Hippies, mods and rockers
Every issue, Yours writer Marion Clarke will be reliving the best bits of our lives. This fortnight she shares memories of our teenage lifestyles
Never again do our music and our clothes say so much about us as when we were teenagers. My teenage years coincided with the birth of rock ’n’ roll and I still love the singers I first heard on Radio Luxembourg – Fats Domino, Sam Cooke and Elvis – although I long ago stopped wearing starched petticoats under a full skirt cinched in with a wide belt! Rosemary Medland grew up in the same era: “My big sister, her best friend and I used to bike more than three miles to the next village where there was a milk bar. We all wore net petticoats under our floral skirts teamed with fluorescent ankle socks in pink or green. “My sister’s friend gave me some money for the juke box and as we were all in love with Elvis, I chose Let Me Be Your Teddy Bear. We used to jive with some young servicemen and had lots of laughs trying to keep in step with the tempo.” A decade later, Liz Shaw grew up in the age of flower power: “I became a hippie in the Sixties when my older brother took me to Donovan concerts. We also went to the Windsor jazz and blues festival where I was lifted onto people’s shoulders so I could see the stage. “I wore brightly coloured kaftans made of cheesecloth or velvet. I loved my stripey shirt and floral trousers which I wore together and was most upset when a neighbour commented that I was wearing pyjamas! The perfume of the time was patchouli oil which was very strong and musky.” Liz completed her outfits with beads, a jangling bell necklace and her ‘make love not war’ badge. Elaine Jacklin also loved Donovan as well as Bob Dylan and Joan Baez: “I desperately wanted to be a hippy. I had a purple flowered dress that I wore with long strings of beads and a bell. When I wore this to work, someone complained about the tinkling of the bell! I also had yellow sandals with a very high cork wedge. People used to ask me how I managed to walk in those sandals. When I look at the flat, sensible shoes I wear now I also wonder how I did it.” While hippies drifted around in floaty kaftans with flowers in their hair, dreaming of going to San Francisco, mods rode Vespa or Lambretta scooters, wore parkas and were more likely to dream of going to Brighton. Sylvia Foster writes: “I was a mod and hung about with the scooter boys we met in milk bars or coffee houses. We used to go to a local club where we danced to music by The Hollies and The Beatles. My parents wouldn’t have been happy if they’d known we were in the club, not the coffee house! “Hot pants were all the rage and we also wore short shift dresses with white pullon plastic boots.” Marjorie Edwards
was a mod, too, and on Friday nights she used to hang around the ITV studios in Holborn where they recorded Ready, Steady, Go! “We screamed the place down when pop stars came in or out of the building. Once we found the door left open so we crept in and tiptoed along the corridors and walked straight into Gene Pitney of Twenty-Four Hours from Tulsa fame. He had just come off stage and he was sweaty and his fake tan make-up was running down his face, but he was still gorgeous!” Marjorie once caught a glimpse of The Beatles, but for her the highlight was once again sneaking in through the stage door and meeting Billy J Kramer and the Dakotas. “I adored Billy J and said, ‘Oh, please give me a kiss!’ – he gave me a quick peck on the cheek. I’ve never forgotten that!” While Elaine was swooning over the pop stars of the day, Ann Rowe was dancing the night away at clubs such as The Flamingo in Wardour Street in Soho. “We used to go to clubs that played soul music by artists like Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett. “I think my parents despaired when I went off to places like Brighton and Margate on Bank Holidays. They were exhausting weekends when we danced all night and tried to sleep on the beach during the day! The early evenings would find all the public toilets filled with mod girls getting washed and changed for another night’s clubbing. They were really fun times!” Whether we were hippies, mods or rockers, our parents despaired of our clothes. Gaynor Waters thought she looked great in her lace-up Hush Puppy shoes worn with a thin nylon navy mac: “Despite my mother telling me I’d freeze to death, this was my uniform for going out – but I was terribly cold during the winter months!” Sheila Peters used to make her own clothes: “I liked to copy Mary Quant designs, especially colourblock dresses. My skirts got shorter and shorter and Mum used to tut, ‘That’s not a skirt, it’s a pelmet!’