Do you know what British teens in bands during the early 1960’s really didn’t want to sound like? British teens.

America was the happening scene, and years would pass before The Kinks wrote about village greens, The Who decked themselves out in a Union Jack, and The Small Faces struck gold with Cockney accents. After the mid-50’s explosion of rock & roll from across the Atlantic, the post-war Brit kids embraced the exotic, unbridled dream of America, with its endless, wide highways filled with giant, gleaming Thunderbirds and Cadillacs, its promise of blue skies and blue jeans and poodle-skirted teens dancing in diners to a jumping jukebox. This was the essence of cool — and the bands wanted this essence for themselves, wanted to sound like their heroes from Memphis, Detroit, Chicago and other music capitals.

Hence, The Nashville Teens. From Surrey, England.

The Teens (who also weren’t teens) formed in 1962 and soon gained a reputation as a formidable live band. Like The Beatles, they honed their chops on the tough, unforgiving, all-night stages of German nightclubs. Backing up American artists such as Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Chuck Berry, they learned how to rock — and they learned their lesson well.

Soon-to-be super-producer Mickie Most caught the group and took them into the studio in the spring of 1964 to record their first single. One of the guys had heard an import of John D. Loudermilk’s “Tobacco Road” and thought it would sound good with a full band arrangement. Loudermilk’s folky country song told of growing up poor in North Carolina — not exactly a setting the Nashville Teens were acquainted with — but the band electrified the track, giving it an edge of defiance and menace which rocked much harder than anything else on the pop charts in the early 60’s, paving the way for the tougher sounds of The Animals, The Rolling Stones, and a host of American garage bands.

Released as a single in the summer of 1964, “Tobacco Road” wound its way into the Top 10 in the UK and Top 20 in the US, the vanguard of the British Invasion that would reach full force in 1965. But that was it for The Nashville Teens in America. One hit and out, then back to London in time to watch it swing.

So bring that dynamite and a crane. Blow it up … with The Nashville Teens.