Where Have All the Bootboys Gone? Skinhead Style and Graphic
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Where Have All the Bootboys Gone? Skinhead Style and Graphic Subcultures Where Have All the Bootboys Gone? Skinhead Style and Graphic Subcultures LCC Graphic Subcultures Research Group Many late Twentieth Century subcultures have been exhaustively analysed and pored over by historians, academics and journalists; collected, collated and curated in books, magazines, galleries and museums. This level of recuperation has never been applied to the Skinhead movement – the subculture retains a strongly close-knit and largely underground identity, away from the cultural mainstream. Looking at the historical and cultural origins of skinhead identity, the Graphic Subcultures Research Group at London College of Communication (LCC) presents a new exhibition running from Wednesday 23 October – Saturday 2 November 2013. From 1960s British roots to contemporary global interpretations of the subculture, the show focuses on the visual manifestations of skinhead style – in dress, illustration, graphic design, photography, media and publishing – together with its links to music genres, football, politics and class. Key themes explored include: • Origins: 1960s Mods and Skinheads • 1960s Ska, Rocksteady and Bluebeat • 1970s Suedeheads and Bootboys • 1970s and 1980s Punk, Hardcore, Oi!, Skunx and Street Punk • 2 Tone and the Ska Revival • Class, Politics and Race – Neo Nazis, SHARP and RASH • Gender and Sexuality • Media Appropriation • Contemporary Global Skinhead Identities Exhibition Curator Toby Mott Creative Director Russ Bestley Catalogue Design Russ Bestley Special thanks to Toast, Matt Worley, Garry Bushell, Ana Raposo, Shaun Cole, Tom Vague, Gavin Watson, Greg Bradley, Tony Credland, Glenn Orton, Roger Sabin and Leila Kassir for their invaluable help and contributions. Thanks also to Natalie Brett, Lawrence Zeegen, Belinda May, Julie Coombes, Joanna Matthews, Les Claridge, Scott House, Luke Whitehead, Kellie Bryson, Kieron Marchese, Adriana De Freitas Rodrigues, Louella Ward, Allyne Costa and Gabriele Grigorjevaite. Boots image on cover taken from front cover of the Last Resort shop catalogue circa 1980. Design by Mick Furbank, photography Martin Dean. Images in catalogue from the Mott Collection and from the archive collection of Toast. 2 54-46 That’s My Number – The First Skinheads Garry Bushell “I want all you skinheads to get up on I interviewed Chris at length in my book on the London club scene around 1965 your feet, put your braces together and Hoolies. He and his gang, the Middle and very much a smart, working- your boots on your feet, and give me Park Skins, came from a council estate class alternative to the dubious lure some of that ollll’ moonstompin’ . .” in Eltham, South East London. They of psychedelia. West Indian culture Symarip ‘Skinhead Moonstomp’ went to comprehensive schools when exerted a major influence on the they weren’t hopping the wag. And evolution of skinhead style. Ska, from If you want to know what skinheads when they weren’t fighting the rival which skinhead reggae sprouted, was were about, it’s best to ignore Eltham Hounds skinhead gang they a Jamaican development of American everything you have ever read about would frequent the White Swan pub at R&B embellished with jazz touches like them in the UK press. The tabloid Crystal Palace for their Friday reggae the omnipresent horn section. Wailers’ prejudice that skinheads were thick night, with DJ Brian Jones, or take guitarist Ernest Ranglin said that the fascist thugs, and mugs heading for the their own records to the Castlecombe word ‘ska’ was cooked up to describe jug was never true. Real skinheads were youth club at nearby Mottingham. the ‘Skat! Skat! Skat!’ scratching guitar interested in reggae, fashion, football, Though they loved Stax and Motown, strum that goes behind. Ska was the fucking and fighting, although probably reggae was the soundtrack of their music of the first-generation British not in that order. The cult, which had lives. Like me, Chris would buy his ska blacks and the teenage immigrants who its roots in Mod, went mainstream imports from Music City in Lewisham, also adopted their own look and a name in 1969 - the year skinhead reggae run by a Jamaican fella called Lee, who – the rude boys. The name was assumed ruled the charts. It was a genuine mass later deejayed at a club called Tites in by Jamaica’s tough and volatile young working-class phenomenon. Every city, Beckenham. Weeks and his mates would ghetto hooligans who were noted for every town in every part of the UK had play the latest Jamaican sounds to get their savage gang wars and lawlessness. a cropped contingent. Richard Allen’s themselves hyped up for football. Ska records often aimed at persuading 1970 