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Just a
short time earlier, America had been rocked by an article in The Nation
Magazine about the Hells Angels written by a young Hunter S. Thompson.
An article that then went on to launch his career, the influence of
which was to come back and haunt the British biking scene only a few
years later; tearing up the once united Rocker scene into divisive
factions, setting bikers against bikers in aping the fiction they were
reading. The young Californian greasers had become the scourge of
America. Great for business when you are selling news. The British press
were hungry for an equivalent to run with a copy cat story and picked up
on what by today's standard was an incredibly mild affair.
The concept of Mods and Rockers actually crystallised in the public
consciousness at a specific place and time: Clacton-on-Sea, Essex,
during the Easter Bank Holiday weekend of 1964. After two days of
comparatively mild violence in the wet seaside resort - the worst was a
shop window being broken - the newspapers were full of blaring
headlines: " DAY OF TERROR BY SCOOTER GROUPS ""
YOUNGSTERS BEAT UP TOWN - 97 LEATHER JACKET ARRESTS " " WILD ONES
INVADE SEASIDE " It was under this glare of publicity
that the idea of scooter gangs - Mods - versus motorbike gangs - Rockers
- really flourished. Until then they had not been rigidly separate
groups: the conflict was more a case of rivalry between Londoners and
local groups which came in for the weekend from villages in the
surrounding county of East Anglia. Then, as later, there were no massed
opposing groups of scooter riders and motorbike riders: the riders were
a noisy conspicuous minority, with most of the youngsters getting there
by train and bus. In truth was, especially in cities, the groups were
inter-related, often from the same housing estates; only separated by
fashion or generations. Older brother / younger brother etc. The
rocker's dress dictated by function which is why it changed so little
over time. But the image of smartly dressed louts with scooters and
leather-jacketed, oily louts with motorbikes meeting to do battle at
seaside resorts was set. A further weekend of "blood and violence" (two
stabbings and the dropping of a man into a flower bed) at Margate later
that year helped make scenes of youngsters running along beaches and
being bundled into the backs of police vans familiar sights on British
TV screens during Bank Holidays. As the free use of amphetamines had
been made illegal the year before, the press could keep the story going
with frequent references to youths crazed by "purple hearts" - Drinomyl
tablets that were really blue and triangular. Drug taking amongst the
young nascent bikers - beyond the notorious " British Rail Tea " -
almost unknown. Whilst the division of these particular minorities of
British youth into factions emerged at Clacton, it's true to say that
stylistic differences had already emerged in the early 60s. An "
Italianate " or " Modern " style of designer dressing and an attraction
to R&B and Espresso bar culture had given birth to the Mod, though they
were lumped in under the general heading of Teddy Boys at the time. They
would go on to generate their own dance culture focused on clubs like
the Marquee, and also their own bands, including The Who. The Rockers,
meanwhile, found their models in the leather-clad style of the movie The
Wild Ones, their inspiration in the " ton-up boys " of the motorways -
Motorcyclists who defied the law by riding at over 100MPH - and their
haunts in the greasy roadside transport cafes. Which is all rather
too neat, as the Mods, at least, fractured into a variety of sub groups
almost from the beginning. There were the scooter boys, all flapping
jeans and anoraks, centring on art-school types. Then there were the
short-haired hard Mods, who wore jeans suspended from braces and weighty
boots. They are the ones who seem to have been at the centre of the
violence, and they are thought to have been the precursors of the
crop-headed, violent Skinheads, who emerged at the latter end of the
decade. Again, there were smooth mods, usually slightly older and
better-off, who played close attention to their dress, cruising the
boutiques by day and the clubs by night. " So what will the well
dressed Mod be wearing this weekend? "
BBC Video Footage - [ Real Media Player ] Likewise with the
Rockers, few could ever have dreamt have afforded all the leather gear,
pudding basin helmets and shiny chrome cafe racer style that the Rocker
Revival movement has championed. They were poor, they rode old bikes,
some could afford old leather jackets but plastic copies, ex-army gear,
wellington boots etc were often the order of the day. There was no
uniform as such until much later. Even blue jeans were relatively
rare. The diversity amongst Mods helped to make the Mod less and less
identifiable as the 60s wore on, especially once Britain's particular
version of the hippie began to make an appearance, and reflected the
restless change of the period that The Beatles and their music both
exemplified and encouraged. Ironically, the Mods were largely absorbed,
while the Rockers went on virtually unaltered, apart from the odd name
change. They entered the 70s as Greasers and largely switched
allegiance to heavy metal and went on to later influence the sound and
fashion of Punk Rock as many of the early founders of that movement; The
Damned, The Clash, The Stranglers, also rode " Brando-style " British
bikes or cafe racers. [ As an interesting aside, it is worth noting how
history repeated itself in the schism between Punk and New Wave; prime
movers in the latter, such as Paul Weller and The Jam, overtly
referencing Mod fashion and design ]. In fact, it is probably fair to
say that the connection between Rockers and Rock and Roll in the early
days was largely incidental. By their inherent oiliness, due to old
unreliable bikes, road filth and early 20th Century British plumbing,
they were marginalise to where they could socialise; truck stops and
roadside caffs. The juke boxes there, well out of date, and determined
by much older clientele were the order of the day. They were also
largely teenagers, they listened and danced to whatever pop was around.
The big difference perhaps being that their first romance was with the
road and their chances of getting laid out on it much higher than
anything else, for most. When The Who produced Quadrophenia in 1973,
later made into a feature film in 1979 where Rockers were laughably
successfully pursued and caught by Mods on Vespas, it's take on Mod
culture and angst already seemed as elegaic as hearing your dad tell his
war stories. The annual battles on the beaches were had ceased long
before, and the war between Mods and Rockers that had raged on our TV
screens was already fading from popular memory. Did it actually
ever happen or was it just a media
creation?
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