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Mon 1 September 2025 17:00, UK
Patriotism is something of a buzzword at current, and while I don’t wish to sound overly patriotic myself, even I cannot help but feel a pang of national pride when discussing Britain’s extensive history of rock and roll greatness.
Although the rock revolution has its roots in cities like Memphis, where American artists blended blues with the infectious emerging sounds of R&B, it did not take very long for the energetic, youth-focused style to travel across the globe. In a grey and drizzly post-war Britain, the rock sounds arriving from the other side of the Atlantic represented an exciting, colourful future for the nation’s youth. Inevitably, then, the UK soon established its own distinct rock and roll scene, which changed the game entirely.
By the time the 1960s rolled around, every city and provincial town across the country was littered with hopeful young rock and roll outfits. Ironically, it was the United States who gave many of these groups their first taste of mainstream success, in an age dubbed ‘the British invasion’. With the likes of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones leading the charge, the invasion period typified the rock sounds of the swinging sixties, as well as inspiring the next generation of artists, like future ELO songwriter Jeff Lynne.
Growing up during the 1950s and 1960s, Lynne was as taken with the emergence of American rock as anybody else, but it was the inspiration provided to him by invasion groups like The Beatles which truly set him on a path to musical greatness. When the iconic songwriter was asked by The Quietus to compile a list of his favourite records back in 2012, it was always likely that The Beatles were about to feature as heavily as cabron dioxide in the atmosphere.
It might not be of cultural interest to aficionados, but the revolutionary power of the band’s 1963 debut Please Please Me is way too undervalued, Lynne recalled, “The sound of it, to me, was real, raw excitement. They were a great group, they really were.” Adding the fairly bold claim, “I think ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ was probably the greatest ever English rock’n’roll song.”
Lynne, who would go on to cross paths with the Beatles, producing multiple Paul McCartney solo records and forming the legendary supergroup The Traveling Wilburys alongside George Harrison, also shared a health appreciation for the band’s more experimental offerings, too. Picking out Revolver, from 1966, he shared, “It was more experimental than anything they’d done before. […] How did it sound back in ’66? Way better than everything else, I would say. It stood out like a sore thumb really.”
The Beatles weren’t the only group to set foot on the shores of the New World as part of the British invasion. Lynne happily heaped praise onto The Who, who were always a little louder and more anarchic than their Merseyside cousins. Selecting their 1971 compilation album Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy, Lynne harked back to his early days, pre-ELO playing covers of the band. “I used to love playing all those Who songs,” he said. “They had something about them, The Who. It was like magic, the sound. And just watching Pete Townshend, he was always amazing.”
Finally, Lynne also picked out The Zombies as a favourite of the invasion period, although he tended to prefer the more expansive, psychedelic offering of Odyssey and Oracle than their earlier sound at the height of the invasion era. “I just loved all the songs on it,” he shared. “I love Colin Blunstone’s voice on it. And lovely, crafted songs. Great harmonies, what more could you want? I love The Zombies.”
Without the profound inspiration of these four albums, crafted by the harbingers of the British invasion, Lynne might never have carried that torch forward into the next musical age, pioneering progressive pop and art rock alongside ELO.
Jeff Lynne’s favourite British invasion albums:The Beatles – Revolver (1966)The Beatles – Please Please Me (1963)The Who – Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy (1971)The Zombies – Odyssey and Oracle (1968)
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