Steve Bellamy - Mod Memories: Well, People Notice You, You're Not Well Dressed

George IV hung around with a circle of noble, well-dressed fellows whom a reader will meet often in the pages of a Regency romance. They were often styled as Corinthians, and members of The Four-In-Hand Club. The most famous of these dashing young men, though not himself of noble blood, was Beau Brummel. Beau Brummel was the top of the heap until one day, when he was feeling particularly full of himself, he asked one of George IV's cronies 'Who is your fat friend?' Such wanton disrespect for royalty was too much, even for the worshipful in-crowd. Beau Brummel was disgraced, left the country and eventually died in poverty. Nowadays he would probably have done well on the talk show circuit.

When I wrote in a previous article that I became a mod because there just wasn’t anything else to be, I probably mis-spoke (mis-typed?) There was a choice of course but it wasn’t one I was likely to make. I could have become a rocker. Oh yes, our hero Steve could have easily become one of the enemy.

After all I was growing up in Sheffield, the classic working class city surrounded by coal mines and steel factories. Sheffield cannot be in any way described as a cultural watering hole. It’s Tetley’s beer and working men’s clubs. It’s dark, dank, and grimy and 'where there’s muck there’s money’ It’s Fiery Freddie Truman, Joe Cocker and Sheffield United FC. Style, trends and a fashion sense was not high on the list of things my school teachers thought that young Steve be aware of in his formative years. Note the cool sandals!

'There's never a new fashion but it's old.'....Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales

It’s sort of ironic though because Rockers are the ill begotten children of the first mods in England. First mods you say, what’s this? I thought you said you were the OM (original mods) Well yes, original mods we were but the scooter born mods of 'my generation’ were predated by another group of working class, fashion conscious, R&B music loving, gang fighting, drug taking. fancy hairstyles, dancing kids who were just as reviled by their parents as 'my generation’ was and if you haven’t guessed by now that it’s the 'Teddy boys’ I’m talking about you are sorry excuse for a Mod Memories reader - indeed you are!

’Fashion's smile has given wit to dullness and grace to deformity, and has brought everything into vogue, by turns, except virtue’. -- Colton

The Teds were echoes of the Edwardian dandies. Originally called Cosh boys, they wore a very special rig: long jacket with velvet collar and cuffs drain-pipe trousers like under the reign of Edward VII (1901-1910), bright ankle socks and slim Jim tie. Their hair was "long" and greased. These Cosh boys terrified English society: razor attacks, fights between gangs but also against the police, robberies, wild drinking and drug taking. All night dancing to Bill Haley, Elvis, Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, and British artists like Tommy Steele, Cliff Richard and the Drifters (then the Shadows), Billy Fury, Marty Wilde (and many many others ... ) If all of this sounds familiar then you have been assiduously reading Mod Memories, well done. The Teddy Boys. England’s first Mods. Thank you guys.

'Every generation laughs at the old fashions but religiously follows the new.' -- Henry David Thoreau

I missed the era of the 'Ted’s’ by about eight years but their influence was all around me in Sheffield. Motorbikes and leather jackets were the standard gear for youths. Leather jackets are not only useful when you fall off motorbikes (and you always fall off) but also they are also rather handy to have as protection when someone tries to re-arrange your anatomy with a razor blade or flick knife.

Long hair tends to blow around quite a bit when your 'doing the ton’ on your bike and also it can get very dirty when you are rolling around on the pavement after a good kicking outside the pub by a rival gang so hair styles tended to favour the swept back greased up style that became so well know as the DA. (Ducks arse)

All of this was the youth style being sported by the teenagers around Sheffield as I was running around in my not too spiffy school uniform. Yet it was a school that I found my salvation.

You see there was a clique of kids at my school that were, shall we say advanced for their age. They had money, girlfriends, style and 'their’ school uniform was button down shirts, perma pressed trousers, Cuban heel boots (the ones with the elastic gusset) and double breasted corduroy jackets. All the kids admired, envied and emulated their way of dressing. It drove the headmaster crazy. We called them the A-group. I never made it into the A-group but I sure learnt what getting dressed up was all about.

’Ego mod Ergo Ago mod - I am a mod therefore I act as a mod'. -- me

If Friday night was club and dancing night then Saturdays in Sheffield was 'showoff’ day for the mods. Nothing to do in the morning except get ready to go out. A ride down into town about 1:00 and immediately to the favourite hangout for Sheffield mods 'La Favarita’ coffee shop. You’d pick up your mates here and then you’d all go off for your weekly hairstyling which took up a couple of hours. Yes I said weekly. I could never understand it when my teachers used to yell at me 'Bellamy, get a haircut’ – I was getting a haircut. Every week for goodness sake. I even pinned up a picture of Steve Marriott on the barber’s wall and would assiduously check the mirror every five minutes to be sure I was getting 'the look’ Eventually around 1966 mod hair styles took a rather radical turn and I ended up getting my hair shaved off, skinhead style. Except for my long hair 'hippie’ days (and if you want to hear about those you’ll have to wait for the next episode of Mod memories) I have kept it skinhead every since. Rather a fortuitous choice on my part as nowadays I am, well I think the phrase is 'follicle challenged'.

