Psychedelic Pop |
London Club Scene |
| As British popular music moved
in the second half of the sixties, several factors shaped its direction.
The best-known performers could command huge audiences. The Beatles' performance
in Shea Stadium (15 August 1965) for 55,600 fans proved that you could
attract audiences on a scale with baseball and football games. However,
such concerts also demonstrated that while promoters had an appetite for
the income these events generated, the amplification technology of the
time was not up to the task of delivering the product. Although other
factors contributed to the 11,000 fewer fans who attended the Beatles'
return visit to Shea the next summer, certainly the fact that the audience
could barely see the band, let alone hear them, must have played a role.
Moreover, mid-sixties music was becoming more complex and more dependent
upon recording techniques that would prove nearly impossible to duplicate
in such venues. Finally, the political climate of the mid-sixties meant
that where some violence at a concert had once been thought of as good
publicity, riots and assassinations were now very real possibilities. |
| Meanwhile, back in the clubs
and dancehalls of Britain, the music never stopped evolving. Where the
Cavern Club had been a proving ground for the Beatles and other Liverpool
groups, London's many clubs became proving grounds for the newest phase:
the evolution of mod/pop culture into psychedelic art. The beauty of these
venues was that the audience and the performers were in concert: clothing,
speech patterns, dances, drugs, and the multitude of other behaviors of
these social groups directly influenced the music. |
| In 1965, clubs in London included
The Flamingo (33-37 Wardour Street), The Marquee (90 Wardour Street),
The 100 Club (100 Oxford Street), The Bromel Club [an R&B club] (
Bromley Hill), Studio '51 [a folk and blues club] (10/11 Great Newport
Street), The Plug Hole (32 Tottenham Court Road), The Pontiac [a pop art
club] (East Putney Street, Putney), Klooks Kleek [an R&B club]
(West Hampstead), and The Pop Inne/Manor House (Manor House), and many
others. |
| 1966 was the year of "Swinging
London," the year the American press acknowledged Britain as the
center of popular fashion, and that London tried to shake off its reputation
as a bastion of conservativeness. This was the year the Indica Book Shop
and Gallery opened and theInternational Times(IT) first
appeared. The rail terminal in Chalk Farm Road in Camden became the Round House and hosted London's first "alternative" concerts where
theater, art, dance, and music stretched into the avant garde. |
| By 1967, the core of the baby
boom generation was approaching adulthood. In the five years since the
Beatles and other beat groups had taken Britain (and the Western world)
by storm, teens had grown in their independence. John Lennon turned 27.
Stevie Winwood - the boy wonder of the Spencer Davis Group - turned 19
and, born in 1948, reflected the leading edge of the baby-boom generation.
This generation was no longer composed solely of wide-eyed adolescents
(although they were still there and seeking their own music). They were
moving out of the house and striking out on their own. They had grown
up seeing the economy grow with them. They had only vague memories of
wartime and post-war rationing. All they had known was prosperity and
now, they were ready to make the world their playground. |
