Although the band Queen was British, Freddie Mercury (born “Farrokh Bulsara”) was born of Indian ancestry in Zanzibar (part of present-day Tanzania) and educated in India and didn’t emigrate to the U.K. till he was 17.
In the 1950’s a lot of US "white’ radio stations would not play “colored” music. Separatism was still de facto, especially in the south. The Brits had no such prejudicies, so they were exposed to more American bands, and that explains why the early rock bands were mostly British.
Well, how about hip hop? Jazz? Soul? The New York rock bands of the 1970’s?
England is a strong music country and many of some of the most memorable bands came from there. But it’s not particularily hard to name drop fantastic bands that from other places around. I think it’s one of those circumstances where we make a generalization and accepts it for true, like when some say that all foreign movies are difficult and pretentious and only stick to what they know.
I can’t believe you’d put Radiohead and The Cure (and The Clash is questionable) in the same tier as the others. I like The Clash, and The Cure, and Radiohead…but they’re far from the same level as the other bands you listed. Also, as the millions posted before me, America has produced a great many great bands as well.
We may not have the (arguably) three biggest (most influential, maybe?) bands of the popular music era, but we have a great many as well. It could be just a coincidence that the Beatles, the Stones, and Led Zeppelin all came from Britain. Then again, it could be something in the water. :smack: 
Radiohead?
Really?
Well, if you must…
I agree that the initial bands list in the OP is odd.
I’d have knocked off Black Sabbath as well, (though I loves me some Sabbath,) and listed the Beatles, Rolling Stones, The Who, and Led Zeppelin. Hard to argue that America produced any four bands to rival those four. I’d put the Grateful Dead on exactly the same level, but they’re only one band.
And Pink Floyd makes five.
Rog gets really pissed off when they’re not included
Actually rock’n’roll wasn’t played on BBC radio for years, certainly not in the 50s. Hip British kids listened to Radio Luxembourg & later pirate stations like Radio Caroline. American radio was actually more diverse.
…Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Warren Zevon, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Blondie, The New York Dolls, The Beach Boys, The grateful Dead, The Cramps, X, The Replacements…
Although America did produce all the artists Led Zeppelin ripped off. 
Shit, Robert Plant is still singing Mississippi John Hurt songs. Why screw with what made him famous?
Largely true although they did also steal from Brit folk singer Jake Holmes.
Very slight nitpick – Mercury was of Iranian ancestry, although he attended boarding school in India.
My hypothesis -
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The Brits bands being discussed were influenced by music that was NOT mainstream in the U.S. at the time -
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the blues which influenced the 60’s Brit greats was barely a blip in the U.S. in the early 60’s - some country blues players were getting long-due respect on the folk circuit, but there weren’t charting blues acts then. The U.S. was into Motown, Beach Boys and other mainstream pop
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the punk which influenced the late 70’s Brit greats was a largely underground phenomenon - the Ramones threatened to break, and were reported on in the mainstream press, but never really charted.
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There is something to be said for outsiders absorbing the essence of a culture and playing it back. Mick, Keef and the boys were considered middle-class wannabees who couldn’t play the blues to save their life - too fast, not bluesy, etc. - when they started out. But the captured the essence of something they heard from the U.S. and made it their own. U.S. bands capable of doing the same thing - Mike Bloomfield of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band who started the whole Les Paul is the heart of Electric Blues trend, influencing Clapton, Richards, Peter Green and others to play one - was a cult player in the U.S., but was a massive influence to blues insiders in the U.K.
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Britain happened to be coming of age in the 60’s right when it was the time that blues rock was starting to happen. The kids born right after WWII were becoming teenagers, there was prosperity in the UK for the first time in 20+ years, the kids had disposable income and could buy clothes and their own music and this was the cool music. It all came together and supported the good bands in a way that wasn’t the same in the U.S.
Some top of mind thinking way too early in the morning…
WordMan writes:
> 2) the blues which influenced the 60’s Brit greats was barely a blip in the U.S. in
> the early 60’s - some country blues players were getting long-due respect on
> the folk circuit, but there weren’t charting blues acts then. The U.S. was into
> Motown, Beach Boys and other mainstream pop
The Motown Sound, the Beach Boys, and the bands of the “British Invasion” all hit the U.S. and U.K. charts at about the same time. The Motown groups and the Beach Boys were not influences on the formation of the British bands. They didn’t start influencing each other until the mid-1960’s or so.
