February 3rd 1959 was declared ‘The Day the Music Died’when a plane carrying Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper crash-landed in Iowa and left no survivors. However, the upcoming decade was about to bring forth the blueprint that allowed Rock & Roll spawn bands by the thousand and become the all-encompassing umbrella that it is today.

The Blues and Rock & Roll had established themselves as an integral part of youth and counterculture during the fifties in Britain. Young bands began to produce their own interpretation of the musical output of their American counterparts. A primary example of which was the Elvis-worshipping, Liverpudlian quartet known as The Beatles.You may have heard of them.

As America mourned the death of JFK, four cheeky mop tops provided a distraction from the real world with pretty love songs that could be enjoyed by everyone from street kids to their grandmothers. Beatlemania was solidified by the band's first US television debut on The Ed Sullivan Show on February 4th, 1964, when The Beatles were live in the living rooms of 73 million Americans, wowing pop audiences across the nation.

The British Invasion also provided America with grittier, more rebellious bands such as The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Animals and The Kinks, whose music adopted the 'rough and ready' elements which were rooted in the music of the black artists of earlier Rock & Roll and Blues material. The Rolling Stones were met with a much more hostile reception from conservative America than the more polished appeal of The Beatles. They were the angel on the shoulder of impressionable young Americans, while The Stones were certainly the devil on the other side.

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