{{Use British English|date=May 2023}} {{Short description|Pop and rock genre}} {{Distinguish|Beat (music)|Big beat|Beats Music|The Beat (British band)}} {{redirect-multi|2|Merseybeat|Mersey Sound|other uses of Merseybeat|Merseybeat (disambiguation)|the poetry anthology|The Mersey Sound (anthology)}} {{Use dmy dates|date=December 2022}} {{Infobox music genre | name = Beat | stylistic_origins = {{hlist|Rock and roll|rhythm and blues|rockabilly|skiffle|traditional pop|Brill Building|doo-wop}} | cultural_origins = Late 1950s – early 1960s, United Kingdom | derivatives = {{hlist|Garage rock|psychedelic rock|folk rock}} | subgenrelist = | subgenres = Freakbeat | fusiongenres = | regional_scenes = Brum Beat | local_scenes = | other_topics = {{hlist|British Invasion|Carnaby Street|Swinging London}} }} '''Beat music''', '''British beat''', or '''Merseybeat''' is a British popular music genre that developed around Liverpool in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The genre melded influences from British and American rock and roll, rhythm and blues, skiffle, traditional pop, and music hall. It rose to mainstream popularity in the United Kingdom and Europe by 1963 before spreading to North America in 1964 with the British Invasion. The beat style shaped popular music and youth culture through 1960s movements such as garage rock, folk rock and psychedelic music.
==Origin== The exact origins of the terms 'beat music' and 'Merseybeat' are uncertain. "Beat" alludes to the driving rhythms adopted from rock and roll, R&B, and soul music—not the Beat Generation literary movement of the 1950s. As the initial wave of British rock and roll was in height in the early 1960s, "big beat" music, later shortened to "beat", became a live dance style and alternative alongside the British rock and roll balladeers like Tommy Steele, Marty Wilde, and Cliff Richard who were dominating the charts.<ref name=Longhurst>B. Longhurst, ''Popular Music and Society'' (Polity, 2nd edn., 2007), {{ISBN|0-7456-3162-2}}, p. 98.</ref> The German anthropologist and music critic Ernest Borneman, who lived in England from 1933 to 1960, claimed to have coined the term in a column in ''Melody Maker'' magazine to describe the British imitation of American rock'n'roll, rhythm & blues, and skiffle bands.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Borneman |first1=Ernest |title=Sex im Volksmund. Der obszöne Wortschatz der Deutschen |date=1984 |publisher=Manfred Pawlak |location=Herrsching |isbn=3-88199-145-X |page=[4] |language=de |chapter=Über die sexuelle Umgangssprache |quote="Während der fünfziger Jahre schrieb ich eine wöchentliche Spalte in der englischen Musikzeitschrift 'Melody Maker'. Um den englischen Imitationen der amerikanischen Rhythm-and-Blues, Rock-and-Roll und Skiffle Bands einen Namen zu geben, erfand ich das Wort 'beat music', das sich mittlerweile in vielen Sprachen eingebürgert hat."}}</ref>
The 'Mersey' of 'Merseybeat' refers to the River Mersey. Liverpool lies on the eastern side of the river's estuary.
