By Martin H. Rots

Freddie Garrity and the Dreamers released the inane dance tune Do the Freddy in late 1965.  It's release signaled the last gasp of the British Invasion, a musical death rattle of sorts.  By 1966, the English bands had lost their grip on the American charts.  The Beatles and the Stones were still selling records to be sure, but the second and third string British Invasion acts didn't stand a chance against the new American bands that rose to prominence in 1965.  After the initial wave of English bands came to dominate the American charts, the American musicians gathered their forces, evaluated the situation and rose to the occasion. 

The race was on and the prize was enormous.  Singers, songwriters and musicians were flocking to Los Angeles for the weather and their shot at fame.  The Byrds released Terry Melcher's production masterpieces, Mr. Tambourine Man in June 1965 and Turn, Turn, Turn the following December.  Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys still had some surprises up their sleeves when they left the beach behind.  In 1966, the B Boys gave us Sloop John B and Wilson's masterpiece, Pet Sounds.  In New York, Neil Diamond, Carol King and the rest of the Brill Building bunch weren't exactly sitting on their hands.  Motown was churning out hit after hit in direct competition with both coasts and the Brits.  As a creative period in popular music, it is unrivaled.

In mid-1964, just about any band or individual with a Beatle-cut, an English accent and an appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show could get a hit record in the States such was the hysteria the Beatles had created.  American bands even took English sounding names to be more marketable.  The Beau Brummels weren't from Notting Hill or Chelsea.  In spite of their name, they were recording in San Francisco as part of another nascent scene.  In late 1965, New Jersey's Knickerbockers released Lies, which went to #20 early in 1966.  It was such a clever imitation of the Beatles that many people still mistake it for an obscure Beatles' cut. 

The Beatles were no longer exclusively the domain of thirteen year old girls, they were beginning to mature and along with them, their music and audience.  Rolling Stones' manager Andrew Oldham locked Mick and Keith in a room until they came out with an original composition. Their success that day insured their futures. This brings us back to Freddie and the Dreamers and the dance tune, Do the Freddie.  In the spring of 1965, they had had a #1 hit in the US with I'm Telling You Now after an obligatory appearance on Ed Sullivan.  I'm uncertain if Garrity was truly the buffoon he appeared to be on stage while performing the song, he swung his arms as if he were doing jumping jacks, an idiot's grin across his face and Buddy Holly's glasses perched on his nose.  Sometimes, he would only swing the limbs on the left side of his body, other times the right.  It was a very short lived dance craze as dance crazes go.  He made Joe Cocker's early performances look sedate by comparison.  What was effective on an English music hall stage was not necessarily effective with the American TV audiences.  Do the Freddie only went to #18 in the US charts and the Dreamers quickly dropped out of sight.  Folk rock was the new big thing and Freddie and/or the Dreamers would not be part of it.  His comedic stage persona didn't fit anymore.  With the introduction of psychedelica in late 1966, he became a musical anachronism. 

Rock was maturing and there were few clowns required in the days that lay ahead.

1966 was actually more of a watershed year than the psychedelic period that began in 1967 with the Summer of Love, Monterey Pop and the release of Sgt. Pepper's by the Beatles.  Paul Revere and the Raiders released the anti-drug song Kicks in 1966 on the eve of the cultural revolution.  Between Kicks and the shtick costumes, they were terribly out of synch with what was about to happen in popular music and would soon be cast into rock oblivion.

The Byrds were hyped as the American Beatles, a title they did or did not really deserve depending on your perspective.  By 1966, the Byrds were a well-respected, established act.  Los Angeles became a Mecca for rock musicians from all over the United States.  Bands like the Doors, Buffalo Springfield and Love were all waiting to emerge from obscurity.  In San Francisco, the music scene was exploding with the Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and the Holding Company, The Grateful Dead, Youngbloods, Country Joe and the Fish, Warlocks and many others. 

Gone was the two to three minute single that had dominated the AM radio for so long.  The Beatles and Bob Dylan put an end to that.  Also set to expire was AM radio itself.  FM radio was about to overtake it as the predominant delivery system of the new music.  An added benefit to FM was that it broadcast in stereo, something AM was incapable of doing.  Initially the new "underground" stations were weak and few cars had FM radios in 1966.  Ironically, these were the very reasons the existing stations could be bought at a reasonable price.  It wasn't long before "underground radio" stations were popping up in every major market in the country.  They didn't play top forty from a list generated by the station program director.  The DJ played what he pleased as often as he pleased.  The three minute single became dead as a door nail.

Not all the British bands folded.  The two most notable being the Beatles and Rolling Stones.  The marginally talented Brits retired from show business and became accountants and bricklayers and such.  Others, like Graham Nash (Hollies) would re-invent themselves.  Some big English Invasions acts simply folded or re-invented themselves.  The Dave Clark Five who had once rivaled the Beatles as the Brit's favorite rock group became irrelevant as the times washed past them.  English music hall favorites like Herman's Hermits became passé.  The Kinks became critics of English society and remained a favorite on both sides of the Atlantic.

By the end of the sixties the distinction between American and English bands had faded.  Hybrid bands like Delaney and Bonnie had a distinct American sound even with Eric Clapton playing lead guitar.  The Rolling Stones were being influenced by American musicians Graham Parsons and Ry Cooder.  Joe Cocker fronted Mad Dogs and Englishmen, a conglomerate of Yanks and Brits.

In the end, the importance of the English Invasion is that it revived popular music from the white bread existence it had settled into.  Pat Boone would no longer be making the charts with his sanitized renditions of black music cleaned up for a white, middle class audience.  The Carnaby Street mod fashions and Beatle cuts led to the wild dress of the sixties and extremely long hair became fashionable as western youth embraced an androgynous look.  The era became a continuation of what had started with four young men from Liverpool and a Sunday night variety show in the United States.

Who could have imagined?