Booted and Suited. Chris Brown
with the second wave that emerged later. ‘Skins and suedeheads naturally progressed to smoothies. The second generation of skins in the late Seventies lost the edge in clothing, music and politics,’ he declared wistfully.
‘Have you got any regrets about being a skinhead?’ I asked.
‘No regrets. Had a great time. Still see a lot of people from that era who are like-minded. Could have done without the criminal record though!’ he answered with a wink.
Ian ‘Adge’ Haddrell, back then a young skinhead from Horfield, was a contemporary of Dobbsy and likewise followed Rovers and a London club, in this instance Chelsea, but, while Dobbsy recalled his first glimpse of skinheads, Adge was unsure of exactly when it may have been. He recalled seeing pockets of them in Bristol in late 1968 but his first mass sighting was in March 1969 at a Chelsea v Manchester United match at Stamford Bridge, where he was amazed not only at the size of the crowd (63,000) but also at ‘the number of skinheads walking along the Fulham Road to the ground’. He also remembered the media’s obsession with them.
‘There was a considerable amount of media coverage about the emergent youth culture and the violence that accompanied it. I do remember that some of the articles dealt with the fashion of the skinheads – both male and female. This would have been around 1969–70. As I regularly attended football, I was drawn to being a skinhead together with my mates as that was what many working-class young males were doing. It also served that basic human need to belong to an identifiable group.’
Adge, like Dobbsy, also remembered his first Doc Martens if not his first pair of boots. ‘Doc Martens identified you as a skinhead. They became associated with the culture of bovver more than anything else – and they were very comfortable to walk in. I think that’s why I kept them for so long after I ceased being a skinhead. I bought them for £4 19s 6d (£4.97)’.
Like a lot of skinheads, though, Adge wasn’t as ‘hard’ in front of his parents as he was in front of his mates. He smiled as he added, ‘For a long time, I kept them in the garage, not telling my parents, and put them on once I’d left the house in my “sensible” shoes!’
Once changed into his more streetwise Docs, Adge would often head to the RCA record shop in Montpelier. ‘Saturday mornings became somewhat of a ritual visiting Roy’s record shop in Picton Street, prior to going into town shopping, watching Rovers or playing football. It was in Roy’s shop that I spent a good proportion of my hard-earned cash, paid to me as an apprentice with a local engineering company, on “sounds”. At school, I was very much into Motown and popular reggae, such as that offered on Trojan Chartbusters albums. I already had the basis of a collection of Tamla Motown singles, supplemented by some American imports on the “Soul” and “Gordy” record labels.
‘However, it was following these regular visits to Picton Street that my interest in soul music burgeoned and my singles collection grew rapidly. The format of a visit to Roy’s shop was always the same. I would take along the latest copy of Blues and Soul magazine, which provided British and American R&B singles and albums charts, features on soul singers and groups and, most importantly for me, reviews of the latest releases, both 45s and LPs. Selecting from the chart list or review in the B&S‚ Roy would be asked to play the particular record on the turntable located behind the counter – invariably he had it, no matter how obscure. In most cases, this would be the first time that I heard the song and, depending on whether I liked it or not, made the decision to purchase or send it back to its place on the closely packed shelves. Sometimes, a few bars from the record were sufficient to indicate whether it was going to join my collection or not, but often the whole record was played in an attempt to make a decision. Throughout this oft-repeated ritual, Roy remained impassive, playing record after record without comment. I never knew what music he really liked.*
‘The shop was tiny and six customers would practically fill the small interior. As well as white youths buying soul records, the shop was regularly frequented by older West Indians buying ska, reggae and Blue Beat records. They, too, went through the same procedure as me, requesting Roy to play their selected “sound”. Very often, once a record started playing the requestor and his mate – there always seemed to be two of them – would begin laughing out loud at the lyrics being sung. As my comprehension of West Indian patois was fairly limited at the time, I didn’t have a clue what these songs that were causing such amusement were about, although I suspect that due to the nature of many reggae songs (“Wet Dream” – Max Romeo, “Wreck a Pum Pum” – Prince Buster) there was a sexual connotation to them. The tunes were always good, though!
‘Not only did I buy the latest releases at Roy’s but I also started to build up my collection of older classic soul records that pre-dated my interest in R&B music. Some notable sounds purchased from Picton Street were Sonny Charles and The Checkmates’ “Black Pearl”, Eddie Floyd’s “Bring It on Home to Me”, American Poets’ “She Blew a Good Thing”, Contours’ “Just a Little Misunderstanding”, J J Barnes’s “Please Let Me In”, and Doris Troy’s “I’ll Do Anything”.’
Like Dobbsy, Adge remembered the obsession with clothing and the detail of the hand-made suits in particular. ‘We used to have our trousers and jackets made to measure by a tailor in Broadmead called Jacksons. You went in one week to be measured up and pay your deposit, then returned the following week to pick up the finished garment and pay the balance. It was important to have your trousers exactly in fashion, being prescriptive about the width of the trouser legs, width of the turn-ups, and having a ticket pocket. Similarly, jackets had to have a certain length for the centre vent, a specific style and width of lapels, and also a specified number of buttons on the sleeves.’
Once you had picked up your treasured suit, there was only one thing to do – pose. Adge continued, ‘Many of the dancehalls and discos within pubs were playing Motown and reggae, so it attracted us. I used to go to the Locarno on a Monday night with mates, where we’d meet other skinheads. It was an opportunity to wear de rigueur black brogues with extra leather soles and my favourite brown suit and light-green Ben Sherman, together with a tie pin through a silk handkerchief in the top pocket, which was an absolute must.’
During my interviews and research, the loveable old ‘Loccy’ ballroom was getting as many mentions as the Never café. It was a place I also frequented in the early Seventies as well as the late Seventies when it changed its name to The Studio and bands such as The Jam, The Clash and U2 appeared there. One can only imagine what effect it had on the youngsters of Bristol when it opened as part of the New Entertainments Centre in 1966; up until then, the Corn Exchange and The Glen, later Tiffany’s, on the Downs had been the main ports of call for the lads and lasses about town.
This place wasn’t just big, it was huge – at the time, it was the largest entertainment centre of its kind in Europe, boasting not only the legendary Locarno but also an ice rink, a cinema, more than a dozen licensed bars, a casino and the Heartbeat (later Raquels) disco, where (allegedly) Jimi Hendrix relaxed after appearing at the Loccy, although the rumours of him enjoying a brown split can’t be confirmed. At its height, this leviathan concrete complex built by Mecca for a cost of £2 million pulled in 5,000 punters a night, 2,000 of whom could fit in the Locarno alone.
The Evening Post reported of its opening night on 19 May 1966, ‘There were girls in grass skirts who brought on the pineapple confection for the buffet supper. There was a glitter and glow of myriad lights… an atmosphere of rich opulent intimacy warming the place in a way not to be expected. Guests were served in the South Seas climate of the Bali Hai bar, in the swish Le Club bar and by check-waistcoated, bowler-hatted barmen in the Victorian bar.’ No mention of the Neanderthal Teddy-Boy bouncers waiting to punch your lights out and chuck you down those concrete stairs, though.
It had been a pivotal year; not only had the Locarno opened but England were the 1966 World Cup winners, the cult of the mod had gone mainstream and the scooter boys were in the ascendancy. It seems an appropriate juncture, therefore, to include some memories from those pre-skinhead ‘Sawdust Caesars’. Steve Holloway, a young mod who then lived in Southmead,