The name ''Mersey Beat'' was used for a Liverpool music magazine founded in 1961 by Bill Harry. Harry claims to have coined the term "based on a policeman's beat and not that of the music".<ref name=Harry/> The band the Pacifics were renamed the Mersey Beats in February 1962 by Bob Wooler, MC at the Cavern Club, and in April that year they became the Merseybeats.<ref>B. Eder and R. Unterberger, [http://www.allmusic.com/artist/p4903/biography "The Merseybeats"], ''AllMusic'', retrieved 16 June 2009.</ref> With the rise of the Beatles in 1963, the terms Mersey sound and Merseybeat were applied to bands and singers from Liverpool, the first time in British pop music that a sound and a location were linked together.<ref>{{cite book |chapter-url= https://books.google.com/books?id=Zx_OpMptTFQC&pg=PA11 |title=The Beat Goes on: Liverpool, Popular Music and the Changing City (editors Marion Leonard, Robert Strachan) |page=11|author=Ian Inglis|chapter=Historical approaches to Merseybeat|publisher=Liverpool University Press|year=2010 |access-date=20 June 2013|isbn=9781846311901 }}</ref> The Beatles' debut album ''Please Please Me'' (1963) is often cited as the record that most exemplifies the Merseybeat sound.<ref>{{cite web |title=Please Please Me – The Beatles |url=https://www.allmusic.com/album/please-please-me-mw0000192936 |website=AllMusic |access-date=August 25, 2025}}</ref> The equivalent scenes in Birmingham and London were described as Brum Beat and the Tottenham Sound respectively.<ref>B. Eder, [http://www.allmusic.com/album/r210426 "Various artists: ''Brum Beat: the Story of the 60s Midland Sound''"], ''AllMusic'', retrieved 5 February 2011.</ref>
==Characteristics== The most distinctive characteristic of beat music was its strong beat, using the backbeat common to rock and roll and rhythm and blues, but often with a driving emphasis on all the beats of a 4/4 bar.<ref>P. Hurry, M. Phillips and M. Richards, ''Heinemann Advanced Music'' (Heinemann, 2001), p. 158.</ref> The rhythm itself—described by Alan Clayson as "a changeless four-four offbeat on the snare drum"—was developed in the clubs in the St. Pauli neighbourhood of Hamburg, West Germany, where many English groups, including the Beatles, performed in the early 1960s and where it was known as the ''mach schau'' (make show) beat.<ref name=stratton /> The 8/8 rhythm was flexible enough to be adopted for songs from a range of genres. In addition, according to music writer Dave Laing,<ref name=stratton>{{cite book |chapter-url= https://books.google.com/books?id=cK-gFIUijQYC&q=%22beat+music%22&pg=PA44 |title=Britpop and the English Music Tradition (editors Andy Bennett, Jon Stratton) |pages=41–46|author=Jon Stratton|chapter=Englishing Popular Music in the 1960s|publisher=Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2010|year=2010 |access-date=2 July 2013|isbn=9780754668053 }}</ref>
<blockquote>"[T]he chord playing of the rhythm guitar was broken up into a series of separate strokes, often one to the bar, with the regular plodding of the bass guitar and crisp drumming behind it. This gave a very different effect from the monolithic character of rock, in that the beat was given not by the duplication of one instrument in the rhythm section by another, but by an interplay between all three. This flexibility also meant that beat music could cope with a greater range of time-signatures and song shapes than rock & roll had been able to".</blockquote>
Beat groups usually had simple guitar-dominated line-ups, with vocal harmonies and catchy tunes.<ref>J. Shepherd, ''Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World: Volume II: Performance and Production'' (Continuum, 2003), {{ISBN|0-8264-6322-3}}, p. 78.</ref> The most common instrumentation of beat groups featured lead, rhythm, and bass guitars plus drums, as popularised by the Beatles, the Searchers, and others.<ref name="Longhurst">B. Longhurst, ''Popular Music and Society'' (Polity, 2nd edn., 2007), {{ISBN|0-7456-3162-2}}, p. 98.</ref> Beat groups—even those with a separate lead singer—often sang both verses and choruses in close harmony, resembling doo wop, with nonsense syllables in the backing vocals.<ref>Nell Irvin Painter, ''Creating Black Americans: African-American History and Its Meanings, 1619 to the Present'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 261.</ref>
==Emergence== [[File:Dave Clark Five 1966.JPG|thumb|The Dave Clark Five appearing on ''The Ed Sullivan Show'' in 1966]] In the late 1950s, a flourishing culture of groups began to emerge, often out of the declining skiffle scene, in major urban centres in the UK like Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, and London. This was particularly true in Liverpool, where it has been estimated that there were around 350 different bands active, often playing ballrooms, concert halls, and clubs.<ref name=Harry>{{Cite web|url=http://www.triumphpc.com/mersey-beat/about/founders-story2.shtml|title=The Founders' Story 2 - Bill & Virginia Harry|website=Triumphpc.com|access-date=2 August 2019}}</ref> Liverpool was perhaps uniquely placed within Britain to be the point of origin of a new form of music. Commentators have pointed to a combination of local solidarity, industrial decline, social deprivation, and the existence of a large population of Irish origin, the influence of which has been detected in Beat music.<ref name=Stakes2001/> It was also a major port with links to America, particularly through the Cunard Yanks,<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/liverpool/content/articles/2007/04/03/cunard_yanks_feature.shtml|title=Cunard Yanks|publisher=BBC Liverpool|first=Paul|last=Coslett|access-date=31 December 2018}}</ref> which made for much greater access to American records and instruments like guitars, which could not easily be imported due to trade restrictions.<ref name=Stakes2001>R. Stakes, "Those boys: the rise of Mersey beat", in S. Wade, ed., ''Gladsongs and Gatherings: Poetry and its Social Context in Liverpool Since the 1960s'' (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2001), {{ISBN|0-85323-727-1}}, pp. 157–66.</ref> As a result, Beat bands were heavily influenced by American groups of the era, such as Buddy Holly and the Crickets (from which group the Beatles derived their name, combining it with a pun on the beat in their music),{{sfn |Gilliland |1969 |loc=show 27, track 4}} and to a lesser extent by British rock and roll groups such as the Shadows.<ref>W. Everett, ''The Beatles as Musicians: The Quarry Men through Rubber Soul'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), {{ISBN|0-19-514105-9}}, pp. 37–8.</ref>
After the national success of the Beatles in Britain from 1962, a number of Liverpool performers were able to follow them into the charts, including Gerry & the Pacemakers (who achieved a number one hit in the UK before the Beatles),{{sfn |Gilliland |1969 |loc=show 29}} the Searchers, and Cilla Black.
