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Postwar Liverpool, England, a deindustrialized and declining port town, once a center of Atlantic trade, was animated with US music, typically brought in by returning sailors. It is there that a totally new form of working-class culture originated, exemplified by local popular music, e.g., the Beatles, in the early 1960s. Unlike mass-produced, marketable US pop music, British rock music was nurtured by its working-class audience. Performers and audiences stimulated each other in an unprecedented crazed manner; few understood what was happening. The phenomenon was visible among the older generation only as delinquency. An attempt is made here to explain this new youth culture and its appeal to working-class British youth. |
