That doesn’t seem like an advantage to me at all. You snuck in “Got there first” and “Setting the template” which is also known as being a superior band.
Americans could have done it before during or after the beatles, but they didn’t. Didn’t the Who play catchup, and Pink Floyd and all of them, even the Stones? They were jealous and hungry, just like in the US.
Jimmy Page had to wait his turn. By then a lot of US groups had already broke up, burned out, or became cult or special audience acts. He set his template after that.
It was the draft that made american bands iffy propositions.
It’s more complex than that. Even back in the day I’d have attributed exposure to black music as a greater factor than the draft.
Maybe there’s also strong element of German cars, and Italian design and French clothing, and even US computing about it. How about the great German composers or Irish poets or French and Italian painters…
So maybe there’s an initial creative ‘big bang’ - in this case very early Beatles, Stones, etc - and sometimes from that explosion a cultural hot spot/hub propagates and establishes.
For the UK, perhaps you could say similar cultures exist for theatre and acting, perhaps in architecture and some other creative areas. Each culture has areas of cultural specialisation that initially established through random and obtuse reasons - US sailors bring Blues and Jazz on vinyl into UK ports, and those port towns producing the initial bang. It’s all a bit Steven Pinker/Malcolm Gladwell.
Agreed. There were great cultural reasons for British rock. I didn’t mean to leave them out but there are a million stories about Vietnam and rock musicians and bands.
One would think that the US, being so large, would have competed with bigger bands at the time, even given politics and cultural forces, just by population.
I can’t see population size as a major factor. Outside of a freak event like The Beatles (and maybe Animals) that whole first wave came out of one city and comprised boys mostly born within 5 or 6 years of each other: the Who, Stones, Kinks, 1/2 Led Zep, 2/3 of Cream and the Yardbirds.
The catalyst was probably the Blues/Jazz scene of the late 50s/early 60s in mostly west London: Eel Pie Island, the Ealing Jazz Club and in central London The Marquee Club. Add in enablers like Alexis Korner, a culture aching for exponential change and … you’ve maybe got a chance: this is a great line from Korner’s Wiki page:
And then looping back to the BBC, there may well have been an audience for Muddy Waters in the UK partly because of BBC radio, plus the absence of a racial cultural divide.
Population size may not be a factor in terms of producing bands, but it’s certainly a factor in terms of nurturing them. Every great British band had to go to the US to become huge. Not making it in the US pretty much doomed bands like Thin Lizzy* to non-hugeness. Even bands like Deep Purple, Iron Maiden and Queen that are inarguably huge and great never sold as many records as they could have because they didn’t crack the US market the way others did.
Nirvana is too recent? The were popular 20 to 25 years ago. I don’t think recency is a disqualifier. Nirvana’s lack of longevity is an issue, however, IMO. I’d put Foo Fighters ahead of Nirvana due to output and longevity.
My point is that England is the size of New England, if that. The numbers were in our favor. But that didn’t work out.
England had a social infrastructure that made for a great teenage generation, going to art school to play guitars etc., no more empire building. The US is a more rootless darwinian place I would say. And with the war it was a whole different story.
You left out Bowie and Rod Stewart. I still don’t know what you meant about population.
I didn’t mean it as a disqualifier in itself. But most of the greatest band seem to be from the 1965-1975 era. If you are both short lived and not from that era, it’s harder being a great band.
Sorry to be the one to break this fact to Nirvana fans, but they owe ALL of their success to being SECOND on the “grunge” scene (after the much-more-laudable Pearl Jam), and the tragic death of Cobain.
Fact is, Nirvana was a modern-version of The Doors, but Cobain took that a bit too seriously. They were good, not great, despite what the pundits and apologists might say of them today.
They only recorded 3 albums, and though they are indeed a best-selling band, only two members (of 12) were there for the duration on the band. Cobain (in his death) joined the “27-club,” which resulted in hits and notoriety during their brief time onstage on the American music scene , but the are not and never could be the GARB.