Outside of Liverpool many local scenes were less influenced by rock and roll and more by the rhythm and blues and later directly by the blues. These included bands from Birmingham who were often grouped with the beat movement, the most successful being the Spencer Davis Group and the Moody Blues. Similar blues influenced bands who broke out from local scenes to national prominence were the Animals from Newcastle{{sfn |Gilliland |1969 |loc=show 29}} and Them from Belfast.<ref>I. Chambers, ''Urban Rhythms: Pop Music and Popular Culture'' (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1985), {{ISBN|0-312-83469-1}}, p. 75.</ref> From London, the term ''Tottenham Sound'' was largely based around the Dave Clark Five, but other London-based British rhythm and blues and rock bands who benefited from the beat boom of this era included the Rolling Stones,{{sfn |Gilliland |1969 |loc=show 30}} the Kinks and the Yardbirds.<ref>J. R. Covach and G. MacDonald Boone. ''Understanding Rock: Essays in Musical Analysis'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), {{ISBN|0-19-510005-0}}, p. 60.</ref>
===British Invasion=== {{Main|British Invasion}} [[File:The Beatles arrive at JFK Airport.jpg|right|thumb|The arrival of the Beatles in the U.S., and subsequent appearance on ''The Ed Sullivan Show'', marked the start of the British Invasion]] The Beatles' appearance on ''The Ed Sullivan Show'' soon after led to chart success.{{sfn |Gilliland |1969 |loc=show 28}} During the next two years, the Animals, Petula Clark, the Dave Clark Five,{{sfn |Gilliland |1969 |loc=show 29}} the Rolling Stones,{{sfn |Gilliland |1969 |loc=show 30}} Donovan,{{sfn |Gilliland |1969 |loc=show 48}} Peter and Gordon, Manfred Mann, Freddie and the Dreamers, the Zombies, Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders, Herman's Hermits, and the Troggs would have one or more number one singles in America.<ref name=Britannica>{{cite encyclopedia|url=https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/80244/British-Invasion|title=British Invasion|encyclopedia=Encyclopædia Britannica|access-date=23 January 2016}}</ref>
=== Freakbeat === {{Main|Freakbeat}} Freakbeat is a subgenre of rock and roll music developed mainly by harder-driving British groups, often those with a mod following during the Swinging London period of the mid to late 1960s.<ref>{{cite web|author=Richie Unterberger|author-link=Richie Unterberger|url=http://www.allmusic.com/album/joe-meeks-freakbeat-30-freakbeat-mod-and-r-b-nuggets-mw0000567860 |title=Joe Meek's Freakbeat: 30 Freakbeat, Mod and R&B Nuggets - Joe Meek | Songs, Reviews, Credits |publisher=AllMusic |date=2007-04-03 |access-date=2015-11-29}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|author=Richie Unterberger |url=http://www.allmusic.com/album/looking-back-80-mod-freakbeat-swinging-london-nuggets-mw0002232931 |title=Looking Back: 80 Mod, Freakbeat & Swinging London Nuggets - Various Artists | Songs, Reviews, Credits |publisher=AllMusic |date=2011-11-29 |access-date=2015-11-29}}</ref> Freakbeat bridges "British Invasion mod/R&B/pop and psychedelia".<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.allmusic.com/album/looking-back-80-mod-freakbeat-swinging-london-nuggets-mw0002232931|title=Looking Back: 80 Mod, Freakbeat & Swinging London Nuggets - Various Artists | Songs, Reviews, Credits | AllMusic|access-date=5 September 2020|publisher=AllMusic}}</ref> The term was coined in the 1980s by English music journalist Phil Smee.<ref>{{cite magazine|last1=Norris|first1=Richard|title=20 best: UK psych records ever made|magazine=Factmag|date=11 March 2012|url=http://www.factmag.com/2012/03/11/20-best-uk-psych/}}</ref> AllMusic writes that "freakbeat" is loosely defined, but generally describes the more obscure but hard-edged artists of the British Invasion era such as the Creation, the Pretty Things or Denny Laine's early solo work.