Quadrophenia

[kingbman]

Following on from my original post I would like to hear from 60's Mods some details of what sort of clothes they used to wear.



To give you an idea of the 'gear' I wore at the time; Hair, short, razor cut, I used to travel 15 miles to a Mod barber in Richmond , Surrey to get my hair cut.

Casual wear was a Fred Perry polo shirt or a Ben Sherman button down. Levi, parallel, jeans. Shoes, do I remember suede desert boots or was that a bad dream? Hush Puppies and bowling shoes, acquired at Streatham Bowl by handing in a tatty pairs of shoes and walking out with a pristine pair of bowling shoes.



Smart dress would be a 3 button mohair or silk suit with a white American Ivy League style button down shirt and a narrow silk tie. Of course there was also the obligatory silk handkerchief in the suit jacket pocket. Shoes were usually Italian jobs bought at Raoul as was mentioned earlier.

It all seems a bit vacuous now but we certainly enjoyed ourselves at the time. I think that this was probably the first post war generation that were mostly in work and had plenty of disposable income

.

Anyway, what did you wear?

Being a mere slip of a lad in the early 60s money was too tight to mention, I was only 15 and had parents that shunned any kind of teenage fad no matter how smart, I had a milk delivery job but that was mostly spent on records and my beloved DC comics



However I did manage to get myself a pair of Levis which were then scrubbed in the bath with bleach to get a washed out look, (my Mum was horrified!) a nice yellow check BS shirt and a pair of Italian blue slip on's with a basket weave sole, for my birthday I got a navy blazer with two side vents and two slanting pockets each side, also red was a very popular colour then so a polo shirt (or sloppy joe as they were called) was obtained, sadly no photos remain of me in my new outfit



On starting work I had a suit made at John Collier and a couple of pairs of Levi sta prest trousers were bought, I simply cannot remember anything else at this point.



Needless to say the quality of clothes in those days was not up to any standard and did not last very long which was a pain as I was always skint!

[hhhhancock]

Being a mere slip of a lad in the early 60s money was too tight to mention, I was only 15 and had parents that shunned any kind of teenage fad no matter how smart, I had a milk delivery job but that was mostly spent on records and my beloved DC comics



However I did manage to get myself a pair of Levis which were then scrubbed in the bath with bleach to get a washed out look, (my Mum was horrified!) a nice yellow check BS shirt and a pair of Italian blue slip on's with a basket weave sole, for my birthday I got a navy blazer with two side vents and two slanting pockets each side, also red was a very popular colour then so a polo shirt (or sloppy joe as they were called) was obtained, sadly no photos remain of me in my new outfit



On starting work I had a suit made at John Collier and a couple of pairs of Levi sta prest trousers were bought, I simply cannot remember anything else at this point.



Needless to say the quality of clothes in those days was not up to any standard and did not last very long which was a pain as I was always skint!

You seem to have been pretty spot on with the clothes you wore at the time, I hadn't heard of Sloppy Joes though, Fred Perry seemed to be our generic term for a polo shirt, it's a long way from Edinburgh to London so there must have been slight regional variations.



I remember well sitting in the bath with the Levi's, my mum and dad also thought I was barking mad. We've got something in common with the whistles as well, it was either Burtons or John Colliers for me.



I would post a picture of 3 of us at Margate in the early 60's but can't figure out how to do it.



Regards.

[MarmaladeSkies]

I got into the mod movement pretty much when Quadrophenia came out, it was an exciting time as a school boy, everyone was a mod and I joined in. There was tons of mod bands going at the time, hell, some even made the charts, I've followed bands like Secret Affair and label mates Squire ever since and have even seen both this year! Trouble is a lot of the groups were jumping on the band wagon, jumping fresh out of the punk movement and the music press went out of their way to kill the movement off. Some of the groups were more punk in my eyes and the sounds by some were very different to the original 60's mod groups. Had happy times as a wee lad, only down side to me was any do's were always smart mod dress only and even though I was into it I didn't fancy dressing up like it

[sizey]

For fans of Quadrophenia, a new slant on its inspiration, maybe...



