10 British Acts Who Never Made It Big In the US

It may be hard to imagine in these digital days where anyone can upload a song and become an overnight sensation around the world, but there was a time when it took a lot of touring, radio play, and extensive publicity to break a new artist. It was often even harder for British acts to make it in the US even though many were already hugely popular — sometimes even household names — in the UK, but just never struck the right chord with US audiences. With that in mind, we’ve compiled a list of 10 of the most important pop acts from the UK to have never made in America.

1) Cliff Richard

While talking about his rock ‘n’ roll influences, Mick Fleetwood recently explained in his autobiography, “Cliff Richard was our Elvis,” which pretty much sums up Richard’s position in UK pop history. Richard was — and still is, to some extent — a heartthrob to rival all of One Direction put together; in fact, he constantly outsells younger acts in calendar sales year in and year out. Affectionately known as “the Peter Pan of Pop” due to his ever-youthful looks, he’s had hit sing-a-long singles that are still played today, represented Britain in Eurovision, for a while reigned as the king of Christmas singles, and even became a movie star making no less than 10 films (Summer Holiday is a perennial favorite on British TV).

He’s actually the fifth biggest selling recording artist of all time in Britain (just behind the Beatles and Elvis) and has sold an astonishing 250 million records worldwide. Richard hasn’t been a complete stranger to the US charts, though: he’s actually had nine top 40 hits in all, his biggest being “Devil Woman” in 1976. But for most Americans, the name Cliff Richard would mean nothing, while in his native UK, he’s still a household name. He may be not be considered the coolest these days (several radio stations have even banned his records for not being hip enough) but for better or worse, eternal “Bachelor Boy” Cliff Richard really is our Elvis.

2) The Shadows

They may have started off as Cliff Richard’s backing band, but the Shadows have been a phenomenally successful band in their own right, not to mention hugely influential. The list of guitarists who say they were influenced by the Shadows, and particularly their legendary lead guitarist Hank Marvin, is pretty staggering in and of itself: George Harrison, Eric Clapton, Peter Green, Jimmy Page, Pete Townshend, Brian May, Mark Knopfler, and Tony Iommi to name but a few. Neil Young also writes about the Shadows’ influence on him and his own early group the Squires in his memoir Waging Heavy Peace (listen to their single “The Sultan” for proof of this).

Many of the songs they played both with and without Cliff Richard are still instantly recognizable in the UK, and Hank Marvin himself has been immortalized as cockney rhyming slang for the word “starving” which was even used in a recent UK advert that features hungry-for-dinner school kids turning into the bespectacled guitar legend to the tune of the band’s biggest hit, “Apache.”

3) Cilla Black

Cilla Black is so well-loved and famous in the UK that her early life was recently immortalized in a miniseries that drew big viewing figures in Britain — and it actually portrayed her failed attempts to make in the US. Despite a few TV appearances including one on The Ed Sullivan Show (where he incorrectly stated the proud Liverpudlian was from Wales), Cilla was apparently booked into posh nightclubs that didn’t appreciate her rock ‘n’ roll background, and Black soon ditched the US for home never to attempt to break the States again. And Cilla really did have a bona fide rock ‘n’ roll roots, having paid her dues singing in the same Liverpool scene that produced the Beatles and even shared a manager — thanks to the recommendation of John Lennon himself.

In Brian Epstein’s 1964 memoir, A Cellarful Of Noise, he described seeing Cilla perform for the first time: “I watched her move and I watched her stand and I half-closed my eyes and imagined her on a vast stage with the right lighting. I was convinced that she could become a wonderful artiste.” And he couldn’t have been more right as Cilla went on to become the biggest selling female artist in the UK during the 1960s with hits such as “Anyone Who Had A Heart”, “You’re My World” and “Alfie” (her version is far more famous in the UK than Cher’s). She then went on to have a decades-long TV career, hosting long-running shows such as Cilla (Paul McCartney wrote the theme tune, “Step Inside Love,” just for her), Blind Date, and Surprise Surprise. Her name may mean little in the US, but in her homeland, Cilla Black is considered a national treasure.

