Rockers: Folk Devilry in Leather

Rockers have been suffering from a mistaken subcultural identity for over fifty years. Teds, those frothily-quiffed dandy thugs in Technicolor facsimiles of Granddad’s 1911 Sunday Best, were not Rockers. And though the Greaser tag eventually became interchangeable with Rocker, flowing alongside Rockabilly and later Psychobilly, into one big, grease-slicked reservoir, Rockers were at first out there on their own, a very pre-Swinging Sixties phenomenon.

Their roots were in the immediate post-war era: an historical incubating period for nearly every youth cult, big or small for the next 25 years. Between 1945 and 1950, the average wage of teens in Britain increased at twice the average rate of the adult wage. This new prosperity collided with the explosion of American Rock ‘n’ Roll, Hollywood’s take on insubordinate youth in The Wild One, Blackboard Jungle and Rebel without a Cause, and, oddly, the construction of arterial roads around major British cities – veritable racetracks with the circumference of a metropolis. British motorcycle building hit a peak in these years too, and the youths who roared up and down the freshly set concrete on these gleaming monsters became known as ‘Ton-Up Boys’ (Ton-Up being slang for driving at 100mph), whizzing by in a phalanx of smoky leather, smoggy exhaust smoke & inky blue denim.

Where it all began: Brando as Johnny in The Wild One (1954)

By the early sixties, the Ton-Ups had become as well known – if not better known - for their devotion to Rockabilly and a singular style of dress, as for their motorcycles, and the Rockers were born (Teds, conversely, had by now passed into history – at least as a visible youth cult). Rockers now began to strip down and soup up their bog-standard factory motorcycles, which ended up closely resembling racer bikes: speed not comfort was the desired end.  Storming north and south of the river and around London’s  arterial roads was thirsty work, and while battered leather, reflective slicked hair and the tribal stomp of engineer boots quickly became unwelcome – if not banned – in dancehalls and ‘respectable’ pubs, The Ace Café, the Ace of Spades and the Chelsea Bridge Tea Stall quickly became Rocker haunts, not only for slurping endless mugs of sickly-sweet beige tea while chuffing unfiltered tabs, but as starting and finishing points for increasingly competitive & treacherous motorcycle races. Rockers were loathed by ‘motorcycle enthusiasts’ and the feeling was probably mutual.

As the subculture grew stronger, the outfit became tougher, largely born of practicality. The leather jackets became increasingly studded, patched and covered in enamel or metal pin badges. Levis were tough, midnight blue and wide-legged, with turn-ups of several inches plus. Under these, a Rocker would sport the classic Lewis Leather biker, or engineer boots. Hair was Brylcreemed into shimmering pomps, ramrod stiff quiffs, or slick, swept-back waves; certainly nothing the chill air could shift while roaring up the North Circular, were you forgoing your helmet or peaked leather cap (latterly a much-favoured fetish item). A fluttering white silk scarf and aviator goggles completed the look. Of an evening, the boots might be replaced by crepe-soled brothel creepers in a spectrum of rainbow colours and off came the leathers to reveal Daddy-O-style bowling shirts. 

Pomps 'n' Pepsi

Rocker girlfriends (for they were nearly always girlfriends – they didn’t have subcultural autonomy like their rival Mod sisters) wore a similar daytime get-up, but with a wild bouffant & more eyeliner than a silent movie star. When the sun went down, she’d shimmy into a circulation-hindering pencil skirt, a bullet bra and a pair of spike heels. Thus attired, the Rocker couple would dance to Elvis, Bo Diddley, Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, Billy Fury, Johnny Burnette, Wanda Jackson and Link Wray. 

Gene und Eddie: rumble

Their drug of choice was beer, for Rockers where emphatically – almost puritanically – anti-drugs. The reason for this appears to be little other than Mods’ fondness for them: anything Mods liked, Rockers emphatically hated. A Rocker would have no more necked a Purple Heart than he or she would have donned a parka and jumped on a Vespa.

Circa 1960

By the late '60s, after a succession of well-publicised seaside clashes with Mods a few years earlier had helped create Folk Devils out of both cults, Rockers began to splinter as elements of their world became appropriated (as usual) by hippies who liked motorbikes, i.e. Hell’s Angels. Easy Rider, released in 1969, was anathema to Rockers, and it’s hardly surprising; it’s harder to think of a more wholesale hippie theft of Rock ‘n’ Roll than this beardy, weirdy, much-lauded film. From here on, the ‘Greaser’ tag took over.

In the early-mid ’70s, old Teds and Greasers became one on the cultural imagination: both were seen as vaguely tragic throwbacks. Teds undoubtedly helped this attitude along with their innate conservatism. The social and political changes of the sixties and seventies hadn’t touched them, and they liked it that way. Greasers were not cut from the same cloth, but they were united with Teds in their hatred of Punk, come ’76, casually beating several shades of Crazy Colour out of the King’s Rd crowd of a Saturday afternoon for what they were doing to ‘their’ Rock ‘n’ Roll. Fortunately, youth creates afresh, and those who loved their parents’ ’50s and ’60s Rockabilly as much as the new-fangled three-chord thrash combined the two and Psychobilly was born, alongside a passionate Rockabilly revival, with bands like The Cramps, The Polecats and The Meteors leading the way. Psychobilly and the new rockabilly were faster & harder than the originals, and former style took the original look to cartoon extremes – 10-inch quiffs, shaved temples, brightly coloured tattoos: and this was just the girls.

Hard Girls: the backbone of all badassery

The Rockabilly revival never truly died out and remains a solid subculture today; a colourful, hardcore, obsessive alternative to a world that seems to drift from the bland to the blander, day in, day out.

Your author's father on the speedway, 1958

Dude 'tude

Rita Tushingham and Colin Campbell in The Leather Boys (1964)

Chelsea Bridge

Dahn The Ace

Originally published on Queens of Vintage.com, August 2009