Quadrophenia's Lost Mod





Best



Simon Wells

[sizey]

Ooops,



Here's the link.



Quadrophenia's Lost Mod



Si

[billy bentley]

Great post sizey !

[jaycad]

yes-very interesting article!

[sizey]

Thanks guys- I love it when movies and real life merge... this one is pretty extraordinary.



best



Si

[Klark Crass]

I'd read this Barry Prior/Pete Townsend link before: was it from you I wonder?



Great read btw Simon, and good to find out about the Florida Rooms which I've learned ran between 63 and 67 when it became a dolphinarium. The Who were regulars on a Wednesday night apparently.

[davidb]

that little you tube clip of deleted scenes on the previous page contains stills of a scene in which jimmy who is on the way back from brighton on his own has to hide from a gang of rockers behind a billboard advertisement featuring the girl who ...ahem .. he had shown a keen romantic interest in the photo of earlier on .



little bits of "insignificance* " like that which somehow connect up with each other and not forgetting the beginning which is also the end are almost a bit nic roeg ish in the style of direction .theyre certainly the kind of things you see in his movies if youre keen eyed . i like that sort of stuff in a movie and it would have put quad on a different level if it had been left in .



. it would be nice if that footage still exists to see it re united with the rest of the movie like they done with the mini's and police alfa's dancing in the italian job dvd extras . no doubt a new super duper dvd version of quad on blue ray will be on the cards to keep us punters spending and it might turn up on that .



* insignificance , nic roeg ! see what i did there !

[Dame Starry]

Quadrophenia is on ITV tonight at 11:30pm.

[phil]

Where is davidb? He always used to Brighton things up.

[Torquemada]

I was one of only two mods in the 6th Form, which meant two things - we had lots of fights and we got lots of girls. An excellent trade off if you ask me.

[earlb]

My friend has just posted this on another site, I thought you may be interested:-

" Anyone else notice the "blooper" In Quadrophenia currently on the telly? Its set in 64/65 when the mods v rockers thing started in Brighton, and as the mods joined in a march by the ATC, (or similar), they went by a cinema, showing "Heaven Can Wait" which was a 1978 film.

OK, im sad, but its attention to detail that they should have used there!"

[dremble wedge]

My friend has just posted this on another site, I thought you may be interested:-

" Anyone else notice the "blooper" In Quadrophenia currently on the telly? Its set in 64/65 when the mods v rockers thing started in Brighton, and as the mods joined in a march by the ATC, (or similar), they went by a cinema, showing "Heaven Can Wait" which was a 1978 film.

OK, im sad, but its attention to detail that they should have used there!"

Perhaps it was a revival of the Ernst Lubitsch one?

[Steve Crook]

My friend has just posted this on another site, I thought you may be interested:-

" Anyone else notice the "blooper" In Quadrophenia currently on the telly? Its set in 64/65 when the mods v rockers thing started in Brighton, and as the mods joined in a march by the ATC, (or similar), they went by a cinema, showing "Heaven Can Wait" which was a 1978 film.

OK, im sad, but its attention to detail that they should have used there!"

It's mentioned in the IMDb goofs list for the film, along with many other anachronisms and other errors



Steve

[Bernardo]

Perhaps it was a revival of the Ernst Lubitsch one?

WHO? (deep joke)

[taffy1967]

My friend has just posted this on another site, I thought you may be interested:-

" Anyone else notice the "blooper" In Quadrophenia currently on the telly? Its set in 64/65 when the mods v rockers thing started in Brighton, and as the mods joined in a march by the ATC, (or similar), they went by a cinema, showing "Heaven Can Wait" which was a 1978 film.

OK, im sad, but its attention to detail that they should have used there!"

Yes many of the cars seen are 1970's models. Even the Minis that are seen scuttling about aren't MK1's, which they would have been during the mid 1960's.

[DB7]

Teenagers take to the streets and Britain erupts in moral panic – why does Franc Roddam's 1979 cult classic feel so familiar?

