The Baby Boomer Generation

by Paul Feeney

  We delighted in being able to see all of our new-style 1960s pop idols perform at the local town hall and cinema venues, and at affordable prices. Whereas today it is common practice for pop concerts to be held at large venues like the O2 Arena or Wembley Stadium with one main act and a support act, in the 1960s a pop concert would be staged very much like one of the reunion tours that take place today; the most likely venue would be a cinema rather than a stadium and the concert would usually include half a dozen top recording artists of the day. For example, The Beatles first Christmas show at the Finsbury Park Astoria in London also featured Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas, Tommy Quickley, The Fourmost, The Barron Knights, Duke D’Mond, Rolf Harris and Cilla Black. There were two performances each night, at 6.00 p.m. and at 9.00 p.m., and ticket prices were 5/-, 7/6 and 10/- (5s, 7s and sixpence, and 10s). Unfortunately, the sound system, stage set and lighting were nothing compared to what is available today but the atmosphere was electric; we had never seen or heard anything like it before. The Beatles were lowered onto a brightly lit stage in a fake helicopter, which was considered to be amazing at the time and a real break with tradition. The concerts back then may not have been the slick, huge-budget shows we have today but they were much more intimate. The fans could actually see the stars of the day up close. We could clearly see the beads of sweat on artistes’ brows and there was no need to have giant screens showing the action because it was right there in front of us. The money-spinning merchandise business was still in its infancy in the UK and there wasn’t any pressure on us to buy expensive printed t-shirts, albums and programmes. We didn’t feel we were being ripped off and we had every chance of getting an autograph at the stage door after the show.

  In the early to mid-1960s, we were leaving secondary school in our droves and many of us were still only 15. Most had opted to leave without any qualifications and yet nearly all managed to get fixed up some kind of job or apprenticeship fairly quickly. The rest stayed on at school to take O Level GCEs and some went on to take A Level GCEs (the highest school-leaving qualifications), but few went on to university. At that time, a university education was a choice reserved only for the upper classes and a few exceptionally clever middle-class academics. Some who were less academically inclined but who had good practical skills went on to further education in technical colleges or colleges of advanced technology, as they were officially known. In the early 1960s, the number of students in any form of higher education hovered around 200,000, only about 5% of the UK school population.

  It was fairly easy for young school leavers to get a job when they left education. The newspapers were jam-packed with job vacancies. Many got themselves fixed up beforehand, often leaving school on the Friday and starting work on the following Monday. We had much greater ambitions and expectations than our parents’ generation but we were still naive in terms of what a career actually was. Most saw ambition as wanting to earn as much as possible as soon as possible. Britain was as close to full employment as you could get, and whatever your age or qualifications, you were in with a good chance of a job. Mind you, you had to work hard when you got a job because these were the days when it was very easy for employers to get rid of you if you were lazy or no good.

  There were restrictions as to the type of job you could get depending upon what part of Britain you lived in, and whether you lived in town or country areas, but jobs were plentiful and there was usually some overtime available to boost wage packets. Everything was still very labour intensive back then. There were no computerised production lines; instead, our factories were filled with workers and lots of them – more workers than machines. The situation was very similar in offices; they were often full to the brim with office workers and filing cabinets, and there were clipboards all over the place. Large companies would have several large, open-plan rooms to accommodate row upon row of typists and accounts clerks. Britain was still in the business of making things and it was fairly easy for a 15- or 16-year-old boy to get on some kind of apprenticeship scheme. Boys who wanted to become tradesmen could join a local firm as an apprentice plumber, electrician, bricklayer or whatever best suited them. Tradesmen were as the name implies, ‘men’; these were not considered to be suitable jobs for women. Girls were still very much compartmentalised into certain jobs, such as shop assistants, machinists and typists, and they were still being paid less than men for doing the same type of work, but things were slowly changing for the better.