Here’s a more cynical explanation. All the influences that created the British bands of the early to mid-1960’s were already there in the U.S. and had quite a few fans, but those fans had no influence. Much of the rock and roll was dismissed as just that ignorant black stuff, and that was true all around the U.S. and not just in the South. The white rock and roll was dismissed as music by a bunch of hillbillies and big-city ethnics, both relatively low-class. The rock and roll done by the few non-ethnic middle-class educated whites was a relatively small proportion and often rather bland.
And then suddenly a bunch of British bands began to become popular in the U.S. Suddenly the people who were most likely to be anti-rock-and-roll, WASP middle- to upper-middle-class educated people, started to be friendly to rock and roll. There was always a certain amount of Anglophilia among such people. Now, though, they could no longer dismiss rock and roll as being the music of those lower-class sort of people. (Of course, the British bands also often came from working-class families, but the hardcore American Anglophiles didn’t make class distinctions among Brits.) It took the Brits to sell American music to upper-class American consumers.
Wendell that may be cynical but it has the ring of truth. It provides a more in-depth explanation of what I was trying to articulate when I framed the concept of outsiders digesting a culture and then feeding it back to the main culture.
I like Zep, but Clutch and Tool are much better bands in terms of creativity and musicianship.
You know the band down at the bar you go to? The one where the local dentist plays lead guitar? They’re better than the Stones. Why people pay money in the triple digits to see this over-rated pub band is beyond me.
The Who are very good and unique, but I don’t see why they’re any better than, I dunno, REM?
I’ll give you the Beatles.
Larry - while I happen to disagree with you profoundly on pretty much every point you make - that isn’t the point of the OP. The Brit bands are in the rock and roll pantheon of the gods, whether you think they are good or not. Talent isn’t the point - fame and influence, etc., is.
Their status is inarguable, the question is why do they have that status? The fact that you seem to think they aren’t that talented (again, we disagree big time, but YMMV) is all the more reason to wonder how come they are first-tier rockers.
Why doesn’t this OP read, “All the best solo rock artists are American?” What’s so damn great about being in a band, or so awful about being solo, that we may only count bands?
Sheesh. People think only of rock music as the be-all and end-all of music, as if music were invented in 1950 because “album sales” as such couldn’t be counted prior to then.
Go back earlier to the jazz era and you might find out why American musicians are named individuals. Most of the big band and swing era artists were named individuals who fronted a band (Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Bennie Goodman, Count Basie, Artie Shaw, Duke Ellington, Gene Krupa) or wrote music (Irving Berlin, Hoagy Carmichael, George Gershwin).
It probably continued that way because it was traditional to do so, not because there’s something inherent about “rock music” that requires a new group-collectivist naming scheme which the British musicians, in particular, did a lot of.
I think there’s a lot to this view. I remember reading years ago (sorry, cannot remember the source) that one of the reasons Liverpool became a hotbed of music in the early 60s was because it was a port city. The kids there wanted the latest music from America, and their fathers, who sailed on the merchant ships between the UK and the USA were more than happy to pick up records when they called in American ports and bring them back to their kids in Liverpool.
Of course, the British sailors didn’t care what they were buying–they had no prejudice against “that ignorant black stuff,” to use Wendell’s phrase–and the British kids didn’t care either. They had American rock 'n roll records. It was only natural that when they created their own bands, this was the kind of music they were going to play.
Sure, British bands of that era covered some American stuff (didn’t the Beatles’ first US album have a cover of the Marvelettes’ “Please Mr. Postman” on it?). And there were other kinds of music floating around Britain that were not in the US–I think skiffle, for example, was also a British genre at the time. But when it came to writing their own music, they were heavily influenced by the American records they had been listening to. They added their own touches to it. And then, it came back to America in the form of the British Invasion.
Again, I don’t know where I read this, but if true, it does reinforce the point that Wendell is making.