skins

Skinhead Story

Spirit of '69

It was the time to make their presence felt, and they did so in 1969.  Chris Welch writing in the pop press, was one of the first writers to notice the new phenomenon, even if his standpoint was unsympathetic:
‘its a curious thing that whenever…a pillar of our
bewildered society wants to cast stones,they instantly start talking about Long haired Louts/yobs/hippie /students etc…Yet anybody who has ventured on the streets will instinctively know that they have nothing to fear from the long haired youth who merely wants to turn on in peace to his favourite band and chick.

The sight of cropped heads and the sound of heavy boots entering the midnight wimpy bar or dance hall is the real cause for sinking feelings in the pit of the stomach’. Welch identified the new breed as ‘Mods’, which wasn’t a bad description in the pre-Skinhead days, for no doubt about it, their origins were the same as the Mods of 1963-64.  But, where as the Mod had been had been at one with rock music, his younger brother or sister was left out in the cold.  The cropped hair and turned up Levis, the braces and the Dr.Martens steel-capped boots became the obligatory uniform for the 1969 version of the Mod – a uniform that was quite clearly a reaction against hippy gear’.  The hairstyle gave the kids their new name - ‘Skinhead’ – and the boots the new message ‘Aggro’ – an abbreviation of aggravation.   The braces,though no doubt unconsciously, marked them out as a working-class group.

In every way their image and their attitudes were in direct opposition to the middle-class student drop-out, who filled the scapegoat role in the early Skinhead days as the rocker had filled it for their elder brothers.  Musically the Skinheads had next to nowhere to turn.   Like the Mods they  wanted music to dance to, or to ‘clomp’ to: They had no room for the liberated free-expressionism of the ‘hippies’ dancing.  Dave Hill of  Slade noted: “Skinheads don’t move their feet  when they dance, they stamp them up and down and make one helluva racket.  The more noise they make,the better.  Putting it crudely, the Skinheads wanted to be noticed, and this involved noise,brashness,violence and bovver.

Motown was the only mainstream pop that had any appeal, and the ‘chartbuster’ albums were snapped up by the Skins.  But Motowns identity wasn’t clearly defined as they wanted their music to be – they thus latched themselves into Reggae, the updated version of Ska and Blue Beat - pioneered by the Rastafarians in Kingston,Jamaica.  ‘The Israelites’, the first major reggae seller, was an obvious - rastafarian record, with its vision of Babylon and the lost people trapped within its boundary.

Blue Beat had enjoyed a small burst of popularity by the ‘Mods’ in 1964, but the much greater success of Reggae with the Skins was probably due to the increasing liasion between young West Indians - especially in Birmingham and certain London districts and the young whites.  In many of the Skinhead gangs,West Indians were prime movers:  All racism was chanelled into the anti- pakistani area – where there was virtually no integration!