  School leavers didn’t command very high wages and for the first couple of years they were usually expected to act as general skivvies and gofers (go for this and go for that). Between the ages of 15 and 18, workers would get paid about £5 to £10 a week (most people got paid weekly then), but that would be enough for them to give their mum some housekeeping money, pay their fares to work, buy clothes and have a couple of nights out during the week. In the mid-1960s, a pint of beer cost about 1s 9d (about 8p in today’s money). However, fashionable clothes were very expensive and teenagers usually had to save up before they could buy any new item of clothing; there were no TK Maxx or Primark stores in those days. Youngsters who wanted to keep up with fashion, like the 1960s mods, often bought their clothes on credit, paying a fixed amount each week. Alternatively, you could have something made-to-measure and pay it off weekly in advance before collecting it from the shop.

  Young teenage workers usually lived carefree lives and fully enjoyed the mood of the 1960s, ever mindful of being part of a new, optimistic generation. We were fortunate to have been around at the right time as part of an increasingly affluent society. During our 1950s austere upbringing we were teased about there being a better life on the horizon but later we would be criticised for too readily grabbing hold of the opportunities that became available to us in the 1960s. As young people, we were fortunate to enjoy a long period of growing prosperity and spend much of our young lives without the burden of a major economic recession. We made the most of it at the time, but we will be forever criticised for having done so. There will always be some blinkered political pundits looking to brand the baby boomer generation as the luckiest and most powerful generation the world has ever seen. We will be criticised for enjoying what will come to be described as the selfish excesses of the 1960s, and it is likely that we will be blamed for everything bad that ever happens in the world forevermore.

  The television period drama series, Heartbeat, which ran from 1992 to 2010, was a wonderful, nostalgic look at sleepy village life in Yorkshire back then, but it didn’t show anything resembling the true mood of the 1960s. And where did they get those clothes? A sleepy country village where three policemen have time to investigate every reported case from a broken window to a lost dog, and a local doctor who pops around to see all and sundry to cure everything from pimples to runny noses; it might be said that the Heartbeat series didn’t even reflect what rural village life was like, let alone the whole mood of Britain in the 1960s. However, it was gentle and enjoyable to watch – just a drama series; pretend; make believe; not reality. The true atmosphere of the 1960s pulsated through towns and cities across the country, especially London – the heart of everything, the centre of all the action and the driving force behind the whole ‘Swinging Sixties’ phenomenon. London was indeed the music and fashion capital of the world. From Kings Road to Carnaby Street, the West End pavements were heaving with visitors looking to feel the vibe and be a part of what swinging London was all about. The decade overflowed with a wealth of originality and style in every aspect of life, from the E-Type Jag to the Mini car, from Twiggy to Quant, from The Rolling Stones to The Beatles, from Radio Caroline to Radio London, from mods and rockers to the hippies, from the Marquee Club to The Scene, and from Thank Your Lucky Stars to Ready Steady Go! We had protest singers, peace movements, women’s lib and even space exploration. We had everything and it was all happening in the 1960s.

  The cultural explosion of the 1960s has left an indelible mark on the memories of those of us who were lucky enough to
have been around at the time, and we continue to reminisce fondly of those heady days. Fifty years down the line, the post-1960s generations continue to show great interest and fascination in the music, fashions and events of the decade that is still affectionately known as the ‘Swinging Sixties’.

  I grew up in 1950s London, where we were spoon-fed a diet of rock and roll music through movies, radio, specialist magazines and the BBC’s ground-breaking television shows Six-Five-Special, Cool For Cats, Oh Boy!, and Juke Box Jury. It was all very exciting for us post Second World War, baby boomer kids, but nothing was to prepare us for the avalanche of eclectic styles of music that were heading our way as we moved through the early ’60s. We had no idea how much our lives would change and we never expected the decade to provide such great experiences. I remember the springtime of 1960, being holed-up in a coffee bar and sharing one bottle of Coca-Cola with half a dozen of my mates while listening to the Everly Brothers’ song, ‘Cathy’s Clown’, being repeatedly played on the jukebox. I recall the heavy thump of the needle hitting the record and the scratchy bass sound as it made its way across the record’s grooves to the start of those unmistakable first few haunting bars of that song. I also remember the beautiful sound of The Percy Faith Orchestra’s instrumental, ‘Theme from a Summer Place’, which often echoed around the walls of the same coffee bar. I was approaching the gateway of my teenage years without knowing that this was to be the best ever decade in which to be a teenager.

