Look What YouDun!
Kev Lawn of the Salford Knights has been heavily involved in scoots for years, and was even an extra in ‘that’ film. Yes, that one. This is his latest scooter evolution. We took the opportunity to get his and Gatch the painter’s perspective.
Kev’s first introduction to scooters was when he was eight years old. He told us: “My brother Pete had just turned 16 and pitched up with an LI 150 series 1. I was gobsmacked. I just had to have one of them. When I was 15 I started work as an apprentice. One of the lads was selling an LI 150 series 3. He wanted £25. DIY 497 was the reg. I had to have it. I explained to George (the kid who owned it) that I had no money, and would he take a quid a week for it? He agreed. “I’ll trust you.” For the next 25 weeks I paid him a pound a week out of my £7 wages. My mother kept asking me where all my money was going each week, coz I was always short.”
How did you get involved in ‘that’ film?
“There was an advert in the Sun newspaper... ‘Have you got a scooter – would you like to be in a film?’ So I wrote to them and they replied, saying come down to Brighton on such and such a date. So I packed my bags and set off on the SX. It was black and white with chrome side panels. We did the filming, staying on set for about three or four weeks as I remember. On the way back I had this brilliant idea of jumping on the motorway to save time. I fought my way through London and got on the M1. I hadn’t been on it long. It was dark and as I was rattling away, at the least minute I caught sight of this rock that must have
fallen off some lorry or other. I swerved the scooter and ripped the exhaust clean off. U tube, exhaust, everything, gone. Undeterred, I carried on all the way up the M1 with no exhaust to speak of. M1, then M6, it sounded like a bloody Lancaster Bomber. I’d set off from Brighton at 7pm, and by the time I got home it was seven in the morning. I had to stop at every petrol station to let the thing cool down. I got home and I woke the whole street up.”
What inspired the series one Slade?
“I’d been to Woolacombe on a Vespa and we stopped off at a mate’s house in Bristol,” says Geoff. “It was an unbelievable man cave – and I clocked the series 1, white and gold. He asked me what I thought of it. I told him I was having it. He said I wasn’t and it went on like that all the way through the rally. I was, ‘I’m having it, I’m having it, I’m having it. Peck. Peck. Peck. I even phoned him up after we got back, and said ‘I’m having it’. ‘NO YOU’RE NOT!’ In the end I just phoned and said, ‘Alright Geoff, how much? He went silent for a minute and then said, ‘Two-and-a-half grand.’ Done, I’ll be there on Saturday. The deal was done. I had a quick toddle up the road, paid him out, got it in the back of the van and for some reason, he’d let the MOT lapse… he gave me £100 back to sort it. It flew through it.
“What made me change it from being gold and white was when I was at Mablethorpe. I’d parked it up and a lad comes running up to it and shouts, ‘My fxxking scooter!’ He’d been a previous owner. It was all, ‘I built that, it was mine and I flogged it to a lad from Bristol!’ I thought that’s it, it’s got to have my own stamp on it.”
Why Slade?
“Because I’m an absolute Slade freak. It goes back to my teens in the early 70s. When I was 14 they were the biggest thing ever. They were even on the crisp packets. Honest. In its first custom of Slade, I went to Isle of Wight on it, hit a pothole and all the filler fell out of the front mudguard, so I got hold of Gatch and told him I’d got a
As soon as I had two or three toxic scooters under my belt I knew I was on to my ‘brand’. It’s taken me 15 years to discover my own identity and I don’t want to throw it all away
new one. He asked me what I wanted doing to it, so I posted him the mudguard and the original programme from the Slade tour of the early 70s and told him to copy it. And that’s what he did. It’s special to me, because I saw them on that tour. I’ve seen them about 26 times. Gatch has done a brilliant job and it really sums up the way I felt at their height.”
