Pride of London: John King about his new book ‘London Country’

It’s fair to say you’ve made it in your writing career when your books are as anticipated as those of John King (The Football Factory), who as the saying goes needs no introduction to any sussed reader (though this is a good start).  London Country (London Books, 2023) is a familiar canter through King’s authorly hinterland of West London (“Herbert Manor”), not only spliced and infused with more punk references than you could shake a mic stand at but revisiting three of his most popular and successful ‘cycle’ novels, Human Punk, White Trash and Skinheads.  

London Country centres on familiar characters from those earlier novels, their personal crises and brushes with the judicial system, collapsing healthcare and occasionally boss sounds on tape and vinyl.  Readers will be pleased to know that skinhead cabbie Hawkins makes an appearance amid the ruminations on the state of the nation, as Brexit hurtles from pinstriped gentlemen’s clubs and electoral fringe politics into daily life (King was once a leading light in the ‘Lexit’ No2EU coalition of trade unionists).  Working class history writer and original skinhead Martin Knight was on hand to hear more.

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April 27, 2023April 27, 2023 by Crombieboy Categories: LiteratureTags: John King, John King Human Punk, John King Skinheads, Loundon Country, The Football Factory 1 Comment

“He was a SKIN.” A talk with Brendan McCarthy

The British comic strip Skin – conceived and drawn by Brendan McCarthy, written by Peter Milligan and coloured by Carol Swain – was commissioned by Fleetway Publications, who intended to publish it in Crisis magazine in 1990. The story revolved around Martin Atchet, a young skinhead whose arms are malformed from birth. Like so many real-life children in the 50s and 60s, the Martin character is born deformed because his pregnant mother is prescribed thalidomide, an anti-nausea drug whose effects on pregnant women are not properly tested.

Due to the raw and potentially controversial subject matter, the publishers soon changed their minds and withdrew their offer, however, and Milligan and McCarthy’s splendid work remained in limbo until 1992, when Kevin Eastman – co-creator of the Ninja Turtles alongside Peter Laird – finally made it available to the public via Tundra Publishing.

In Italy, Skin was published in three parts in Tank Girl magazine, namely from November ‘95 to February ‘96, and this original Italian edition is quite difficult to find. However, Hellnation Libri are now issuing a new Italian edition, edited and translated by Flavio Frezza (of Garageland magazine). For this interview, Flavio and the skinhead artist Alessandro Aloe (of Moriarty Graphics) had a chat with Brendan McCarthy, who like his co-author Peter Milligan was a skinhead in the very early 70s.

This interview was originally published in Italian on the Crombie Media blog.

January 12, 2023January 12, 2023 by Flavio Frezza Categories: LiteratureTags: Brendan McCarthy, Brendan McCarthy Skin, Skin cartoon, Skin comic, Skin graphic novel, skinhead books 2 Comments

‘Scorcha! Skins, Suedes and Style From The Streets 1967-1973’ reviewed by Stewart Home

Scorcha! Skins, Suedes and Style From The Streets 1967-1973 by Paul ‘Smiler’ Anderson and Mark Baxter (Omnibus Press, 2021)

With words and images, Scorcha! sets out to document one strand of UK working class youth culture in the pre-punk era. The pictures provide a far more accurate depiction of late-sixties and early-seventies street style than slick fashion photos using models, stylists, make-up artists and professional photographers ever could. There are a slew of previously unpublished photos of ordinary kids all pilled up and with only a handful of places to go. Some of those in the pictures have also been interviewed – alongside a few pop personalities ranging from former BBC Radio One DJ Emperor Rosko to mod revivalist Paul Weller. Alongside this, there is record art and other promotional schlock I’ve seen before, but it provides needed context.

December 25, 2021December 26, 2021 by Crombieboy Categories: Literature, Skinhead historyTags: hard mod, Mark Baxter, mods, Scorcha!, Scorcha! Skins suedes style, Stewart Home, Suedehead 2 Comments

Review: ‘Packing a Punch – Brief History of Skinhead Zines’

Packing a Punch is that rare thing: a documentation of 80s British skinzines completely without celtic crosses or crude drawings of glue-addled ‘super skins’. And it isn’t a coffee-table book either. Instead, it’s brogues, Jaytex and razor partings all over – the focus is on what the author considered the rightful heir of the original skinhead, namely the ‘sussed skin’ of the 1980s. This scene, from which George Marshall also emerged, was based around zines such as Spy Kids, The Bovver Boot, Tighten Up and The Suedehead Times. And the little book at hand that guides us through their evolution is a kind of zine too, written by someone who was part of it all. He’s still around today and as committed as ever.

