At the Edwardian Club Tommy Sr was the DJ, Lynne took the money on the door and Bopper showed his dancing talent on the dance-floor. Other people helped out as well, but it was basically a family business. Tommy’s sound system was called “Edwardian Dreams” and if there was a rock ’n’ roll record that he didn’t have then it was one that had never been recorded. The bands who were booked were mainly the Ted bands of the day, solid four-piece rockers who could recreate the records with little deviation. The Teds didn’t hold with deviations in their music, and trying to play “Tutti Frutti”, for example, as a mid-tempo country tune would get them bottled off the stage. On Friday nights the club was packed and rocking and the place to be if you were a hip young retro, or an ageing Teddy boy.
It was my first real outing to a rock ’n’ roll club, or any club come to that, and I was as excited as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. I had greased the back and sides of my hair and teased the front forward into a reasonable quiff in front of the mirror at home. My James Dean cut was growing out and starting to look like Elvis circa 1956, especially with the amount of Brylcreem I had slapped on it. I dressed in my black suit with a plain white, small-collared shirt and a dark blue slim-jim tie, which I had purchased for 10p ($0.15) at the St Bede’s jumble sale, and my dad’s black army shoes polished like mirrors. I finished the job with a more than liberal splash of Brut aftershave lotion. I was ready to rock at the Johnny Kidd Memorial Night.
Johnny Kidd, or plain old Frederick Heath as he had been christened, had been the lead singer with British rock ’n’ roll band Johnny Kidd and the Pirates. The band had had a number 1 hit in 1960 with a song called “Shakin’ All Over” and had a few more top 20 entries before the lead singer was killed in a car crash in 1963. Johnny Kidd held a special place in the hearts and memories of the original Teds because he had been one of the few home-grown exponents of rock ’n’ roll music who had not “sold out” to “the establishment”.
The first of the British rock ’n’ rollers had been Tommy Steele who, as early as 1956, had made a clutch of recordings that could easily stand comparison with the American imports. “Rock with the Caveman”, “Elevator Rock”, “Build Up” and “Singing the Blues”, to name but a few, were real British rock ’n’ roll recordings and were guaranteed to get the Teddy boys bopping and jiving. But by 1957 Tommy Steele had ruined his rebel reputation by becoming an all-round family entertainer, going on to star in many films and variety performances and recording such songs as the “Children’s Hour” favourite “Little White Bull”. The Teds had a wild and dangerous reputation to uphold and Tommy Steele’s comedy caperings and nicey-nice recordings just did not fit in. By the mid 1950s the Teds wouldn’t even spit on Tommy Steele.
Next to take the crown as the king of British rock ’n’ roll was a hip young dude named Cliff Richard. With his band, the Shadows, he burst on to the scene in early 1959 with a menacing record called “Move It”, and became the Teds’ new favourite. In the early days of his career Cliff made some fantastically wild rock ’n’ roll recordings, some of which were still filling the dance-floors of Teddy boy clubs twenty years later. “High Class Baby”, “My Feet Hit the Ground”, “Livin’, Lovin’ Doll”, “Mean Streak” and “Apron Strings” proved that Cliff and the Shadows were worthy of the Teddy boys’ acclamation. But then, like a repeat of the Tommy Steele experience, Cliff too became an all-round entertainer, abandoning the guitar-jangling, foot-stomping brand of Teddy boy rock ’n’ roll for more middle-of-the-road recordings like “Living Doll” and “Summer Holiday”. The Teds hung their heads in sorrow.
Billy Fury was the next strong contender for the British rock ’n’ roll crown. He had the looks and the attitude and his first album, the mainly self-penned ten-inch, Sound of Fury, contained some outstanding rock ’n’ roll that was bordering on a rockabilly sound. Billy Fury could easily have taken the crown had he not been so predisposed towards ballad singing. As far as the Teds were concerned, ballads were okay for a slow dance with your bird at the end of the evening, but you couldn’t bop or jive to them. Two Billy Fury recordings that did make the grade and live into the 1970s were “Turn My Back On You” and “Type a Letter”, a pair of blistering boppers that were de rigueur at any Teds’ do.