4) Tommy Steele

When I was a kid, the first London show I ever saw starred Tommy Steele, who by then was the toast of the West End, but wasn’t always known as a song-and-dance man. In the 1950s, Steele was actually Britain’s first rock ‘n’ roll star and a huge teen idol to boot. His life story is like something from a movie and actually even became one with Steele starring as himself in 1957’s The Tommy Steele Story. Starting out in the Merchant Navy as a sailor, while traveling the world he docked in the States, heard Buddy Holly and the rest, as they say, is history. Steele made teenagers forget all about the skiffle craze in Britain when he signed to Decca, storming the charts with his first hit “Rock With The Caveman”  in 1956 and becoming an overnight sensation. The working class boy from Bermondsey quickly moved into films, starring in a succession of comedies and musicals, his biggest success coming with a role alongside Fred Astaire in the Francis Ford Coppola movie Finian’s Rainbow in 1968. Since then, the toothy Steele, still very much the cheeky chappy of old, has been a regular on British stages and is considered a legend of musical theatre.

5) Marty Wilde

He may be better known these days as the father of Kim Wilde (another UK pop legend who had limited success in the States), but back in the 1950s, Marty Wilde was one of the biggest names in British rock. Wilde was first spotted in 1959 by pop manager and impresario Larry Parnes — who also took Tommy Steele and Billy Fury under his wing — and changed his name from the very British and ordinary Reginald Smith to the far more rock ‘n’ roll Marty Wilde. Along with his backing band the Wildcats, he went on to have a string of hit singles, many covers of American hits, before moving into songwriting himself. When his teen idol appeal declined during the ’60s, his writing held him in good stead as he wrote hits for other artists including Lulu’s “I’m A Tiger” and “Ice In The Sun” by Status Quo. By the 1980s, he was writing for his pop star daughter, including one of her most memorable hit singles, “Cambodia”, co-written with his equally talented son Ricky Wilde.

6) Billy Fury

If you visit the Albert Dock in Liverpool, there’s a rather beautiful and striking black statue of a quiffed rock ‘n’ roller making some cool moves in sight of the sea. The stunning seven-foot bronze sculpture isn’t Elvis, as you first might think at a distance, it’s Billy Fury, Liverpool’s first true rock ‘n’ roll star. Born Ronald Wycherley, like Marty Wilde, Fury was managed and given his name by Larry Parnes who discovered him when the budding songwriter snuck backstage in an effort to offer his songs to Wilde and was instead pushed onstage to audition, resulting in him joining the tour. Fury was notable as one of the only early rock ‘n’ rollers to write his own music and went on to have no less than 24 hits in the 1960s. His debut album, The Sound Of Fury, is now considered one of the best UK rock ‘n’ roll albums of all time. Sadly, Fury died in 1983, aged just 42, while recording a comeback album, The One And Only, which was later released posthumously. There’s a fantastic documentary about his life called Billy Fury: His Wondrous Story  which I highly recommend checking out.

7) Joe Brown

Joe Brown is another managed by Larry Parnes but was actually something of a guitar prodigy before he became a singer. As a teen, he joined Jack Good’s TV orchestra and his first job was backing none other than Johnny Cash on the teen music show Boy Meets Girls. He also played lead guitar on Billy Fury’s legendary The Sound Of Fury LP, which Keith Richards admitted was a huge influence on him. Despite a handful of single releases, Brown didn’t take off as a solo artist until 1962 when he finally made it all the way to #2 with “A Picture Of You”. Brown toured off the back of its success with none other than the Beatles on the bill with him. The band was so impressed by Brown that George Harrison sang “A Picture Of You” on the Beatles’ first radio broadcast, and Brown and Harrison went on to be lifelong friends with Harrison even taking on Best Man duties at Brown’s second wedding in 2000. His chart success slowed down by the late ’60s, but he has remained active in music ever since, still regularly touring. He’s also had success in film, musical theatre, TV (including three series of The Joe Brown Show for ITV), and radio presenting, with various shows on Radio 2. His daughter Sam Brown also had some success as a pop star in the late 1980s, with her single “Stop!” becoming a huge hit in 1988.

