British rock bands have played an important musical and cultural role in the development of rock and roll over the last five decades. From the Beatles to The Smiths, from Led Zeppelin to Radiohead, british rock bands have been some of the most influential and innovative, and beloved artists ever to play a tune.
The history of british rock bands really begins with the Beatles. The group's first incarnation was in 1957, when then sixteen year old John Lennon and some schoolboy pals decided to form a band. A month later Lennon met then fifteen year old Paul McCartney and invited him to join. Several months after that, McCartney invited fourteen year old George Harrison to join, and the genesis of the Beatles was complete.
They ended up writing songs and playing gigs under several different names, including some pretty awful ones like "John and the Moondogs." Eventually Lennon's schoolboy friends decided to leave the band for school, and Lennon, McCartney and Harrison were left as a trio who would play gigs whenever they could find a drummer.
They eventually found a permanent drummer in Pete Best, and added a bassist named Stuart Sutcliffe. Around that time they settled upon the name "The Beatles", and stage two of the history of the most famous of british rock bands was complete.
As that quintet they played gigs both in their hometown of Liverpool as well as in Hamburg, Germany. When Harrison was deported for being underage, with Lennon and Best soon following for a liquor-fueled arson incident, Sutcliffe decided to stay behind with his fiance and the quintet went back to a quartet.
After a bit Best was replaced by Ringo Starr - this was in late 1961/early 1962 - and the Beatles were now whole. Hit song and hit record after hit song and hit record followed, and the British invasion was launched.
British rock bands of all types soon followed in the Beatles' wake. Perhaps the most famous (after the Beatles, of course) were and are still the Rolling Stones. The Stones fashioned themselves after great southern bluesmen like Muddy Waters and played a more aggressively bluesy style, heavy on distortion and power chords, than the Beatles did. Also coming out of Britain at that time were The Who, a band which in many ways originated two subgenres of rock: Punk rock and progressive rock. They were also the first of the british rock bands to make destroying the stage during the show a virtual art form.