British beat
| Beat | |
|---|---|
| Stylistic origins | |
| Cultural origins | Late 1950s – early 1960s, United Kingdom |
| Typical instruments | |
| Derivative forms | |
| Subgenres | |
| Freakbeat | |
| Regional scenes | |
| Merseybeat (Merseyside) Brumbeat (Birmingham) Nederbeat (Netherlands) Tottenham Sound (London) VIA (Soviet Union) Big-beat (Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland) |
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| Other topics | |
Beat music, British beat, or Merseybeat (after bands from Liverpool and nearby areas beside the River Mersey) is a pop and rock music genre that developed in the United Kingdom in the early 1960s. Beat music is a fusion of rock and roll (mainly Chuck Berry guitar style and the midtempo beat of artists like Buddy Holly), doo-wop, skiffle and R&B. The genre provided many of the bands responsible for the British Invasion of the American pop charts starting in 1964, and provided the model for many important developments in pop and rock music, including the format of the rock group around lead, rhythm and bass guitars with drums.
The exact origins of the terms 'beat music' and 'Merseybeat' are uncertain. Beat music seems to have had little to do with the Beat Generation literary movement of the 1950s, and more to do with driving rhythms, which the bands had adopted from their rock and roll, rhythm and blues and soul music influences. As the initial wave of rock and roll declined in the later 1950s, "big beat" music, later shortened to "beat", became a live dance alternative to the balladeers like Tommy Steele, Marty Wilde and Cliff Richard who were dominating the charts.
The name Mersey Beat was used for a Liverpool music magazine founded in 1961 by Bill Harry. Harry claims to have coined the term "based on a policeman's beat and not that of the music". The band the Pacifics were renamed the Mersey Beats in February 1962 by Bob Wooler, MC at the Cavern Club and in April that year they became the Merseybeats. With the rise of the Beatles in 1963, the terms Mersey sound and Merseybeat were applied to bands and singers from Liverpool, and this was the first time in British pop music that a sound and a location were linked together. The equivalent scenes in Birmingham and London were described as Brum beat and the Tottenham Sound respectively.
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