Anyway back to the plot. After our weekly trimming we’d generally then head off to Burton's’s or one of the other local tailors to thoroughly harass the poor square middle-aged buggers who worked there about the design, the shape, the number of buttons on the cuff , the vents, the pockets, the material etc of our suits in the making. Suits were one of the three most important clothing items an original mod had. I think at one time I owned about twenty suits. My father was so proud of me!

The other two items were a full length leather coat (ala Sting in Quadrophenia) and a pair of Levi jeans – remember accept no substitute. Only a pair of Levis that had a label saying 'bar tacked at points of strain’ would do. AND you had to have sat in the bath for about three hours wearing them because they were made 'shrink to fit’ Yes we suffered for our vanity. As much as modern legend would like to have you believe 'fishtail’ parka’s’ weren’t wore constantly. You’d pull them on over your mod gear while cruising around on the scooter but stow them on as soon as you arrived wherever it was you were going. I still have (and can still fit in) my Levis purchased in 1964 for the princely sum of sixteen shillings.

An OM Saturday afternoon was rounded out by a visit to Sheffield’s own Carnaby street, a place called Chapel walk where you could buy the latest style shirts, trousers, ties and jackets. Once in fit of mod excess I walked into Barry’s fashion emporium there and actually ordered a 'Union Jacket’ but fortunately nobody had a clue how to get them so I was spared that particular embarrassing memory moment in my old age.

The Saturday evening meeting place for all Sheffield mods was downtown in front of a large department store. By about 7:00 pm there would be about 150 kids all milling around meeting and greeting each other. How you dressed was a function of your status in the group. Desert boots, Levis, Fred Perry sports shirt and seersucker jackets would be standard for the average kid. Expensive mohair suits and full length leather coats for the 'faces’ Truthfully we were dressing to impress each other rather than trying to impress the girls who always were just cardboard cutouts of Mary Quant or Twiggy anyway. I can’t say I actually remember too much about what the girls wearing, girls weren’t too much a part of 'the scene’. Sorry about that.

The buzz would be either which all-nighter we were headed for or which party we were about to gatecrash. In seven years I don’t think we ever failed to come up with one or the other to fill our Saturday evening.

'If you are not in fashion, you are nobody' --Lord Chesterfield

So from Friday night to Sunday morning 'We were the mods’ Thirty six hours each week when who we were really mattered. It was 'our generation’ We were somebody in the eyes of those who we respected, each other. It was a very important part of my growing up. School and home life were sometimes reduced to the in-between times. I can probably remember more about idle conversations about music, drugs and dancing I had with mods I met in dance clubs and coffee shops (as evidenced by these articles) than all of those mind-boggling hours spent learning algebra, physics, calculus and biology my teachers thought would help me develop into a 'more better and rounded individual’

Just recently how we dressed, how we spoke, how we lived those thirty six hours seems to have become a subject for academic dissection. I read long very boring articles written by dried up dusty sociologists who attribute extremely 'deep meaning’ to what was happening to England’s youth during those days but honestly 'fuck it’ we were just kids, we weren’t out to change anything, we weren’t out to start a revolution or anything else. We just wanted to get 'out from under’ 'escape from the council estates’ we just wanted to have fun. And if in the doing so we changed the way parents and kids interact forever it definitely wasn’t any part of some grand plan.

So Mods dressed well. Take a look around you, how many fashions do you know that have lasted more than a few years. Remember Beatle jackets, bell bottom trousers, polyester suits, the grunge and punk looks of the seventies and eighties. All gone but mod has stayed the course. As I said in a previous article I still dress as a mod, think as a mod, act and live as a mod. Maybe that’s why it was called mod – Modern. Part of today, part of what’s happening now not just an odd memory from a mis-spent youth. But I could be wrong after all these are called Mod memories aren’t they . What do you think?

'Fashion is made to become unfashionable'. -- Coco Chanel

Addendum
I want to say a special thank you to Peter the Shades Primer webmaster for allowing me the chance to get these articles out onto the web. Writing them is fun and in a way therapeutic. I spent much of the eighties and nineties being somebody else because I thought nobody remembered or cared about what the mods were. Thankfully Peter disagreed with me. I would love to hear from anybody who lived those times too. Drop a note on the Shades Blog, and let’s hear your 'mod memories’ too.