8) The Move

One of the most surprising bands not to make it in the States has to be The Move who scored a slew of hits in the UK during the late ’60s, including the #1 hit “Blackberry Way”. The band was something of a Birmingham supergroup — all the members had “moved” from local bands — planning to form a group similar to The Who. They were a big success right from the start with their debut single “Night Of Fear” making it to #2 in the charts. Their third single, “Flowers In The Rain,” famously became the first pop record ever played by the newly launched BBC Radio 1, and they also became a favorite with the music press thanks to their crazy live shows and publicity stunts that sometimes got them in trouble. The most notable of these was a postcard promoting the “Flowers In The Rain” single which pictured then-Prime Minister Harold Wilson in bed with his secretary and led to the band being successfully sued for libel.

Jeff Lynne joined the band in 1969 after the departure of original singer Carl Wayne and together with Roy Wood, who was the group’s principal songwriter, they shaped the vision of the band’s last two albums. While recording their final record, Message From The Country, Lynne, Wood and drummer Bev Bevan were also laying down tracks for the first Electric Light Orchestra album, the release of which in 1972 marked the end of The Move. ELO, of course, went on to great worldwide success while Roy Wood left and formed yet another successful band, Wizzard.

9) Status Quo

To be fair to Status Quo, they did manage one US hit back in the late ’60s with their psychedelic-tinged “Pictures of Matchstick Men” — obviously the inspiration for Spinal Tap’s “(Listen to the) Flower People” — but in the UK, Status Quo (known affectionately as “The Quo”) have cornered the market in pub rock and dad rock for years and years, all the while seemingly using only three chords doing it. In the UK, they’ve actually had no less than 60 hit singles: that’s more than any other rock group in Britain. Last year, Francis Rossi and Rick Parfitt even starred as themselves in the first Status Quo movie, the comedy adventure Bula Quo! (yes, it’s as terrible as it sounds). Songs such as “Rockin’ All Over the World,” “Down Down,” and “Whatever You Want” are staples on UK radio, and while they’ve never quite been cool, thanks to their look consisting of white trainers (sneakers), waistcoats, and ponytails, the band has had the last laugh selling 128 million records overall.

10) Slade

In the early ’90s, British comedy duo Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer had a regular series of sketches on their show The Smell Of Reeves & Mortimer, called Slade In Residence that parodied the home life of the glam rockers showing that despite their outrageous stage clothes and big rock anthems, all they were really obsessed with was soup. That’s how embedded Slade are in British popular culture and how instantly recognizable singer Noddy Holder, he of the big top hats and bushy sideburns, is, although it’s no doubt partly due to the continuing success of their Christmas hit “Merry Xmas Everybody,” a perennial holiday favorite since it first hit the top of the charts in 1973. The Wolverhampton group were one of the most successful groups of the 1970s, scoring 17 Top 20 hits and six #1s. They did manage some minor success in the US in the early ’80s but America strangely never really took to them despite anthemic songs such as “Mama Weer All Crazee Now” and “Cum On Feel The Noize” (misspellings were also their thing). Slade continue to this day but without their main man Noddy (he left in 1992), who has since become a much-loved radio and TV personality.

Sharon Lacey

Sharon Lacey has spent most of her career as a home entertainment journalist, but has always loved writing about music ever since her first pop review was published in a UK mag at age 15. She lives in London and still loves going to see live bands, old and new, which she writes about on her blog The Boho Dance.