young Presley had a reputation for always having a supply of uppers

epub or mobi, with thanks to the original sharer

Nowhere, though, was amphetamine more readily embraced than by the mods of London in the early 1960s. Unlike in the United States, where speed had a rural and small town reputation, English uppers were the urban/suburban drug. It was used by factory workers to cure their hangovers after a rough night at the pub. It was what the girls in the typing pool used to lose weight, and distance themselves from the mind-numbing keyboard. Among the young, it made possible non-stop Clockwork Orange weekends of rowdyism, night-clubbing, obsessive dancing, and, on occasion, outbreaks of mindless violence. A DIY teenage underworld had evolved so while The Rolling Stones sang “Mother’s Little Helper,” English mods dealt the “little yellow pills” on a thriving black market, and bands like The Who and The Move made themselves embodiments of pill-head triumph over hunger, sleep, orgasm, and reality.  The British mods had started out in the late 1950s and early 1960s, as a small, self-appointed elite who called themselves not “mods” but “modernists,” and spent their time hanging out primarily in anonymous late-night clubs in London’s West End. Although almost exclusively heterosexual, the modernists cultivated effeminacy, some going as far as mascara and eye shadow. Being so few in number, they attracted little attention except the odd article in some up-market glossy magazine, and it really wasn’t until large numbers of working-class youth aped a more robust, rock & roll version of their look—and also their taste for amphetamines—that the word “mod” was coined, and both the media and law enforcement began to take notice.