-synch along to their music in filmed segments playing instruments, but not acting out to the music, so the Beatles films in addition to being...well..Beatles films were ground breaking on that level. Also, name one of Bill Haley's Comets, or Buddy Holly's Crickets, or a Blemopnt or a Vandella! Cmon I dare you. The Beatles were the first group that we all knew each individual members name, John, Paul, George, and Ringo. Later to honor the Fab Four, the Pope of the Catholic Church took part of the names of two of them, and of course, we remember him as Pope John Paul. We have to wait for the current pope to die, but don't worry, they don't last long anyway, and who knows, maybe somewhere there is a Pope George Ringo somewhere hidden under the Cardinal's robes.
There were five Beatles movies. Hard Days Night was the first released in 1964, followed by Help in 1965, Magical Mystery Tour in 1967, Yellow Submarine in 1968 and the docu-flick, Let It Be in 1969. Some fo the Beatles also appeared solo in films, most notably John Lennon in "How I Won the War" and Ringo Starr with Peter Sellers in "The Magic Christian" Other groups also released similar formula films as Help and Hard Days Night including the Dave Clark Five and many others. None could match the drawing power of the Beatles ticket, but the undercurrent was there and it was growing and infecting other media as well. Britain for years had a successful BBC program called Top of the Pops which ran for a total of 42 years starting in 1956. It featured all the pop artists and songs of the day and when the British Invasion got under way, and British groups were at the top of the charts, they completely consumed Top of the Pops as well with the energy of Pac Man on methamphetamine. Each week the top groups of the day would be featured and the pop way was the only way to go.
In red, white and blue America, American Bandstand was the standard bearer, but, by 1964, the "Shindig" hit the fan (and the TV airwaves) with host Jimmy O'Neill greeting us every week with a "Hid-e-ho Shindiggers" and then we sat back enjoying the latest British bands landing on American pop culture soil, not to mention the Shindig dancers..co-ed legs that reached to the top of the Empire State Building and we couldn't help but imagine what awaited us in their sweet penthouse suite at the top of those legs. What a view!
"Shindig" had come on the air and was a ratings sucess, replacing the folk music TV show, "Hootenanny" which was an attempt to revive a dying, limp folkie scene that by now had reached a not so bound for glory this land is your land stage of it's lifespan, and today garners as much interest as the later Disco era had...put them together and it's Woody Guthrie with a disco ball riding the rails to Peter, Paul and Mary's house for a folk fest menage a trois' complete with hammers and jet planes and a magic dragon named Puff.
By 1965, the show Hullaballo began airing, and like Shindig was an American program featuring British groups in it's weekly line-up, Hullaboallo went a step further by including taped segments from England that were hosted by Beatles manager, Brian Epstein. Hullabalo only lated until 1966 and was knocked off and replaced by an American band..no not Grand Funk, but the Monkees! The Brits had taken control long enough, now it was time to remember the Alamo. Yes, the Alamo, where British soldiers disguised themselves as Mexican federales and wiped out Davy Crockett in their search to capture Fess Parker instead. The British monopoly was being broken, and the Americans wanted revenge..but it was not over yet...the British Invasion continued switching to an ever increasing arsenal of cinematic releases that included films with the worlds most suave and debonair secret agent...James Bond..Agent 007 that gave the world a new hero with gadgets galore, not to mention the latest in Brit sexual offerings..her name..Pussy Galore and she was about to get goldfingered!
Pussy Galore Gets Emma Peeled! The British Invasion
Sexy, Sexy, Sexy! Bond and the Bond Babes...made spywork look like a romp undercover under the covers...exotic cars and gadgets poured from the mind of Ian Fleming into a series of books that would ultimately become one of the longest running film series in history...James Bond, 007, liscense to kill. The big screen gave birth to a Medusa's head of evil villains from Dr. No to Goldfinger and my all time favorite...the man with the deadly bowler, Odd Job who could slice a concrete head off a gargoyle at 10 paces.
The exotic cars equipped with the latests armaments that make the Batmobile look like a 1972 Dodge Dart. Besides, the cars were sports cars, British sports cars with enough style and British class you'd think they were outfitted on Kings Row. Five speed gear shifting jammers at home on the backroads of England to the seaside twist and turns of Monte Carlo after an evening of diamond studded women and martini's, shaken not stirred and a pack of Turkish cigarettes.
The babes were all bikini'd and built like No. 10 Downing Street and the one outstanding piece of Bond Babe-ism is the inimitale Pussy Galore. The name itself conjures up a cornucopia of carnal pleasures and a carnival of sexual activity. Pussy was played by Honor Blackman who to say was as sultry as a steamy night in the South would be a gross understatement. Pussy has a cadre of all female pilots comprising their own version of Virgin Airlines or in this case Vagina Airlines. There is a slight air of lesbianism in the air as pilot Pussy directs the other airborne pussy's with subtle girl on girl command.
This armed flotilla of winged women give new meaning tot the term cockpit and James Bond is not blind to this fact. In the end, Bond gets Pussy after a round of fighting in a horsestable...bringing to mind yet more visuals that excite the senses. There have been many Bonds in the past..but to me there is only one legitimate 007..Sean Connery. Maybe he couldn't leap over tall buildings in a single bound, but he sure had his share of pussy galore!
If bond had it's share of nefarious babes, the British television show, "The Avengers" had real Emma Peel appeal. Patrick Macnee and Dianny Rigg were a mixture of campy sci-fi, British humor, fantasy and parody, and relationship between dapper John Steed and the assertively sexy in leather, Emma Peel.
The series ran from 1961 until 1969, but, interestingly enough, although we have dubbed Emma Peel as queen of the Avengers prom, there were other female counterparts to Steed the stud before she entered the small screen scene, including, Honor Blackman who went on to iconic fame to this day as the flying bi-babe Ms. Galore. The show became an international hit and is still considered on the top cult classics in television history. As footnote, Rigg left the series after a couple o years when she discovered some of the tech crew on the set were making more weekly than her. The producers failed to meet her requests for salary and she, rightfully so, told them to stuff it and that was the last we saw of that exceptional leather clad ass as it walked away into the sunset as if powered by hydraulics.
Other shows followed in the wake of Bond and the Avengers incluiding Dr. Who, the Prisoner, Secret Agent Man from the British, and the cross Atlantic spawn in the form of the Man from U.N.C.L.E., I Spy, Maxwell Smart, Our Man Flint and the spirit of the high five sci fi lives on not as Goldfinger, but Gold Member with the Austin Powers series..yeah Baby!!
The British Invasion also gave us Benny Hill, Peter Sellers, Terry Thomas, and a host of British comedies including the classic "Are You Being Served" that is still running in syndication to this day almost 40 years after it launched it's pilot show, "Sexy Knickers" and the verbal question that still lingers in the air adding a smile to our face..."Mr. Humpries, are you free?"
The residual effects of the British Invasion took many forms, and in successive waves of music, film, television and popular culture. We still tune into the gang at Grace Brothers Department Store, Beatles music is still selling and still being released in different forms and formats, Emma Peel still gets us hot under the leather pants...Sean Connery is still truckin' along better than ever and all in all...give me Pussy Galore...and a Mini Cooper where you don't need a big one to be happy..but it sure helps!!!