Also The Redskins: 'Lean On Me'.

I'm pretty sure Tom wouldn't mind me posting this little piece of his :

In London, by 76/77 there were only a few skins left, people like Terry Madden from Camden and Binnsy from Arsenal. I was a punk in 76 and in late 77, I bumped into a bloke in full skin regalia, sta-prest, Ben Sherman, Crombie and Loafers! A bit of a shock to the system, the last proper skins I remembered , at the age of 10-11 being my Uncles and cousins - 69/70 smart. I was already into the Jam (remember 'Jam' shoes down Shelleys?) from the Red Cow through to supporting the Clash at the Rainbow. The fights down the Kings Road were Punk vs Ted (with similar small scale fights all over like those at Liverpool Street and Petticoat and the second wave skins hated Teds,) have a look on the cover of Clash City Rockers (I'm there with someones ear across my face...suppose it stopped the camera from breaking).

The decison was simple, move away from something I'd enjoyed to being different and sharper. At first being a skin was class, everyone who got into it went looking for the right gear, visiting every old tailor and army surplus etc hoping to get Ben Shermans (in the 'wooden' boxes') Sta-Prest. To me and my mates in Hoxton, we preferred loafers and brogues rather than boots, look smarter and just as hard. Hair was a No.2 with the classic razor parting. I raided my uncles old rooms for records and original Shermans....Tighten Up Volume 2....and Tamla and Stax.

At first, and this was the same as the 78/79 Mod Revival, it didnt matter where you were from, but you were a skin.We met the Archway Skins (Suggs and Toks), Becontree (Nelson and Lawrence, Croydon (!) Kilburn (Joel McBride), Bow and Canning Town ('H', Hodges. Away from the grounds, football and politics didn't matter. We'd meet down Brick Lane on Sundays and then off for a beer. But the politics started to move in and, as the first lot of revival skins were a fairly hard bunch, more and more of the plastic skins started arriving to latch onto it. Shave your head? Tattoo..on your neck and face? Big Boots and Flying jackets? At football skins started to make a big return...

Some of us started growing our hair and thought of ourselves as suedeheads, others were already into the emerging mod scene. I remember when we coached up north to see the Jam at Saddleworth and Secret Affair at Huddersfield, the culture shock between us and the Northern Scooter Clubs with their flares, parkas and beer cloths sewn on the back of parkas to dry their seats. the London look was epitomised by the Glory Boys (the Glory Boys Album Liner)who followed both Secret Affair and the Jam (Grant and Meakins on TOTP in their red jackets for Eton Rifles)...and later the Rejects. In 78 and 79 seemed to pick up again with new bands and the same 'community' atmosphere'....What was funny was that the glue skins now seemed to think anyone in a suit was a mod and ready for a battering, something they found out wasn't true (the Rejects at the Electric Ballroom, first digging me for a mohair suit ending with them getting a battering from the Rejects and later that night, when feeling brave and thinking we'd all left, they started playing football with a young kid around the floor in a parka, which led to the Rejects clearing the place out). They were hard times, there were rows at most gigs... it wasn't just the politics....

It sounds elitist, but as it became more popular, then it started to go downhill for many of us. As mohicans and begging did for punk (no one was a mohican in 76/77), the glue sniffers and idiots did for skin, for mod it seemed that Poison Ivy etc and mail order (just wear a parka, be a mod) started to do it for mod....sounds snobby I know!

The last big event I can recall was the August Bank Holiday at Southend in 1979, where skins, mods, suedeheads, punks, teds etc all seemed to fight with each other (See Garry Bushells original Sounds article and Kims article in Maximum Speed). The mob I was with were based around West Ham and were after the Teds and Skins (they looked a disgrace to us...read the fanzine Hard as Nails for some excellent piss takes as Harry and his Skinhead girl (typical glue sniffing idiots)get transported back in time to 69....as a mob of 69 sharp skins are transported to 79). That night we went to the Paddocks on Canvey Island to watch Secret Affair.

As the 80's arrived many of the old skin and mod firms, especially from East London moved into the football casual scene........Some of us were getting old and moved on.

Last edited by Alex Roest (2009-05-05 01:40:30)

The original Teds, stayed teddy boys until the end, it was a vocation, a dirty greasy violent nicotine stained elite.  I remember when I first started working back in '87 and I was taken out at lunch time to the local boozer in North Birkenhead, the infamous Blood Tub.  My boss was pally with the barman and in we walk and there's a middle aged geezer, all teddy boy greased back hair, ginger sideburns laughing and joking with his missis, some 50's music on the juke box.

The barman told us they had been in the pub for two and half days solid, speeding off their tits. I remember them with great scorn, a middle aged ted with his bird with corn beef chunky legs, how dare they dirty sulphate with the style of a waltzer operator from a travelling fare.

Last edited by The Ace Face (2009-05-05 13:16:50)

The teds tended to be, say, nineteen or older, and the rockabillies were kids.  The teds spent money and dressed up, whereas the rockabillies wore tight Levis, clumpy boots and donkey jackets.  Being a mad bastard at 18, I went into one of their pubs one Sunday evening and saw dancing rockabillies being hassled by teds.  Some of them were just plain c***s - although some of their girls were well sexy and I managed to shag two of them...

The Clash had wide musical influences from the beginning.  I saw them in 77, and they'd been talking the previous year about digging rock n'roll style clothing: especially Mick Jones.  In spite of what they said about Elvis in '1977', they dug him pretty well, I'd reckon.

To the modernist, hopefully, violence is uncool.  I don't even really like seeing it in the movies nowadays.  My wife really hates it, too, and the kind of arsehole who really gets on my tits is the trendy lager-drinking, barbie-tending yummy daddy who loves 'Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Veggie Sausages': exactly the type who loved 'Quadrophenia' - and missed the point entirely.  I won't even squash a bug in case it turns out to be Gandhi or Martin Luther King...

What is all of this skinhead nonsense doing on here? If anyone vulgarised and corrupted and missed the whole bloody point of the beautiful Ivy look it was the whole skin/suede thing. Ivy was an aspirational, upwardly mobile style - you were trying to look like you were educated, elegant, had a bit of money. The skins catoonified the look, in the same way that Paul Weller now has a cartoon Marriott head. There is a place for talking about this aspect of the look and that is in how it relates to what the Squire Shop and Ivy Shop were trying to do, beyond that no, it is absolutely culturally pointless. The guys around in the 60s who had taste moved away from the Ivy League look in the late 60s as it had become devalued visual currency because of council estate kids with shaven heads and braces. There is a SOFTNESS in the Ivy look which was completely missed by the skinhead element. Little wonder that velvet and corduroy became the fabrics of choice, and hair became longer as the original faces tried to get a bit of elegance back into their wardrobes. The skinheads have a lot to answer for.

GG

Well said Gibson Sir. I felt like asking what all this Skinhead talk was about, but being a new boy I didn't want to upset anybody. But this is a style forum, and when Mensi from the Upstarts gets namechecked it's time to worry. Sham 69, cockney Rejects etc. had no style or substance whatsoever and their fans were predominantly halfwit thugs. Skins were usually people who didn't have the imagination or money to be mods who could only express themselves through violence. Besides that the whole skinhead look has now been taken over by Old Compton Street. Now, there's irony.

Well if anything has come out of this thread Gibson, its your point and the thoughts that arise from that. So something good has come about because its got me thinking about where this all fits together and its interesting to hear your views.

It also reinforces for me that Ivy was at the end of the day just a fashion, no-one saw it as some sort of way of life (though I'm happy to be corrected on this?) so when the time came to move on, they did. I guess now its achieved classic fashion status.