Hot and loud and vulgar music, non-stop for five hours

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To the older generation rock 'n' roll came to mean Teds and violence. There was a riot in Berlin. Some countries banned rock 'n' roll altogether. In Singapore police were called in to stop British soldiers jiving in a cinema foyer after a midnight premiere of Rock Around The Clock. The Rev. Albert Carter of Nottingham denounced rock 'n' roll from his pulpit: 'The effect of rock 'n' roll on young people is to turn them into devil-worshippers; to stimulate self-expression through sex; to provoke lawlessness, impair nervous stability, and destroy the sanctity of marriage.' In Miami, Florida, the head of the local censorship board described rock 'n' roll dancing as 'nothing more than shoving boys and girls around' and 'vile gyrations'! Racialist Asa Carter of the North Alabama White Citizens' Council was scared too: 'Rock 'n' roll is a means of pulling down the white man to the level of the 'Negro'. It is part of a plot to undermine the morals of the youth of our nation. It is sexualistic, unmoralistic, and the best way to bring people of both races together.' Many older musicians hated rock 'n' roll: 'Viewed as a social phenomenon, the current craze for rock 'n' roll material is one of the most terrifying things ever to have happened to popular music ... Musically speaking of course, the whole thing is laughable ... Let us oppose it to the end.'

Vince Taylor was ordered to shave off his sideburns before appearing

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Hardcore Teds hated skiffle, the acceptable face of youth, patronized by vicars, teachers and youth club leaders. After playing at a community hall the West Side Skifflers from the Methodist Church were ambushed by twenty Teds. 'We want rock 'n' roll not skiffle' they shouted as they beat the group with their own instruments … the demand for rock 'n' roll never went away. DJ Tony Blackburn was sent a razor-blade sandwich through the post, accompanied by a message threatening to shove it down his throat if he didn't play a rocking record ... The arrival of rock 'n' roll changed the atmosphere of the dance halls. The music was a dangerous and destructive force that worked the listener into a mindless frenzy. The very term 'rock 'n' roll' was slang for sexual intercourse ... During a disturbance at a dance, girls began chanting 'We want sex, we want sex'. The dance ended in chaos as fireworks were let off ... 

Vince Taylor was black leather and chains, the final rocker.

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From the start, Pepsi has been based on a single age-old precept: it's fun to be a freak. And it is, of course. It's fun to get stoned and float on giant cushions, to stay up past your bedtime. And it's fun to visit Hair, to go up on stage and dance with the kids, belonging, and believe that you've had access to secret knowledge, revelations that the straight world doesn't even suspect. It is even fun to be misunderstood, to feel yourself martyred, a rebel and outsider. What isn't much fun, though, is to be punched in the face and thrown into jail. Not at all, it isn't and, therefore, the political and philosophical basis of the movement has been more or less forgotten. In the heart of the Pepsi Rock fan, there lurks a secret shame at the blatancy and vulgarity of the music's past, Elvis in his gold lame suit, Little Richard jumping on the piano and Jerry Lee Lewis so greasy, all those wild and orgiastic exhibitions. Just like the jazz fans of 1960, who preferred Dave Brubeck to John Coltrane, they want it both ways: they want to be hip, to be in the game and yet, in the end, they don't want to get their feet wet.

royal pimps and headless men and naked Ministers in masks

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It was appropriate that the most blatant rebellion against law and order in 1964 should be merely the day-long unauthorised broadcasting of pop records from a rusty hulk moored ten miles off the coast. Throughout the month of April, the country waited in mounting suspense to see what the Government would do to terminate such unauthorised invasion of the airwaves. The Post Office cut off Caroline's ship-to-shore telephone. The Customs Officials did as much as possible to hinder intercourse with the ship. The Foreign Office lodged a protest with the Government of Panama, where the Caroline was registered. Four days later, when Radio Atlanta also began transmission, the prospect of a whole armada of pirates massed round Britain's shores elevated the problem briefly into major political importance. As May drew to a close, 'Screaming Lord Sutch', a pop singer from North London, set sail with a trawlerful of leopard-skinned acolytes, took possession of a disused army fort on Shivering Sands in the Thames Estuary and announced a round-the-clock service of Sutch classics, spiced with readings from Lady Chatterley's Lover.

wearing a miniskirt but no knickers, the latest trend among the hippies?