The rest of the British rock ’n’ roll contingent, such as Marty Wilde, Vince Eager, Duffy Power et al. were considered to be too “soft” for the hard-core tastes of the real Teds. But Johnny Kidd was different gravy. Johnny Kidd and the Pirates were all breathless menacing vocals and nerve-jangling guitar riffs over explosive drum sounds. You could bop to Johnny Kidd records and still look as hard as nails. For a lot of Teds Johnny Kidd was the true king of British rock ’n’ roll and as such he deserved to be honoured. Hence the memorial night at the Edwardian Club.
Personally I could take or leave Johnny Kidd. I thought his music was okay but I was no big fan. Of all the British rock ’n’ rollers Billy Fury was my favourite, ballads and all. But the Johnny Kidd night was to be my debut on the rock ’n’ roll club scene, so I was listening to his 20 Greatest Hits LP on my Dansette as I was getting ready. I ran the steel comb through my hair for the final time and winked at my reflection in the bathroom mirror. I looked cool.
The intense heat of the day was gone but it had left the evening comfortably warm as I headed down the three flights of stairs from our flat to meet up with the lads on the porch of Ingle House. The Edwardian Club had an eighteen-and-over rule, but though none of us was over seventeen we knew we would have no trouble getting in. Bopper had promised to take care of it and his dad was running the club. There was me, Big Nose Eamon, Dave Wall, Peter Mayne and Lee and John Carey, all dressed in our 1950s finery, combing our already immaculate hair every five minutes and smoking like James Dean, with the fag permanently hanging from the corner of the mouth. It was around 7.00 p.m. but it wouldn’t even start to get dark until after 9.00, and there was a good and excited feeling amongst us as we gathered around the porch chatting and practising our dance moves. Someone passed around a bottle of cider mixed with cheap gin and I took a good drink from it. The 1970s kids were hanging around the opposite porch and they started shouting over to us and a bit of banter developed. They now had a cassette player over there and the sound of Abba or the Brotherhood of Man drifted on the summer air. I dogged out my butt and slapped my hands together. “Fuck this shit! That music is giving me the creeps. Let’s split.” Peter drained the cider bottle and launched it into the bin chute and we moved out as a group.
Getting down to Loughborough Junction involved a bit of a journey for us. We caught the 137 bus just outside the estate, getting off at Streatham Hill station, and then caught a 159 bus down to the White Horse pub on Brixton Road. Then it was a walk down to the junction. Big Nose Eamon kept us amused on the journey with his outrageous patter. As the 159 pulled up outside the bowling alley on Streatham High Street we spotted three skinheads. They were around our age and wearing the uniform of half-mast jeans, braces and boots and were standing in a group smoking. We were upstairs on the smoking deck and we all piled on to the side of the bus where we could see them and shout abuse through the windows. The skins started shouting their own abuse and giving us the wanker sign as the bus pulled away. We were all fired up and excited over it. This was the first time we had come across another teen subculture outside the estate and the instant animosity was to set the tone for all future contact.
Moving around in a group that had a distinctive look gave me a good feeling of belonging. This was my gang. We were into the 1950s and were declaring it loud and clear with our hairstyles and clothing, and if you didn’t like it, well fuck you! And if you belonged to a distinctly different subculture you were an instant enemy even though I did not know you. It was strange how we all just seemed to arrive at that point at the same time; not just us, but the skinheads, soul boys and smoothies as well. Perhaps it had always been this way for teenagers, and you could certainly see the same attitude in mods and ro
ckers of the early 1960s, but in 1976 I think the lines were being drawn more clearly. If you were not with us then you were definitely against us and that seemed to be our creed.