  The miniskirt, The Beatles and the E-Type Jaguar immediately spring to mind when recalling icons of the 1960s, but they were just the icing on the cake. The decade was crammed full of special people and events that would forever be regarded as symbols of the 1960s. England won the football World Cup in 1966 and we have revelled in that glory ever since, but at the time we didn’t fully appreciate and celebrate the achievement as we would if England won it today; there was so much else going on in 1966. This was a very special time, a period of social, economic and political history that will always be fondly remembered, and the music and fashions of the 1960s will always be admired. From the mini skirt to the topless swimsuit, the 1960s revolutionised twentieth-century fashions, and many items have survived the test of time and still remain at the height of fashion. There are also lots of 1960s singer/songwriters, including Bob Dylan and Paul McCartney, who are still recording and entertaining us today.

  The 1960s were all about war and peace, and everything in between; from the Vietnam War to flower power and the summer of love; from the twist to the locomotion, and from the Mersey Sound to blue beat, the 1960s were never boring.

  ‘If you can remember anything about the sixties, you weren’t really there,’ is a famous quote by Paul Kantner, the American psychedelic rock musician. However, there are still many people around today who did manage to get through that magical decade without succumbing to the drug-fuelled dream world that scrambled the minds of some. Yes, I remember the sixties and I was really there; it was a great time to be a teenager living in London. To borrow a couple of lines from Mary Hopkin’s hit song of 1968 (English lyrics by Gene Raskin), ‘Those were the days, my friend! We thought they’d never end. Those were the days. Oh yes, those were the days!’

  Kipper Ties, Shagpile and Discontent

  It was very sad having to wave goodbye to the 1960s, and for many of us the saddest moment of all was waking up on New Year’s Day and having to face up to the fact that we were now in the 1970s. We really did believe that the atmosphere of the 1960s would go on forever. At the very least, we expected the mood to carry on into the next decade, but end it did, and as if in an instant, pretty much everything changed and we baby boomers came down to earth with a terrible bump. There were certainly plenty of clues around in the late 1960s to show that our sense of fashion was starting to wane when we began flirting with things like hot pants, tie-dyed shirts and frayed bell-bottomed jeans. Women had taken to wearing brightly patterned, polyester jumpsuits, sometimes referred to as hostess pyjamas, with culottes-style of flared leggings, and there was even a short-lived craze for women’s disposable paper knickers. However, there were a number of late 1960s fashion disasters that went on to become very popular 1970s fads. Many of these would have been regarded as cringeworthy in the mid-1960s but they were perfectly suited to the new wacky world of hotchpotch 1970s style. The new-wave fashion gurus of the 1970s were keen to have a style revolution that would be as ground-breaking and far-reaching as the 1960s one had been. We certainly saw some strange sights on our streets during the 1960s but none so strange as we were about to witness in the 1970s world of all things weird and wonderful. All at once, we seemed to lose any sense of style and good taste and we appeared to be oblivious to what was happening. Our trend-setting teenage years were now just distant memories and we became feeble followers of fashion rather than the leaders we once were. Perhaps we just lost interest in it all and stood back to allow a younger generation to make their own sweeping changes as we had done ten years before. Whatever the reason, surely us baby boomers cannot be held responsible for the succession of embarrassing outfits and styles that paraded our streets during the 1970s. Yes, we did succumb to wearing such things as kipper ties but only because it was hard to find anything else in the shops at the time.