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We’re not a nation of prudes whatever anyone thinks. It’s only when you come on television you’re led to believe the people of Britain are very delicate flowers who must be nurtured and not offended. Unfortunately, the people who dislike us or who are critical of the BBC are very vocal and well-organised, viz. Mary Whitehouse. She says, ‘I have 800,000 people who all agree with me, this is obscene.’ But it’s nothing against the 18 million people who actually enjoy it. They don’t actually fill in questionnaires and say, ‘Yes, I’d like to see more filth on television.’

"If you get Sohoitis, you will stay there always day and night."

 

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The Colony Room Club at 41 Dean Street was originally the first-floor reception room of a domestic dwelling built in 1731 though now much altered. The space retained its domestic proportions which is perhaps why people felt so at home there. Muriel sat perched on a high chair at the far left of the bar, next to the door, head tilted back to display her fine aquiline nose, imperiously waving a cigarette in a long holder as she barked ‘Members only!’ at anyone she didn’t recognize. This was quickly followed by ‘Fuck off!’ if they did not turn immediately to leave, followed by ‘Get a face-lift on the way.’ Members, however, were welcomed with an endearing: ‘Hello, cunty!’ She was a formidable presence; one afternoon a local gangster entered the club looking to set her up for protection money but he had barely announced his purpose before Muriel screamed: ‘Fuck off, cunt!’ so loudly that he backed out of the door and down the stairs.

Brains did not, as a rule, dominate the music scene.

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'Christ, listen to him!' Johnny Reb yelped. 'What did we come here for? Tell me, what for? To bash punks, didn't we?'

A pretty girl wearing a sweater with 'Gene Vincent' emblazoned across it placed a hand on her left breast. Her solemn expression got a few giggles. 'They're wicked. They’re into everything nasty ... ' Her face broke apart in a loud laugh. 'Let's find the cunts!' she whooped, shocking an old lady nearby. 'Let's give 'em stick! We hate punk rockers. And the fuckin' music press that supports 'em. We go for the real music, man. Pure 1950s rock 'n' roll. Punks are shit! What the hell, they can't call their crap, rock. Like, have you heard some of the rubbish they're putting out?'

a chaos of quiffs, leather jackets, brothel creepers and winkle pickers

 

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For whatever reason, the inevitable glut of articles gleefully denouncing the latest punk outrage was counterbalanced by an equal number of items devoted to the small details of punk family life. For instance, the 15 October 1977 issue of Woman’s Own carried an article entitled ‘Punks and Mothers’ which stressed the classless, fancy dress aspects of punk. Photographs depicting punks with smiling mothers, reclining next to the family pool, playing with the family dog, were placed above a text which dwelt on the ordinariness of individual punks: ‘It’s not as rocky horror as it appears’ . . . ‘punk can be a family affair’ . . . ‘punks as it happens are non-political’, and, most insidiously, albeit accurately, ‘Johnny Rotten is as big a household name as Hughie Green’. Throughout the summer of 1977, the People and the News of the World ran items on punk babies, punk brothers, and punk-ted weddings. All these articles served to minimize the Otherness so stridently proclaimed in punk style, and defined the subculture in precisely those terms which it sought most vehemently to resist and deny.

Screaming Lord Sutch Jack-the-Rippering to the thunder of steel guitars

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Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies, who had, for years, run a very dedicated scene called the Blues and Barrelhouse Club, now opened in the Moist Hoist, a notoriously evil cellar opposite Ealing Tube Station. They opened with amplifiers full on and Dick Heckstall-Smith on tenor. Something was happening to the sincerity and authenticity cult. The group moved to the Marquee fairly quickly where they attracted not only mods but also an even more sophisticated crowd from the art schools. Purple hearts appeared in strange profusion. Bell bottoms blossomed into wild colours. Shoes were painted with Woolworths lacquer. Both sexes wore make-up and dyed their hair. The art students brought their acid colour combinations, their lilacs, tangerines and lime greens from abstract painting. The air in the streets and clubs was tingling with a new delirium. The handful of art-student pop groups appeared, with their louder, more violent music, their cultivated hysteria, their painful amplifiers, the Rolling Stones, the Pretty Things, the Kinks. 'Kinky' was a word very much in the air. Everywhere there were zippers, leathers, boots, PVC, see through plastics, male make-up, a thousand overtones of sexual deviation, particularly sadism, and everywhere, mixed in with amphetamines, was the birth pill. The established business world, the square commercial world, the promoters, the deathwishers, were completely out-distanced. All they could do was run to keep up, for unless they could keep up an appetite for living might emerge.