I was very nervous about entering the Edwardian Club for the first time and didn’t know what to expect. As we walked down Loughborough Road we were passed by a big 1957 Ford Zephyr in two-tone pink and black, which seemed to be packed out with Teddy boys all hanging out of the open windows. As they passed us they sounded the horn, which played the first few bars of “Dixie”, and waved to us. We didn’t know them and they didn’t know us, but we were fellow travellers close to the same destination so we waved back. The Loughborough Hotel was on the corner of a side street with the front of the pub facing out on to Loughborough Road. To get to the Edwardian Club we had to turn down the side street and go to the rear of the pub. When we turned the corner I was overtaken with delighted excitement. On that warm summer’s evening that backstreet in Brixton looked to me exactly how I imagined it did in the 1950s. There were classic cars parked on each side of the street – Ford Zodiacs, Zephyrs and Consuls, Vauxhall F-Type Victors and Crestas, Humber Super-Snipes and Hawks – mostly in bright two-tone paint jobs and all polished and gleaming in the evening sunlight. There was a row of about eight motorbikes, Triumph and BSA being the favoured marques, parked next to each other like horses outside a Wild West saloon. And groups of bequiffed Teddy boys and leather-jacketed rockers were standing around as though they owned the street. As we stood there, taking it all in like a bunch of yokels seeing the big city for the first time, a bright pink Ford Anglia pulled up and four of the most gorgeous girls I had ever seen got out. They were dressed up in circle skirts with petticoats, black stockings and stiletto shoes that clicked loudly on the pavement. I whistled softly and looked at Dave as the girls made their way across the pavement to the club entrance. Dave straightened his slim-jim tie and swallowed. “Wow!” he exclaimed. And I felt the same way.
To get into the Edwardian Club you had to go up a wide concrete staircase and on to a narrow landing. From the bottom of the stairs we could hear the music, loud but distorted in the cavernous stairwell, as though it was coming from under water. Outside the doors that led into the interior of the club was a table at which sat Lynne Hogan and a couple of burly Teddy boys with hard faces. Lynne was tall and blonde and looked very 1950s in her leopard-print blouse and bird-wing glasses. She reminded me of one of the Vernons Girls, the backing singers on that old 1950s TV programme “Oh Boy!”, and she had a real cockney barrow-girl charm about her. “Hello boys,” she greeted us cheerily. “Good night tonight. We’ve got a decent band and plenty of Johnny Kidd on the disco. £1 each, lads.” We paid our entrance fee and walked through into the club.
The interior was dimly lit and packed with people. The bar was right next to the entrance and we made that our first stop. As I waited to be served in the throng around the bar, I looked around and took it all in. The ceiling was high and domed and there were light sconces around the walls at regular intervals above head height but they didn’t seem to give off much light. The tables and chairs were situated around a large hardwood dance-floor with a good-sized stage area towards the back of the room. I got my pint of light and bitter and made my way through the crowds to the edge of the dance-floor. I wanted to see everything. Tommy Hogan himself was spinning the records from a set of decks in one corner of the stage and I spotted Bopper up there behind him going through a record box. The rest of the stage was set up for a band, with instruments, amplifiers and microphones all ready, though no sign of the band. The dance-floor was packed with jiving couples and bopping singles. I watched, utterly fascinated, as the jiving girls were spun around at high speed, exposing their knickers and stocking tops for a split second. I didn’t yet know how to jive but I was looking forward to learning. We all did a version of the bop that we had mainly picked up from watching 1950s impersonation band Showaddywaddy on “Top of the Pops”, but it was nothing like the dance I was seeing here. It looked as though my practised dance moves would need a drastic revamp if I didn’t want to embarrass myself.
Big Nose Eamon sidled up to me, pint in hand and eyes glowing in the dimness. “This is fucking great!” he shouted in my ear above the music. I smiled and nodded. It was just what we had been looking for and expecting. The record that was playing approached its end and the dancers slowed down before it segued smoothly into another song and they renewed their efforts. Bopper must have spotted me from his vantage point on the stage and came down to see me. He looked immaculate, as usual, in a blue three-piece drape suit and blue creepers. He took me up on stage to meet his dad. Tommy Sr was as immaculately dressed and coiffured as his offspring and shook hands warmly with me. I liked Tommy straightaway and was impressed with the way he could work the complicated-looking decks whilst shouting encouragement to the dancers through the microphone and carrying on a conversation with me. He asked me if I had any requests I wanted playing and on the spur of the moment I asked him to play “Rave On” by Buddy Holly and to dedicate it to the Sinclair Mob. The band came on stage at 9.30 but just before they did Tommy played my request. I was made up and so were the rest of the lads. It felt as though we had finally arrived on the rock ’n’ roll scene.