The history kicks off with Skins, the original croptop zine edited by a Chelsea FC and Sham Army skin named John Smith from late ‘79 or early ‘80 – the exact date is hard to establish – and printed by the Last Resort shop in the East End. While reporting on contemporary stuff such as the Southall ‘81 riot, Skins also had an acute sense of tradition: there was always room for Motown, reggae and original skinhead history in its pages. Skins ran for five issues, the contents of which are all listed individually – a treatment awarded to all zines discussed in Packing a Punch.

July 29, 2021July 31, 2021 by Crombieboy Categories: Literature, Skinhead historyTags: Hard as Nails, skinzines, sussed skinhead, sussed skins, traditional skinheads 1 Comment

Do You Remember The Days of 79?

No Jeans! No Greens! No Casuals! London Scooter Clubs 1979-1985
Roger Allen, Old Dog Publishing 2020

Driving a scooter through London wearing a parka in 1980/81 was seen by other youth cults as a provocative gesture. It was seen as an invitation to violence by skinheads, casuals and bikers that roamed the same streets. Soon these scooter-riding mods banded together in clubs united by a shared interest in scooters, as well as fashion and music, to present a united front against their enemies.

After visits up North, on scooter runs to Scarborough, a lot of these clubs started to drop the mod fashion and picked up on the scooter boy look of the Northern clubs. Many London mods didn’t get it and banned scooter boys from their venues with signs proclaiming ‘No Jeans!, No Greens!, No Casuals!’ in other words no scooter boys.

Roger Allen spent two years interviewing over 60 members of the clubs that existed within the London area between 1979 and 1985. The A23 Crusaders and The Paddington, The Wasps and The Viceroys, The Nomads and the Virgin Soldiers and all the 80 scooter clubs that made up this scene. Andrew Stevens spoke to him about the 337-pages strong result.

November 22, 2020November 22, 2020 by Andrew Categories: Literature, Scootering, Skinhead historyTags: mods, No jeans no greens no casuals, Roger Allen scooterists, scooter mods, scooterboys, scooterists Leave a comment

Cropheads Between the Covers Special

She’s My Witch, Stewart Home, 2020 (London Books)

As with Defiant Pose (1991), Red London (1994) and Tainted Love (2005) before it, Stewart Home raided his record collection for this novel’s title, epitomised by mean and moody rocker Kip Tyler’s smouldering classic single. ‘She’s My Witch’ has been covered by several artists since its 1959 release, most notably in a Cramps style by the Panther Burns (1987), woozy garage rockers the Fuzztones (1992) and most recently psychobillies The Radiacs (2010). I mention these only as Home’s own musical tastes and live forays, particularly to Dalston’s Garageland, get frequent mentions and largely fuel the online relationship which unfolds between the novel’s two protagonists, Vespa-riding personal trainer (and former skinhead) Martin Cooper and video editor Maria Remedios, a former dominatrix more likely to be found in bars with Hells Angels and skinheads than behind an editing suite in her native Spain (in one Facebook message she rues how the latter are now all “just fat middle-aged men”). This in itself opens up the time and place of the novel, East London in the post-financial crisis, pre-Brexit era (understandably as this is published on John King’s London Books imprint, the jacket text goes in heavy on this) where personal wellness and the creative industries meet, mutually reinforcing. As London riots then prepares to stage a few weeks of global sport, Martin and Maria get further acquainted on social media and commence the exchange of favoured YouTube clips of garage rock and proto-punk and the odd cult film trailer.

July 4, 2020July 15, 2020 by Andrew Categories: Literature, Reviews, Skinhead history Leave a comment

A Sense of Style: Modzines

Modzines: Fanzine Culture From The Mod Revival, Eddie Piller and Steve Rowland, 2019 (Omnibus)

“The US Army parka, the trilby hat, the Harrington jacket, desert or monkey boots and a Fred Perry t-shirt made up the basic look. Small pockets of adherents sprung up in certain areas, like East London, Paddington and Waterloo, as they grew in number, these new mods began to coalesce into a scene.”

