The 1960s was simply the most exciting decade in music history known to man. The eruption of talent after the discovery of the Mersey Sound, spearheaded of course by the Fab Four, changed the world.

What was special was that for a glorious and colourful short period of time, hardly a week went by without some new creative talent emerging on our airwaves, some new direction in music being created; something fresh to excite us being presented for our edification. Looking back at the charts week by week you realise that there was an explosion in song writing, a huge growth in people being interested in music and, as a result, some really great sounds were made.

In this book we have not tried to quantify that, or even order those bands and artists who helped to change our society and our way of looking at it, but we have created a top 40 of artists that can simply not be ignored for what they did. From artists such as Cliff Richard to The Kinks and Pink Floyd, The Rolling Sones and, of course, The Beatles!

Robin Bextor