Back In The Day

I am a member of an online motorcycle forum, as you may recall, and one of the members is from the U.K. He works for the revenue service -- Inland Revenue? -- and was a teenager back in the mid-60's when the music was exploding and the whole "Mod" and "Rocker" thing was going on. His nickname on the forum is "Collector". His real name is Graham.

He's a fan of "cafe racers" -- stripped down racing bikes:



(He doesn't own that bike -- it's just one he saw on eBay and admired. His bike, and him, can be seen here.)

After posting the picture of the cafe racer shown above, he wrote this:

"Just the thing for tooling down to Brighton at Easter to face off a few Mods."

Now that instantly put me in mind of the Who's album Quadrophenia, which was all about Mods and Rockers and the kind of disillusionment suffered by the main character, Jimmy, an aspiring Mod. So I asked him to recall the days. Here's his response:

There would have been around 5 or 6 of us that hung around together. We were the scruffiest bunch of individuals you ever did see. I recall my wife saying, before we got married, that if she saw me walking down the road and didn't actaully know me then she would have crossed over. Laughing

We all wore black leather jackets with denim cutoffs, and they were covered in studs, chains and pins. I think I must have had the original pair of 'originals' which used to stand up on thier own when I took them off and would attack anyone they didn't know! Laughing

We belonged to the University of East Anglia motorcycle club because the bar was cheap and we spent an inordinate amount of time in a cafe called the 'Three C's' (Its emblem was a clover leaf) where we played the pin tables, drank awful coffee and tried (unsuccessfully) to sleep with the waitress. Not all at once, obviously.

We rode a variety of bikes. I had my Matchless, Alistair had a BSA 441 Shooting Star, Colin had BSA's of varying descriptions, as did Phil. Andy bought a cafe'd up 250 BSA that most of the bits fell off at one point or another, it shook so much. Pete didn't have a bike but rode bitch with anyone.

Bear in mind we were all young and had little money between us so we rode what we could afford. On Saturdays we would go to Tinklers motorcycle shop and look at all the nice shiny aftermarket stuff. That was the place to see bikes, also. There would be guys turning up on immaculate cafe'd up Nortons (the Dominator was a favourite), BSA's (Lightning, Gold Star, Road Rocket and *faint* Super Rocket). Then there would be Triumph Bonnies, Tritons, Tribsa's, Royal Enfields et al. If we were lucky we might get to see something a bit more exotic, like an Ariel Square Four, A Velocette Thruxton or *swoon* a Vincent.

But for all our appearances we were not out looking for trouble, and never looked for or got into fights. We were kind of in our own little bubble, if you get my drift. There were some hard core guys went into the Three C's cafe, though. One in particular with the nickname 'Brontus', 'coz he was f'n enormous. He rode a beautiful metalflake blue chopped Triumph and was associated with the HA's.

I remember one Saturday afternoon his bike was parked outside in the street when a bunch of football supporters on a post-match high came a-wandering down the road. They seen his bike and went for a touchy feely inspection. One of the guys warned them it was not a good idea. They should have listened. Brontus came lumbering out of the cafe, on his own, and told them all to f*ck off and leave his chop alone. There is always a stupid brave one, isn't there? Brontus picked him up and threw him over a car, punched out another couple and the rest ran away. We sat in the window and laughed.

We mainly ignored Mods. We felt that they were style over substance and in any case their scooters were two stroke heaps of kak that were slow and even more unreliable than our bikes. As I have said elsewhere, although it was an annual treat for Mods and Rockers to meet up at various seaside reorts to kick seven bells out of each other, I was never into gratuitous violence and so did not participate.

There was a local chapter of the Satan's Slaves. They were to be avoided at all costs; they were completely unpredictable and were responsible for a knifing in a pub in '73 or '74 (I think) when a couple of them got sent down and the rest kind of disappeared.

You are right when you say that Mods liked The Who. I was kinda pissed about that, coz I really liked all of their early stuff although I lost interest when they went into 'Rock Opera' phase. I think the Stones were more rocker oriented - remember Altamont?

My all time favourite Who track has got to be 'My Generation'.

And as for Harleys - what the hell were Harleys? Laughing We never saw any of them around because there just weren't many. We used to laugh and say that if you wanted something that didn't handle, stop, or go fast, then get a Harley. When AMC took them on there was huge reliability problems and the British MC press slated the hell out of them.

I found that an interesting read ... a transportation to a different place and a different time. You and I are a bit too young to have recalled much from that era. But does any of what he writes here ring up memories for you?