Mods and rockers: from struggling in the sixties to trying to survive in the 21st century | Culture

On May 18, 1964, in the coastal city of Brighton, UK, a bunch of kids were beating each other up. There were a couple thousand of them and they belonged to two sides: the mods and the rockers, two of the first subcultures of the second half of the 20th century, fueled by the baby boom post-war period that increased the young population. In reality, there was no express or ideological reason for the confrontation: bored, riding their motorcycles and their scooterswith their leather jackets and parkas, mods and rockers wandered around the coastal cities on holidays. Until one day the spark flew, as it sometimes does at an early age. And all hell broke loose.

There was stone throwing, mass insults, stampedes and a great stir in the international press, which saw in the event tasty fodder to offer to one and all. From the right (as in Franco’s Spain) it was painted as an example of the moral decadence of liberal democracy and the end of tradition. From the left, it was painted as a product of the contradictions of capitalism and a response to the daily alienation of the youth. Many, from today, agree that it was not so bad.

The history and idiosyncrasy of these two subcultures is recounted in the exhibition Raincoats & Parkasat the National Museum of Anthropology, which begins with the “Battle of Brighton” on the 60th anniversary of those legendary riots. “At that time, they were the only two subcultures, kids who dressed differently, with different tastes… It wasn’t unusual for that fight to take place, but the truth is that everything was magnified,” says Rubén Olivares Rosell, rock advisor of the exhibition, which includes another small exhibition: The rhythms of the street. Rockers and mods in Madrid 1980-1990a work by Miguel Trillo, a photographer famous, precisely, for his portraits of urban tribes and youth styles throughout the decades.

The mods, with their fringes and sideburns, parkas, skinny ties, tailored suits, and loafers, are very elegant. The rockers, with their leather jackets, baseball jackets, slicked-back pompadours, cuffed jeans, chains, and boots. Curiously, although rockers may seem like local thugs and mods like refined bourgeois children, both subcultures come from the working class. Mod elegance is especially interesting because it is claimed by the working class as well, and not just by the wealthy elites.

“They were young people who worked all week to go out partying on the weekend, also to buy records or go to the tailor. It could be the case that the mailman of the multinational company was more elegant than the boss himself,” says Daniel Llabrés, mod advisor for the exhibition. Llabrés started at the age of 14, as his co-advisor rocker (both are now 53), when he was in a priestly school, wearing a uniform, and he realised that he had to “play it differently”. “I saw the mod thing out there, in magazines, on TV, in comics, and I understood that this had to be my thing,” he says.

The exhibition is part of a cycle on urban cultures, because anthropology also refers to these phenomena and not only to what comes to mind first, distant ethnic groups with distant customs. “It is a good way to take the museum out of its traditional identity, offer something different and reach new audiences. The collaborative work method we use is also novel. It gives a lot of intensity, legitimacy and social coverage to this type of project,” explains Fernando Sáez, director of the museum. National Museum of AnthropologyThe director found proof of the interest at the opening, which was attended by 700 people and quite a few toupees and bangs (nothing was left to chance). And in the three concerts they have organised in July, with long waiting lists. The first exhibition of this cycle was dedicated to the culture of the hip hop through graffiti, titled It all started in 1984. The origins of graffiti in Spain.

Raincoats & Parkas also pays tribute to the film Quadrophenia (Franc Roddam, 1979), who is 45 years old, and who contributed to the mod revival of the late seventies, as well as the emergence of the band The Jam and the heat of the punk movement. Curiously, at that time there was also a revival of the rockeralso in the heat of punk and other subcultures. Not in vain, the Sex Pistols, the epitome of punk, covered music rockerlike Eddi Crochran (Something Else), and music from the mods themselves, like The Who (Substitute).

Note: there is no such thing as mod music, but mods have consumed jazz, pop, power pop, soul, northern soul, ska, reggae, rocksteady and a thousand other variants that allow you to dance on the dance floor all night long (hence the motto). All Things Modsomething like everything is mod).

A few years later, in the eighties, in Spain, rocker was already part of the radio formula, embodied in the proposals of Loquillo y los Trogloditas, La Frontera or Los Rebeldes (the Stray Cats were a hit internationally). In Spain, the end of Franco’s regime meant the arrival of many of these trends, and mod and rocker, but also punk, new wavethe sinister…, appeared together and mixed, sharing spaces, bands and even living within people who took certain elements from each one to create their own identity.

Those were the times of the Movida madrileña and other subsidiary movements. “I was influenced, on the one hand, by my mother listening to Elvis, but at that time you were offered all kinds of subcultures to choose from. Now everything is more homogeneous, and television is much less musical and varied,” recalls Olivares Rosell. The film Grease (Randal Kleiser, 1978), although criticized by purists for its stereotypes, also influenced at least one generation to enter the world of rock n’ roll and hooliganism (to the rockersOlivares points out, they called them travoltas). The Movida ended in 1985 when the rocker Demetrio Lefler was killed in a fight with mods at the doors of the legendary Rock-Ola, which would later close. Rocker and mod then went back into hiding, where they remain today.

Keeping the flame alive

One thing that is evident in the exhibition is that, although urban tribes have sometimes been portrayed as hotbeds of juvenile delinquency, ways of going bad, tales scarecrowbelonging to one of these movements can be enriching for a young person: it brings them closer to cultural expressions such as fashion, music or literature, provides them with a social circle, and gives them an existential meaning. One that some abandon with age, but that others never abandon. The Spanish mod and rocker scenes, according to these experts, are already somewhat old, there is little general replacement and the youngest, not very numerous, are already around thirty.

“The rock scene, despite everything, is vigorous and established, in the big cities and there are also people who resist in the villages. We are very diverse people, a reflection of society: there are everyone from transporters to lawyers,” says Olivares Rossell. A famous rocker, by the way, is the television journalist Iñaki López (his pompadour gives him away), who even set up the Hot 45 Records label, dedicated to the genre. The exhibition mentions some mod and rocker clubs, respectively, such as The Boiler, in Barcelona, ​​or Rockersaurios, in Madrid and festivals such as the Rockin’Racein Torremolinos, or the long-standing EuroYeyé in Gijón (now renamed Ye-yé Gijón), standing (and dancing) for three decades.

“The mod scene is older in terms of age, but just as young, scoundrel and debauched in its state of mind,” says Llabrés, “we don’t really care if we die on the dance floor and if all this ends with us.” By the way, the subculture has a reputation for being one of the best ways to celebrate a birthday, given its intrinsic elegance: it’s not the same to reach old age with a Fred Perry polo shirt, horn-rimmed glasses and sideburns as with a mohawk and studs.

According to Llabrés, before in the mod movement you had to earn your place by doing things, editing a fanzine, organizing parties, DJing, playing, doing radio… Today people are more easily accepted, because there are not many of them. “However, what you see is that many young mods come to the movement, stay for a while and go on to something else,” he says. It must be a symptom of liquid postmodernity where everything is ephemeral and fleeting and we live in a continuous zapping vital. By the way, Llabrés and Olivares, mod and rocker, have nothing but good words for each other and have collaborated fraternally on this exhibition, without coming to blows. Brighton is a long way off.