Pearl Jam would take that title from them.
The Doors would take that from them.
For record sales, The Eagles easily beat them, as do Aerosmith, Bruce Springsteen, Metallica, Bon Jovi, Guns-n-Roses, and even Barry Manilow (not that Barry’s a rocker, but just for comparisons’ sake.)
Despite all the fanfare and “top hundred” etc. “most influential” blahblahblah, Nirvana were highly-overated second-rate non-perfomers in the overall history of American rock. Hell, I’d pick Chicago over Nirvana. (And no, I’m not seriously putting Chicago forward as a nominee for GARB.)
On the other hand, just because REM and Velvet Underground were " under the radar" doesn’t necessarily rule them out. As I mentioned earlier regarding the Grateful Dead, mass-exposure and hit-singles aren’t necessarily the be-all-end-all to the answer to this question. I would toss BOTH of these bands in ahead of Nirvana.
(Full disclosure - I am a kinda-sorta REM fan, whereas I literally know almost NOTHING about The Velvet Underground, or even Lou Reed in general. Future posters who wish to exploit my lack of knowledge of “all things rock” hereby have my approval to take me to task and school me. I can only know what I know.)
FWIW I think your other suggestions are very good.
In fact, I agree that if Bruce Springsteen counts as a band, then he should be put ahead of Nirvana.
As shown in the acclaimedmusic.net list critics do not agree with your assessment of Nirvana. But perhaps most of the population does. Their music can be quite abrasive, especially on albums other than Nevermind or Unplugged in New York, and general appeal is a factor in GARB nomination. By the way, I think Unplugged in New York is such a seminal live record, that you could view it as a 4th album for the band.
And I would definitely recommend a listen to Velvet Underground by the way. I’d recommend starting with their first album, which sort of encompasses the range of styles in their subsequent albums.
I’m also not getting the “Nirvana is more” mainstream, successful, acclaimed, whatever than REM. REM had a longer, more varied career. They had more hits and sold more records, though, admittedly, it took them much longer than Nirvana. I won’t knock Nirvana, as I liked them, but I also wouldn’t rank them quite so high on an “acclaimed” list.
Same goes for the Velvet Underground. Like The Stooges, the Underground (and Lou Reed on his own) is on the fringe, and most people know next to nothing about them.
Bleach was out in 1989, Mookie Blaylock (Pearl Jam, how did these guys get so many bad names in two attempts?) was formed in 90. You are wrong on every level, but especially musically. Nirvana were good, but Pearl Jam was phony with a capital F. DQ.
And the Doors were an explosion that never repeated. It was just an arc of self immolation of the voice of the group. He never liked himself or the audience and let them know it bigtime. How is that “greatest”?
Barry Manilow: He is not a group. Otherwise we all would have stopped arguing by now and gone back to listening to Barry Manilow.
Nirvana sold far more records before Cobain died than after. But more importantly, if they were second on the grunge scene it was to the Melvins or Soundgarden, not Pearl Jam.
Fwiw, I think I’ve come to the view we’re talking about different genres - there’s 60s British rock (which grew out of the Blues, maybe infused by a little jazz), and then there’s other genres that mostly grew out of Elvis, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee and all their associates - the early Beatles fall into the latter category initially (though ultimately a freak occurrence).
By the time we get to the mid 70s a whole bunch of stuff is mixed up and we get Glam rock, psychodelia, prog rock, southern rock, soft rock, punk and all sorts. I’d guess that era of Blues influenced British rock is probably time-limited to early 60s to mid 70s.
This explains, for me at least, why the US does better with single artists, it’s basically coming from different roots - in the 60s to early 70s entirely folk and country.
2 weeks later with no posts on this forum, and we’re gonna let a BANNED guy (who just rejoined) to have the last say on this issue? Are there no other contenders? Is there even an ANSWER to this interesting question?