  The clean-cut hairstyles of the 1960s were abandoned and we allowed our hair to grow excessively long. Men’s hairstyles now ranged from the perfectly cut, blow-dry look to that of a neglected shaggy dog. There was also a lot of strangely sculptured facial hair, which did nothing to improve the image of the 1970s man. We also began to see exaggerated versions of the mullet hairstyle emerge, similar to that worn by Tom Jones for a period in the late 1960s. Although the style didn’t reach the peak of its popularity until the 1980s, the likes of David Bowie and Paul McCartney proudly sported this short-top-and-sides and long-at-the back mullet cut during the 1970s. As always, women did their best to be creative, using large rollers to shape and create volume in the hair, then landscaping it with all sorts of lacquered flicks and curls. Later in the 1970s, women tended to use much less lacquer and hairstyles became more free-flowing and wispy in appearance, typified by the three girls in the 1970s Charlie’s Angels television series. The large Afro-style, ball-shaped hairdo was very popular among black men and women and many black entertainers adopted the style to its extreme, as with some members of 1970s pop groups, like The Jackson Five and The Stylistics. The miniskirts of the 1960s remained fashionable throughout the 1970s, thank goodness, but flashing back to what we remember of the 1970s fashion revolution tends to evoke less-favourable images: things like the aforementioned kipper ties and the snug-fitting tank-tops that were matched with colourful bell-bottomed ankle-swingers that looked down on peculiar-looking platform shoes. As far as fashion was concerned, the 1970s could be described as the era of ‘big hair and big flare’. We were exposed to the extraordinary sights of glam rock with men in makeup, and punks who wore safety pins and spiked collars as jewellery. There was also a nationwide army of Bay City Roller fans who wore tartan ankle swingers in homage to their pop idols. The period is commonly referred to as ‘the decade that style forgot’. A little harsh perhaps, but some of those 1970s fashions were simply unforgivable, and for that reason it might be wise for us to keep our old photograph albums hidden away in a dusty corner of the attic where nobody is likely to find them.

  We certainly had peculiar ideas of what looked good in the 1970s, and this peculiarity was not restricted to the clothes we wore. We acquired an all-round tasteless streak that affected our ability to distinguish between what was chic and what was tacky, and we managed to combine these two features to create an overall impression of bad taste. We began to decorate and furnish our homes differently, with trendy geometrically patterned wallpapers, glass-topped chrome tables and yards and yards of shagpile carpet. Our homes were awash with all shades of purple, orange and brown. We became obsessed with the colour brown; from bedspreads to curtains, we just couldn’t get enough of i
t. We ripped out the traditional white enamelled, cast-iron bathtubs and replaced them with new mass-produced, lightweight acrylic ones. We could now buy complete bathroom suites in all sorts of colours, from the reddish purple of maroon to avocado shades of green, and of course chocolate brown was one of the most popular colours. The bathroom was no longer seen as just a utility room – a cold wash place that we nipped in and out of as quickly as possible. It was now a room in which we could spend time and relax while pampering ourselves with fragrant bubble baths and splashes of Brut cologne. We installed heating in the bathroom, applied mirror tiles to the walls and we even laid fitted carpets – very chic but impractical and not very hygienic. We went on to create feature walls in our living rooms, which we clad in tongue-and-grooved pine panels, wood grain wallboards and cork tiles. The brown epidemic of the early 1970s quickly spread to our wardrobes and very soon we found ourselves dressed from head to toe in all shades of brown, and preferably in fabrics made from synthetic materials that would create a lot of static electricity to make our hair stand on end and surprise us with electric shocks when we touched something metal – it was the sparkling 1970s in more ways than one.

  Many of us baby boomers may well be able to distance ourselves from the worst of the clothing fashion blunders of the 1970s because, by then, we were too old to get caught up in any of the extreme teenybopper crazes that came and went in the passing years. As long as those dusty old photograph albums never see the light of day then we can boast that we managed to resist the temptation of wearing any of those dodgy patterned tank tops, gaudy dungarees and flared satin trousers. We can unashamedly claim to have maintained our dignity and sense of style throughout the 1970s by dressing only in sophisticated and classic styles, which fortunately could still be found in some of the high street shops. In retrospect, it seems reasonable for modern-day critics to label the 1970s as ‘the decade that style forgot’, but at the time I suppose we all fell into the trap of thinking it was all very innovative and progressive. There was certainly nothing wrong in trendsetters trying to establish a special 1970s identity. Well, they did that all right!