A WAY OF LIFE - the evolution of the sixties modernist
There he stands on the street in Brighton, resplendent in his button down collar and Italian haircut. The fishtail parka keeps the seaside weather from harming the perfection of his expertly tailored suit with the correct buttons, seams, stripes and side vents that were happening that week. His trusty Lambretta at his side and the painted eyed, sleek haircutted modette hanging on every sentence that he utters filled with the true lingo and executed in the Shepherds Bush accent. The true personification of "Mod" as we now see it in the modern day. We’ve all been listening to too much sixties hearsay and have seen Quadrophenia far too many times. The Faces and the Tickets have merged into one. Fighting on the beach is as much part of modernist life as strutting down Carnaby Street in dandified clothes whilst expressing the new views with crisp upper class elocution. Where is all of this mixed up lifestyle leading to? More importantly, how did the true existence that is Mod begin?
As the fifties were drawing to a close and the new decade appeared on the horizon, some members of the youth culture in Britain wanted to distance themselves from the riotous, unkempt rock ‘n’ rollers that the new generation was churning out in mass numbers. Educated middle class lads in the South of England who took pride in their smart appearance and good behaviour began to step away from the rest of their generation and form a new youth group. A group who became known by the name of the music they socialised to: modern jazz. These "Modernists" spent their money on smart clothes that acquired the respect of the older generation, yet adopted flair and originality from the new fashion of Europe which made them still appear young and in tune with the new age. They collected together in the jazz clubs that sprang up all over the country, socialising in cellars which pounded with the sounds of modern jazz.
Slowly as the new decade began to progress, new styles of music crept into these underground clubs bringing with them various youngsters who slowly began to create a culture of their own. They merged with the Beatniks and Modern Jazz enthusiasts that they found themselves hanging out with in the music filled cellars, becoming a group who embraced all classes and backgrounds. Youth bound together with a joint purpose: new music, new outlook and the ability to be "different". They took the term "modernist" and turned it into something new, creating a way of life that was "Mod".
Being a mod has always meant different things to different people. They get into it for the lifestyle, the music, the fashion, the outlook or some other major modernist expression and become swept up in the whole deal. Nowadays there is no one look, behaviour or thing that a mod must have in order to be a true mod, and as the eighties and nineties revivals occurred the whole thing became even more varied.
In the early sixties things were a little more clear cut. The ordinary mods known as Tickets would do their day job, working nine to five during the week, and escaping the hellish working life during their lunch break by heading down to the glorious lunchtime sessions in the city centre clubs. Heavenly dark cellars filled with like-minded people dancing away to fantastic music or hanging round sipping a drink and playing it cool. For those short lunchtime moments you were living the nightlife, escaping from the real world. Then for most of them it was back to work. The lads dreamed of being musicians and the girls had their eye on modelling so that they could get away from mundane jobs and live the life twenty four hours a day. But such things could only happen to a lucky few. If you couldn’t cope with the work and hanging out with the squares in the office became too much then maybe you could get a job in a top fashion boutique or become a DJ. At least then you could hang out with the Faces and not get bossed about by some ancient guy in an old suit all day.
The leaders and trend setters of the mod group were the Faces. They majority of them had their own jobs to go to like the Tickets who worked in the town, but when they were out on Carnaby street on weekends and lunchtimes, there was no trace of their normal day to day life. Being up to date was terribly important, and fashions changed very quickly, so you needed to keep an eye on the Faces. If they wore single-breasted jackets with six inch side vents and three buttons at the cuff then that was what must be worn at the clubs that weekend. Some clubs were so strictly mod that they wouldn’t let you in if you were wearing last weeks look. You had to know the latest dance, and dance that way when the precise part of the precise song came on, or it was quite possible to be laughed out of the place. So everyone would parade up and down Carnaby Street checking out the Boutique windows and the Faces, taking note of everything and then rushing to their tailors to get a new suit made up, or alterations carried out ready for the next event.
Suddenly boys were spending several hours in the bathroom grooming themselves for a night out, and it was quite possible that they would be unable to attend something because they were "washing their hair". Their whole life was so busy, spending all week working and preparing, and not an hour of the weekend could be spared when everything was really happening. There was very little time for sleep, and many mods lived on a constant diet of uppers and downers in order to survive through the week and not miss anything.
Girls were pushed aside in favour of music and clothes, and those guys with girlfriends were prone to telling their girl they couldn’t go out because they had just spent all their money on a new suit or some new item to personalise their scooter. The popularity of scooters in the mod lifestyle was down to their price (money was needed for nights out and clothes), their reliability (better things to worry about than how to fix the engine), their cleanliness (can’t mess the clothes up) and the ease of personalising them. Tremendous amounts of mod cash was spent on paint work, chrome, mirrors and so on in order to make their scooter worthy of a true Face. Vespas and Lambrettas were the preferred mode of transport, and no-one would be seen dead riding a bike like those dreadful Rockers.
It’s well known that the mods all looked down their noses at the Rockers that the early Modernists had tried so desperately to separate themselves from. An enemy who listened to the old music which most mods saw as having no style to it, and who wore greasy unkempt hair, dirty jeans and thick black leather. They seemed riotous and out for trouble, threatening everything that was important to a mod. No two groups of people could ever have been created to be more at odds than the mods and the rockers. It was just unfortunate that both groups chose to spend their bank holidays at the same seaside resorts.
Before long the bank holiday beach riots arrived, really splitting the mods as a group. Wasn’t the whole thing meant to be about playing it cool, acting above everything else and being the opposite of the riotous thuggish blokes with their leather gear and noisy motorbikes? The original modernists were horrified as the new guys dragged the name alongside that of fighting and chaos, the things that they hated the most. Even the Faces in London stepped back in horror as the working class Tickets gathered together on the coast and fought bravely against the old enemy. This was where the real confusion over true mod life began. The freedom for everyone to be different and do what they liked "anyway, anyhow, anywhere" they chose meant that modernists would always argue over how mod life should be.
The mod scene faded into the background in the late sixties, but the mods were still out there. In the late seventies and early eighties, the mod revival occurred perfectly in time with the release of the Who’s film "Quadrophenia" which told about the early glory days, and Paul Weller who achieved fame through Style Council and the Jam. The new mods still dressed in the correct gear, had the same codes of practice and hung out in the same places, but they adopted the beach riots as their way of life and seem to express this in the new mod hair style. In the sixties long, well groomed Italian styles were adopted to keep mods apart from the short haired rowdy American youth, but eighties mods weren’t as bothered about immaculate looks and complicated hairstyling so they tended to adopt the shaved head look that the early mods had so disliked.
In the middle of the nineties a new breed of mod arrived who listened to Indie music and became a mod because their music heroes such as Blur idolised the lifestyle. Casual clothes were in, and the long hair was back but it was tousled instead of immaculately groomed. The music was quite cheerful and mellow, and all you needed to be a mod was appreciation of Paul Weller as the father of all things mod, and the knowledge that scooters were important. You couldn’t really get much further away from the sixties. Nowadays the different groups of mods mix quite easily and share interests, but the divisions are easy to spot. Each mod now has to decide what kind of a mod they are, and find the hang outs of like-minded people. Despite all the changes that have gone on over the years, the majority of the new breed choose to live the life of the sixties mod, the only true modernist way of life.
Pete Townshend