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.allmusic.com/style/freakbeat-ma0000012342|title=Freakbeat Music Genre Overview|publisher=AllMusic|access-date=5 September 2020}}</ref> Other bands often mentioned as Freakbeat are the Action, the Move, the Smoke, the Sorrows, and Wimple Winch.<ref name="Erlewine (Nuggets II Brit. Empire)">{{cite web|last1=Erlewine|first1=Stephen Thomas|title=Various Artists: Nuggets, Vol. 2: Original Artyfacts from the British Empire & Beyond|publisher=AllMusic|url=http://www.allmusic.com/album/nuggets-vol-2-original-artyfacts-from-the-british-empire-beyond-mw0000005166|access-date=10 July 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150705001817/http://www.allmusic.com/album/nuggets-vol-2-original-artyfacts-from-the-british-empire-beyond-mw0000005166|archive-date=5 July 2015|url-status=live}}</ref>
==Decline== By 1967, beat music was beginning to sound out of date, particularly compared with the "harder edged" blues rock that was beginning to emerge.
Most of the groups that had not already disbanded by 1967, like the Beatles, moved into different forms of rock music and pop music, including psychedelic rock and eventually progressive rock.<ref>E. Macan, ''Rocking the Classics: English Progressive Rock and the Counterculture'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), {{ISBN|0-19-509888-9}}, p. 11.</ref>
==Influence== Beat was a major influence on the American garage rock<ref name=AllmusicGarage>V. Bogdanov, C. Woodstra and S. T. Erlewine, ''All music guide to rock: the definitive guide to rock, pop, and soul'' (Backbeat Books, 3rd end., 2002), pp. 1320-1.</ref> and folk rock movements,<ref>R. Unterberger, [http://www.allmusic.com/explore/essay/merseybeat-t680 "Merseybeat"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120423221816/http://www.allmusic.com/explore/essay/merseybeat-t680 |date=23 April 2012 }}, retrieved 5 February 2011.</ref> and would be a source of inspiration for subsequent rock music subgenres, including Britpop in the 1990s.<ref>D. B. Scott, "The Britpop sound", in A. Bennett and J. Stratton, eds., ''Britpop and the English Music Tradition'' (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010), {{ISBN|0-7546-6805-3}}, pp. 103-122.</ref>
==See also== * :Category:Beat groups * British rhythm and blues * Freakbeat * Garage rock * Popular beat combo
==Notes== {{Reflist}}
==References== * {{Gilliland |show=28 |title=The British Are Coming! The British Are Coming!: The U.S.A. is invaded by a wave of long-haired English rockers }} * Leigh, S., (2004) ''Twist and Shout!: Merseybeat, The Cavern, The Star-Club and The Beatles'' (Nirvana Books), {{ISBN|0-9506201-5-7}} (updated version of ''Let's Go Down to the Cavern'') * May, Chris; Phillips, Tim (1974). ''[https://books.google.com/books/about/British_Beat.html?id=h5NwNwAACAAJ British Beat]''. Socion Books. London. {{isbn|978-0-903-98501-7}}
==External links== *[http://www.triumphpc.com/mersey-beat/ Mersey Beat magazine, including history of genre] *[http://www.merseybeatnostalgia.co.uk/ Merseybeat Nostalgia] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200827091147/http://www.merseybeatnostalgia.co.uk/ |date=27 August 2020 }}
{{rock}} {{pop rock}} {{pop music}} {{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Beat Music}} Category:Beat music Category:1960s in music Category:1950s in Liverpool Category:1960s in Liverpool Category:20th-century music genres Category:British Invasion Category:Music history of the United Kingdom Category:British styles of music Category:English styles of music Category:Pop music genres Category:Rock music genres Category:The Beatles music