Alex von Tunzelmann
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 18 August 2011 12.24 BST

Between 1964 and 1966, teenagers rioted in British seaside towns. Violence flared between mods and rockers, two youth movements that were connected in the press with drug-taking, vandalism and delinquency.

Youth culture
Jimmy (Phil Daniels), a fictional mod, hangs out in a London dive. Everyone looks about 12; pass round a few splurge guns and you'd be in Bugsy Malone. But this lot are less the adorable moppet sort of gangster and more the sort that takes pills, nicks stuff and smashes other people's faces in. Among the newspaper clippings and pornography on Jimmy's bedroom wall is an article about the 'Battle of Hastings' – not the 1066 one with the Anglo-Saxons and the Normans, but the 1964 one with the mods and the rockers. The film is based on a rock opera by the Who, which it turns into a stealth musical, complete with lavish product placement for the Who's albums. Still, Jimmy's obsession with the band is credible: their hit My Generation became the ultimate mod anthem on its release in 1965.

Violence
The mods plan a weekend away in Brighton. So do the rockers. It turns into a running street riot. Kids whack each other with deckchairs, rockers get shoved over the edge of the promenade, shops and cafes are torn apart. There's a clumsy jolt of unreality when the mods stream past a cinema showing Grease and Heaven Can Wait, both released in 1978: this is supposed to be 1965. On the other hand, there's a gesture to historical accuracy when we see a photographer gleefully taking pictures. In 1972, sociologist Stanley Cohen wrote a study of the mods and rockers phenomenon called Folk Devils and Moral Panics. Though there was no doubt that some incidents had been violent and destructive, he found that significant facts had been exaggerated by the mass media – and that the hysterical reporting of the riots had actually provoked and escalated them. There was a credible suggestion that photographers were asking young men in mod or rocker gear to pose kicking in a window or smashing up a telephone booth.

Justice
Facing down a court room full of unrepentant youth, the magistrate doesn't hold back. "These long-haired, mentally unstable, petty little hoodlums, these sawdust Caesars who can only find courage like rats, in hunting in packs, came to Brighton with the avowed intent of interfering with the life and property of its inhabitants," he says. His speech is taken word for word from remarks given in court by George Simpson, a Margate magistrate whose florid pronouncements were widely quoted after the Whitsun riots in 1964 – except, of course, that Simpson said "came to Margate" rather than "came to Brighton". Thanks to his sharp tongue, he became a national hero.

Media
Mod Ace-Face (Sting) is fined �75 by the magistrate. "I'll pay now if you don't mind," drawls Ace-Face, revealing enormous wealth and privilege (�75 in 1965 is equivalent to about �2,700 today, going by average earnings; it was ritzy for a teenager to own a chequebook). This is based on a real trial overseen by Simpson at Margate in which a 17-year-old boy did indeed offer to pay his �75 fine with a cheque. Britain's media were united in their outrage at this new breed of posh-kid rioter, and splashed the story across the front pages. What none of them bothered to report was that, three days later, the boy admitted he had never signed a cheque and did not even have a bank account, let alone �75. Quadrophenia gets slightly closer to the truth: after the verdict, Jimmy's heart is broken when he sees his beloved Ace-Face working as a bellhop at the Grand Hotel, revealing that he's not really a posh kid at all. The fact he's stuck in a lowly job would be bad enough but, even worse, they've made him dress up as a majorette. Poor Sting.

Verdict
Back in 1972, Stanley Cohen concluded: "The intellectual poverty and total lack of imagination in our society's response to its adolescent trouble-makers during the past 20 years, is manifest in the way this response compulsively repeats itself and fails each time to come to terms with the 'problem' that confronts it." Quadrophenia is a striking and evocative reminder of a bygone age when Britain was … well, basically exactly the same as it is now.

[Dadwasinflame]

Be intrested to know where all the extras in fight scences came from Schools, or Equality , or were they all actors, and whereabouts the famous alley is , aalthough according to Ash in her book, it didnt happen, with daniels , not read his book (daniels so dont know his version) , but great seeing it again