Gatch Rivett
Gatch has become quite a name on the custom scene, particularly with his very own ‘Toxic’ brand of machine, and even though this machine isn’t toxic, you cannot mistake it for any machine from any other stable other than his. I asked Gatch about this scoot, his interpretation of the brief and his own scootering past, too. “I got a scooter at the end of the 90s. I didn’t get into scooters as a way of making new friends, for me it was more of a practical thing of getting out and about.
“I was doing a paint job and someone said to me, instead of taking the money, would I take a scooter? I did my CBT on a 125 automatic and the next day I jumped on a T5 and I realised what a contrast it was. You see, I found it pretty impossible to fall off an automatic and it was nigh on impossible to stay on the T5 to begin with. Misjudging the clutch, misjudging the throttle, wheelies… I spent most of my time on my back. After I got to grips with the process, I had one or two standard machines and then I got an interest in cutting them up. Indicators? They can go. My feeling is, if they are there and they don’t work, that’s a problem. If they aren’t there at all, then it doesn’t really matter. The scooters became more of a way to showcase my artwork at the time.”
How did Kev’s Slade scoot come about?
”I’ve known Kev quite some time. I’m not entirely sure how me painting it came about. I think he saw his mate’s scoot (Abbott) and I’d done that and he asked me if I’d do his. He told me it was a Series 2 and he didn’t want anything too modern. The Slade era he was looking at was the early 70s and it really interested me because that was the era as a kid that I started to notice stuff, you know, the platform shoes, outrageous haircuts and
the glitz and the glamour, I thought that was a good thing. So when he asked to me to do it, with all the writing on the scooter, you know, ‘Look Wot You Dun’, ‘Mama We’re All Crazee Now’, that kind of stuff, I couldn’t help but be into the idea.
“He was specific about one image: it was one of a cartoon teddy bear that’s trying to express a nightmare. I thought ‘cool’, he wanted it on a red brick wall effect, to reflect the skinhead graffiti era, and that’s a natural nod for me, as my background was street art. It was a natural fit – along with all the stuff like the pricing of the programme… the general excitement of that band and that era. It’s a stark contrast to today where everybody is shoved out of the concert by 11pm and it’s all corporate. When I started looking at it, and their look, I thought what an ensemble of oddities and I wanted to reflect that.
“I did Nobby’s Nuts on the front to keep it a little more modern. I liked the hypnotic stare and the screaming Lord Such hat... great imagery. From my observation, Slade were Suedehead rather than Skinhead. I think you could consider them Skinheads with their attitude, if nothing else. Kev’s scooter will never rust any time soon. His scooter has had some damage, so we’ve repaired it and added more lacquer, so by now it’s almost got about 10mm of paint on it.
“When we did Kev’s scooter the first time around I always felt we could have done more. Originally the front had a big platform shoe on it and it didn’t totally work, so when it came back to be re-done with the new front mudguard he handed me the tour programme that he wanted on it (it was essential I got the 20p price point on it). With the Series 2 there’s a lot of ‘canvas’ to go at, and the mudguard’s near enough the size of a panel, too. I never knew why he wanted two headlamps. (Kev cleared this one up – he didn’t like the lamp not following the ‘steer’ as you went round a corner). I think it all sits together alright now.
“Every customiser needs their own style. Armando’s have one with their triangular shapes, A F with the use of the panel flash, and I was thinking and thinking about this, so that is where Toxic came from. The grinding, cutting and fabricating of stuff. As soon as I had two or three toxic scooters under my belt I knew I was on to my ‘brand’. It’s taken me 15 years to discover my own identity and I don’t want to throw it all away.
The problem with me is that I always talk myself into more work. If I see in my head that it needs something ‘extra’ then I can’t keep quiet. I work kind of back to front. I put the mural on first, and then do the back coats, the flakes, etc. I don’t see the point in painting it all in metal flake, lacquering it and then introducing the murals, which will cover up about 70% or more of the flake. It doesn’t make sense to do that, and it’s cheaper, too. As with anything, you’re going to get stick, but the person who didn’t upset anybody never achieved anything.” Words & Photographs: Rik.