The majority of people at the Edwardian Club were a lot older than us and seemed to be either drape-suited Teddy boys or leather-jacketed rockers with little in between. Me and my mates were dressed in a 1950s style at least, which I think is why we were tolerated, but there wasn’t a drape or a leather jacket between us, which made us stand out a bit. I made up my mind that I was going to steal enough money to get a drape suit made before I came to the club again. I wanted to immerse myself.
That night I came across a phenomenon, for the first time, that would always make me feel slightly uncomfortable in rock ’n’ roll clubs. When the records were playing the dance-floor was full of dancers, but as soon as the band came on everyone would either head for the bar or outside the club for a breather, leaving only a handful of people in front of the stage. No one seemed to want to dance to the live music, only the records. I don’t really know why this was because some of the better bands could produce a sound that was so close to the original as to be almost indistinguishable. It had just somehow become the tradition that no one danced to the band, but if the band were exceptional then plenty of people would gather in front of the stage to watch them perform. I sometimes felt sorry for the bands, particularly the young ones, as they gave their all for an ungrateful and undemonstrative crowd, but that was the tradition.
Around 10.30 I was feeling pretty drunk and happy. I even ventured on to the dance-floor to hop about a bit when Tommy played Johnny Kidd’s “Please Don’t Touch”, which was my particular favourite. I noticed that Dave spent most of the evening chatting to a couple of giggling Teddy girls in one corner of the club and seemed to be getting on famously with them judging by their body language. The heat was stifling inside the club and I decided to pop outside for a couple of minutes for a bit of fresh air.
The stairwell was crowded with couples sat talking or kissing and I had to step over people to make it to the street. It was dark outside now and a bit cooler, but the street lights cast a warm orange glow over everything. I lit up a cigarette and saw Big Nose Eamon and John Carey talking to a mean-looking biker with “Road Rats MC London” on the back of his cut-down denim jacket. I walked over to take a listen and found they were talking about motorbikes. The biker was very well spoken, which seemed completely at odds with his huge straggly beard, tattoos and oil-stained denims. I was later to find that this was the case with a lot of bikers: they were not all wild-eyed criminals and some of them held down very well-paid day jobs. I was admiring the sleek lines of a jacked-up Ford Zodiac that was parked along the street from the entrance to the club when I became aware of raised voices down at the corner of the street. Three young Teds came bombing around the corner at top speed and shouting an alert. “The niggers are coming! The niggers are co
ming!”
Brixton was a predominantly black area and since the Notting Hill riots of the 1950s there had been no love lost between black people and Teddy boys. Having a Teddy boy club in what was essentially the heart of Brixton was a bit too much for a lot of the young black kids on the surrounding estates and sometimes there would be trouble. Bopper had told me that the week before the Johnny Kidd night a couple of Teds from Shepherd’s Bush had beaten up a Rasta in one of the cab offices after leaving the club. Now it seemed there was a gang coming for revenge. I didn’t know what to do. One of the Teds ran into the club and within about a minute crowds of Teds and rockers were piling down the stairs and out on to the street. I got carried along with the excitement of the crowd as we spread out across the street and began marching up towards the junction. I noticed that a lot of people had produced weapons and there was everything from sheath knives and cutthroat razors to motorbike chains and broken pool cues. I felt a bit naked without a weapon of my own but I was up for a punch-up.
There must have been about sixty or seventy of us by the time we reached the junction. I noticed Eamon, John, Lee and Peter in the crowd, faces glowing with drink and excitement, and the only one who was missing was Dave, who was still inside the club chatting up the girls. I had been in gang fights before but nothing on this scale or with this amount of weaponry on show. My heart was racing and my mouth was dry but I was eager. This was it; we were going to show these fuckers that you couldn’t mess with the Teds. As we turned the corner I saw a group of about forty blacks, all armed with sticks, bats and knives, and my excitement reached fever pitch. Someone had found a plastic crate full of milk bottles outside one of the shops and was passing them out to those in our crowd who didn’t have a weapon. I grabbed two bottles, one in each hand, and holding them by the necks I stood shoulder to shoulder with my people. This was what it was all about, a brotherhood, us against them; it didn’t matter who the enemy was, if they weren’t us they weren’t anything.
The Mammoth Book of Hard Bastards (Mammoth Books) Page 40
