Post by markdixon on Aug 29, 2016 9:02:42 GMT
I had a flick through Mark Lewisohn's "Tune In" book to see if there was anything in there that proved or disproved the 'Mersey myth' that's been discussed in the last few posts. Lewisohn doesn't refer to sailors offloading rock 'n' roll and r'n'b records in Liverpool. He shows that the Beatles were exposed to American records through the standard routes. They tuned into Radio Luxembourg and the American Forces Network, they saw feature films such as "The Girl Can't Help It" and they bought records on the London American label in NEMS.
I did spot one unusual detail in the book. John Lennon heard a lot of Delta and country blues records when he was at art school because he had a friend who borrowed them from the cultural department of the American Embassy in London. However, traditional blues rarely featured in the Beatles' repertoire.
I looked at Alan Clayson's book "Hamburg: The Cradle of British Rock" and I noticed a comment by Denny Laine that casts further doubt on the Mersey myth. Laine claimed that a lot of the Birmingham groups had the same repertoire as the Liverpool groups because they brought records back to the UK from Germany. However, he didn't mention how the musicians acquired the records.
I doubt that British musicians in Hamburg bought many records directly from Americans. It appears that the Beatles and other beat groups travelled to Hamburg to play specifically for German audiences (although American sailors sometimes turned up at clubs such as the Kaiserkeller and the Top Ten). The situation was different in France because British beat groups such as Rory Storm and the Hurricanes were hired to play at United States Army bases. Presumably, they would have had plenty of opportunities to purchase records from American servicemen.
Hamburg was the centre of the German music industry, so it's possible that there were record shops there in the early Sixties that sold a wide variety of American imports (such as r'n'b records).
I did spot one unusual detail in the book. John Lennon heard a lot of Delta and country blues records when he was at art school because he had a friend who borrowed them from the cultural department of the American Embassy in London. However, traditional blues rarely featured in the Beatles' repertoire.
I looked at Alan Clayson's book "Hamburg: The Cradle of British Rock" and I noticed a comment by Denny Laine that casts further doubt on the Mersey myth. Laine claimed that a lot of the Birmingham groups had the same repertoire as the Liverpool groups because they brought records back to the UK from Germany. However, he didn't mention how the musicians acquired the records.
I doubt that British musicians in Hamburg bought many records directly from Americans. It appears that the Beatles and other beat groups travelled to Hamburg to play specifically for German audiences (although American sailors sometimes turned up at clubs such as the Kaiserkeller and the Top Ten). The situation was different in France because British beat groups such as Rory Storm and the Hurricanes were hired to play at United States Army bases. Presumably, they would have had plenty of opportunities to purchase records from American servicemen.
Hamburg was the centre of the German music industry, so it's possible that there were record shops there in the early Sixties that sold a wide variety of American imports (such as r'n'b records).