novel Skinhead, published later, the rudies to cool it, but perversely the sold more than a phenomenal 1 million Fighting was largely territorial and Wailers’ first single, ‘Simmer Down’, copies in paperback, and spawned 17 occurred mostly at or around football and later songs like ‘Rude Boy’ and ‘Jail further novels. The back-cover blurb matches, although the mass media House’ only helped to glorify the cult. sums it up as “a book that portrays with were more interested in the shock- horrifying vividness all the terror and horror mileage to be had from stories The rude-boy rig-out sported by West brutality that has become the trademark of skinhead attacks on minorities – Indian youths in south London was of these vicious teenage malcontents” homosexuals, squaddies, long-hairs a direct ancestor of skinhead style: – words certain to horrify the press and (from my own childhood I can recall Crombie-type coats, trousers worn other self-appointed guardians of public long-haired teens getting off the train higher than the norm to emphasise morality, but for the nation’s young at Eltham rather than Kidbrooke to white socks and black shoes, and all tearaways they were an enticing advert. avoid risking a beating from the Ferrier topped off with pork-pie hats and Estate skins) and Pakistanis, although wraparound shades. Creole brought Charlton Athletic hooligan Chris Weeks these attacks were more to do with Desmond Dekker to the UK in 1967 to became a skin that year, when he was cultural than racial differences – a fine promote his Top Twenty hit ‘007 (Shanty 14. Why? “Skinheads had it all,” he distinction to be made after you’d just Town)’. They gave him a suit; Dekker says. “They had class, music, style. been clobbered over the head with a immediately insisted that the bottom There’s no way I could’ve been a ‘grebo’ half-brick to be sure, but an important six inches be cut off the trousers. For – the greasers were filthy rotten back one nonetheless. The new Pakistani most of his new, young fans this would then and still are. They’re nothing but a immigrants were different: unlike the be their first exposure to rude-boy poor man’s Hell’s Angels. Give me half- West Indian kids, they weren’t cool, sartorial style. Razor hair partings also inch braces and a clean Ben Sherman they didn’t mix, and in fact they were originated with the young blacks, and [shirt] any day.” A 16-year-old skin equally (if not more) disliked by West it’s highly likely that the skinhead interviewed at Margate in 1969 echoed Indian skinheads, or Afro Boys, as they crop, although having roots in the Mod that revulsion: “We hate the grease ’cos became known. crew cut, was accentuated as a means they don’t wash and they wear all that of imitating the rude boys’ hairstyle leather and oily hair. They’re just dirty The roots of Skinhead stretch back (although its similarity to the hairstyle and their girls are even worse. So when years before 1969. Its development of GIs and the glamorous, pioneering you meet them you just want to get in can be traced directly to the ‘suits’, a US astronauts can’t be overlooked as there and do them.” Spartan branch of Mod first spotted contributory factors). 5 In the beginning these shaven-headed Class was a major factor in skinhead worth buying the book for, as the rest I got a job at Burton’s in Bexleyheath Steady’ was typical of the new genre, shitting himself. But as far as we were white kids were known by a variety thinking. They hated bosses, the rich, consists of over-generalised, under- and so finally I could afford my first which itself developed. Until by 1969 concerned he was ruining our night and of names (peanuts, cropheads, boiled and the middle class – middle- and researched, pseudo-sociological claptrap handmade mohair suit and proper it was producing massive British chart he had to go. So we all got stuck in. The eggs, no-heads and so on) but became upper-class hippies in particular. The about the late-70s skinhead resurgence). Bens. The manager didn’t mind me crop hits like Desmond Dekker’s ‘Israelites’. police came and lobbed us out. Sadly, identified as skinheads as early as Collinwood mob found them ‘plain Simplifying, early workday/football because he said it reminded him of his This ‘reggae of the ’69 kind’ was a that was the end of the White Swan 1967. In Jamie Mandelkau’s Buttons: revolting... you notice that a lot of rich wear would be boots, braces (to days in the RAF. I got my first Crombie major chart factor for the following reggae night.” The Making of a President, he talks of people turn hippy; they have been emphasis working-class origins and overcoat in Burton’s, because I got staff few years with some Jamaican artists battling ‘the Walthamstow Skinheads’ spoilt... they are reacting against society loyalties), any unfashionable shirt, discount.