One Good Thing from Empire

When I wrote last week about American empire, I forgot one positive fact I learned from that episode of On the Media.

You know how the members of the Beatles came from Liverpool? They weren't the only band that was part of a huge music scene there in the 1950s and early 1960s. I knew that generally, but I didn't realize that didn't happen elsewhere in England: it was unique to the Liverpool area. Why?

Well, the author of How to Hide an Empire makes the case that it's because of the American Air Force base 15 miles from Liverpool. After World War II, England stayed on austerity for almost a decade (rationing, for instance, didn't end until 1954), and all those young American soldiers had money to spend in the pubs and other businesses. They also got or brought records from home, in a time when the BBC wasn't playing any of the music that led to rock ’n’ roll. That cross-pollination of cultures led to 500 English bands in a single city by the end of the 1950s, one of which was the Beatles.

So that's today's fun fact I never knew.