SearchLong, long ago, before Disco and cell phones and iPods, England experienced a brief period of rapid cultural change. The war was over, England had won, but it didn’t quite feel like it. Sugar was still rationed. There were bomb craters in most major cities and lots of people were homeless and jobless. Pop music consisted pretty much of Tommy Steele, Petula Clarke and Frankie Vaughan.
Nobody knew exactly how it started. Perhaps with the Aldermaston March. A few faint tremors could be sensed in the revival of Traditional Jazz among art students and a few bearded denizens of Soho pubs. When Skiffle came along it spread to the suburbs. Lonnie Donnegan got on TV with songs like Leadbelly's ‘Rock Island Line’ (‘John Henry was on the B-side) and suddenly England had a whole new sub-culture. Then came the spillover from places like Ken Colyer’s Club and Eel Pie Island…scruffy hairy young people with bedrolls would find their way down to Brighton either by hitching or on the infamous Milk Train from Victoria. It usually happened at weekends. They’d sleep on the beach under the pier or in upturned fishing boats on the hard pebbles and meet up in the fish market to share bottles of stolen milk and Mars Bars. Some of the beatnik chicks were quite attractive in a Bohemian kind of way. French actress style. It wasn’t that difficult to entice them into your sleeping bag. One at a time of course.
Primitive music was played there on the pebbles. Some people, like Davy Graham and Wiz Jones and Martin Wyndham, would have guitars. Somebody might show up with a battered trumpet. Perhaps there would even be enough instruments to make an impromptu band! Bemused old folk and other passersby on the sea front above would gather to watch this curious cultural phenomenon. Teddy Boys, working class lads in pseudo-Edwardian suits, would shout rude things at the Beatniks. Things like ‘Do you ever wash?’ or ‘Get a bleedin’ ’aircut!!!’ and ‘Are you a boy or a girl?’ Ha-ha.
Teds wore drape jackets, drainpipe trousers and suede shoes with big crepe soles. They liked Gene Vincent and Bill Haley. Then along came a younger group, the Mods, who liked the Kinks, Small Faces and early Reggae. They showed up in their Fred Perry Polo shirts and parkas on Lambrettas and noisy little Vespas covered with superfluous headlights. They got a lot of attention which annoyed the Teds, who had somehow metamorphosed into Rockers while nobody was watching. They traded in their suits for leather jackets, bought motor-bykes and rode around shouting rude things at the Mods.
It may have been youthful high-spirits, or excess testosterone. Historians are still puzzling over it. Or maybe the various fashion styles and musical tastes just didn’t mix well. Anyway fights broke out which quickly became running battles, and it wasn’t long before the Great British Press was all over it. Old Bill got in some weekend overtime with his truncheon. Arrests were made. Newspapers were sold. The public was shocked.
The Beatniks, being peaceful folk for the most part, stayed out of it. Some simply went home to read ‘On The Road’. Other more adventurous souls decided to hitch hike to India in search of spiritual enlightenment and cheap hash. They in turn became Hippies. Most of these young people eventually got jobs, started families and settled down in front of the telly. Some have since joined the old folk on the seafront where they sit in Regency shelters, feeding sliced bread to gulls and discussing the youth of today.
© Chuck Woww. All rights reserved by the author.
Print Article
Send to a friend
Save as PDF