It may read like a casting for Call The Midwife extras, but in 1979 it was a chance meeting of some West Essex schoolkids in the queue for Who documentary The Kids Are Alright outside South Woodford’s ABC cinema which sparked a resurgence in the gospel of scooters, amphetamines, frenetic guitars and the written word, at least on the part of Modzines author Eddie Piller.

February 10, 2019March 1, 2019 by Andrew Categories: Literature, Music, ReviewsTags: Acid Jazz, Modzines, Secret Affair 2 Comments

Cropheads Between the Covers – Festive Roundup

Skins: A Way of Life, Patrick Potter, 2018 (Carpet Bombing Culture)

Indefatigable is not a word to be thrown around lightly, unless perhaps you’re George Galloway bending a knee to the nearest tyrant. But is there any other for the sheer number of chroniclers of skinhead? It’s a rich and varied genre of texts, more often than not inches of girth in photography rather than analysis, as we’ve considered before, with its own standard-bearers and flops.

Uneven diatribe with decent visuals

Where then does Skins: A Way of Life sit? Is it a Nick Knight, a George Marshall or a just a dud? I’m happy to report it’s none of the above, though it’s not going to win any prizes for analysis, that’s for sure. And why should it? Even before its release on Carpet Bombing Culture (who’ve already put out the likes of Derek Ridgers’ subcultural portraits), it managed to elicit its fair share of favourable coverage, though doubtless the upcoming Spirit of 69 anniversary played a part.

Much of the text forms a single-handed diatribe rather than an overview or potted history of skinhead since the days of 1969, not to mention being uneven in parts (plus don’t even get me started on the Adam and the Ants comment). Another coffee-table book perhaps, but as sure as Sweden gave us IKEA it also gave us Perkele. And like a copper’s knock on society’s windscreen when we shouldn’t be behind the wheel, Potter is one author reminding the publishing world that skinhead remains as worth talking about in print as well as ‘well-received’ BBC4 documentaries and the occasional Viceland feature.

As much as his last book Mods: A Way of Life documented that subculture as experienced on a thousand council estates, there are photos here you will have seen a million times and a satisfying number you may not have. Next year also sees the imprint put out former Scootering editor Martin ‘Sticky’ Round’s Scooter Boys, which should act as something of a triple-decker or proof of how the subcultures doubled up in the 1980s.
Stevo

December 28, 2018December 29, 2018 by Andrew Categories: Literature, ReviewsTags: Skins a way of life, Stewart Home Re-Enter the Dragon 1 Comment

Suedeheads, sorts and smoothies – a Creases Like Knives night

“Being a suedehead with its loose links appealed to the new Joe Hawkins. He began to study those other young men on the Underground, trying to separate the wolves from the ewes.”

Saturday Nov 10 from 6:30pm

Upstairs at the Wheatsheaf, Rathbone Place, London W1T

An evening of Richard Allen, Skinhead and the New English Library in the West End:

Stewart Home (Pure Mania, Defiant Pose)
Tim Wells (reading from his novel Moonstomp)
DJ Paul Hallam (Old Dog Books, proud purveyors of soulboy/psychobilly pulp)

Presented by Andrew Stevens (Scootering, Dean Street Press)

Followed by book launch for Stewart Home’s Re-Enter The Dragon, his exploration of Brucesploitation for all you Dragon Skins.

All welcome. Entry tax: zero (donations welcome)

October 20, 2018October 20, 2018 by Crombieboy Categories: LiteratureTags: Dean Street Press, DJ Paul Hallam, Richard Allen, Stewart Home, Stewart Home Re-Enter the Dragon, Suedehead, Tim Wells, Tim Wells Moonstomp Leave a comment

I was a skinhead werewolf: ‘Moonstomp’ by Tim Wells

1979: the year Babylon was burning with anxiety and the croptop revival exploded. No longer confined to small pockets of ex-punks, the skinhead style once again became a nationwide working class youth fashion, if not yet a ‘way of life’. This time around, it was helped along by 2 Tone and a street-smart second wave of punk bands.

September 27, 2018February 27, 2023 by Crombieboy Categories: LiteratureTags: John King, Moonstomp, New English Library, skinhead revival, Tim Wells, Tim Wells Moonstomp 4 Comments