Happy 81st birthday to the great Eric Burdon! “We always laughed at the notion of a British Invasion, simply because it was just a catchphrase that Walter Cronkite, America’s number-one anchorman at CBS, coined to put us all in one basket. So the British Invasion had little to do with the music. There was no plot to storm America. That said, it was good for Americans to hear the music they’d invented, but now returned to them with a new passion. It was a sympathetic relationship that helped escalate awareness a bit. Some would say it was a musical renaissance. I think in many ways it opened people’s minds and erased some barriers. For us, it was just a ticket out of Newcastle – out of the U.K. and off to the U.S. We were all just thrilled to be in the land where jazz, blues and rock ‘n roll were born. In those days, a lot of the early greats had trouble making a living in the U.S., but found an eager audience in the U.K. We simply returned the music to the place where it had come from. In a way, we helped show Americans the music that was being created in their own backyard.” – Forbes Photo: GettyImages