I remember these from the Seventies. I saw them in bookshops back then.
My memory was jogged by a modern monotone reprint of Skinhead I saw in a charity shop in Castleford, but it's the colourful NEL original I remember.
Suedehead is the other NEL paperback I recall vividly, never really knowing what a suedehead was. I didn't know any.
Richard Allen's quest to novelize every category of Seventies British yoof knew no bounds!
Books all new to me but available online include Knuckle Girls and Terrace Terrors. I have to wonder if the author made these group names up or were they known like that?
Are the cover characters on the Allens actors do you think?
Boot Boys is a sub-culture I came across as a young teenager and these two fellas look more stylish than I remember them being. I knew them as Bovver Boys, who's passion was a bit of aggro and some argee bargee!
Sorts and Smoothies are new to me. Well, I can guess what a Smoothie was - I reckon a sort of mod - but Sorts, no. Clearly a girl thing. But hang on, that Smoothie bloke is on the Boot Boys cover too! He had two careers!
There's no doubt more Richard Allen field guides like these. What about Mods, Hippies, Greasers, Bikers, Teds, Punks, Yobs and Rockers?
Are these paperbacks icons now would you say?
I had the Richard Smith book The Ted's, loads of photos of the Rock n Roll scene in the 70's, I was too young to be there but lots of my older friends were, there was a photo journal of the Rockabilly scene in the late 80's and early 90's that my age group are featured, the difference being the 70's scene was very much a working class thing, very british, the latter books pictures could've been from America in the 50's, a slice of period perfect but many nights fueled by the party drugs of the 90's, all nighters in warehouses, a fog of sweat and weed, dance floors packed, I was there, it was an exciting time to be in a band and part of that, being signed to a little label too and that stable, it was us against the world, the laughs we had too, we backed artists from the 50's too, it was a wild time
ReplyDeleteYou left out the Flower Children and the Punks.
ReplyDeleteI would think the people on all those paperback covers were professional models, or actors.