From Tommy Steele to Cliff Richard and Billy Fury, the 1950's represented the birth pangs of rock 'n' roll music in the UK. Here for the first time is the authoritative and complete history and social analysis of the era tracing the music's emergence from the primitive experimentation of teenage revolutionaries in the coffee bars of London's Soho to the marketing of the first generation of television idols to the eventual breakthrough of such global stars as The Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Writer Pete Frame, one of the few writers to have experienced the highs and lows of that decade first hand, presents the ultimate appraisal of an era previously lost in time. This is the definitive and only book to analyse the 1950s UK pop world. This will become the key text on the era. It ties in with the 50th anniversary of the birth of rock'n'roll music in the UK and contains exclusive and previously unpublished interviews with all the major stars of the period.