‘Swinging London’ observes 50th birthday
This year, 400 years since the death of Shakespeare and 90 since the birth of Elizabeth II, is also the 50th anniversary of Swinging London, a time and place that produced the British Invasion rock bands, Georgy Girl and Darling, Twiggy and The Shrimp and the miniskirt.
In the 1960s, London — epitome of everything hierarchical, traditional and stodgy — was the site of a revolution in music, fashion and design. Lords partied with bricklayers, rockers with gangsters. Anything seemed possible.
The scene was made famous by an April 1966 Time magazine cover story, titled “The city that swings.” It described a place where “ancient elegance and new opulence are all tangled up in a dazzling blur of op and pop.”
This was when and where the Rolling Stones played their first gig and Pete Townsend smashed his first guitar. John met Yoko and Paul met Linda. Jean Shrimpton, raised on a Buckinghamshire farm, became the first supermodel. Mary Quant, the designer daughter of Welsh schoolteachers, helped popularize the short, short skirts that became the essence of “mod.”
London after World War II had been the dreariest victorious capital in history. Entire neighborhoods were bombed out. Household coal fires stoked killer smog. Rationing continued until 1955.
But by the mid ’60s earnings had increased by 70%, and the Baby Boom made London’s population younger than it had been in centuries.
One result was a cultural energy born of contrasts between the old (the Queen, the Old Vic theatre, the Changing of the Palace Guard) and the new (the Kinks, the Carnaby Street shops, the Marquee Club).
The 50th anniversary of Swing- ing London is being marked at a Saatchi Gallery show of Stones memorabilia. Jimi Hendrix’ old flat (once Handel’s attic) has opened to tourists. This summer the Victoria & Albert Museum begins an exhibition, You Say You Want a Revolution?
There’s also a Swinging London walking tour. Its guide, Ian Porter, says interest extends beyond Baby Boomers.
The other day he was leading a group of teenagers on a Sherlock Holmes walk that happened to pass the site in Soho of Trident Studios, where pop classics such as the Beatles’ Hey Jude (1968) were recorded.
The kids, who’d shown no interest in Holmes and Watson, came alive, snapping selfie after selfie in front of a list of Trident recordings posted in the old studio’s window.
Porter says that growing up in the ’60s, he knew little about the pop culture of earlier decades. But today many of the ’ 60s stars are still around and active.
Also, Porter says, there was something about the characters that populated Swinging London. On his tours he shows a photo of the Who — Pete Townsend, stiff legged and guitar in hand, jumping 3 feet off the ground; a barechested Roger Daltrey strutting the stage; Keith Moon blasting away at his 20-drum kit.
But Swinging London was “a small part of everyday life,” Porter says. “The poor clothing choices, dodgy haircuts, drug or sociopolitical problems, they tend to get forgotten.”
And it didn’t last. Immigration became a divisive issue (as now) and the housing shortage became critical (as now). When I first visited in 1973, London was less about paisley and psychedelia than closed docks and labor strife.
Today, little is left of Swinging London beside names. Carnaby Street, now a pedestrian mall, is dominated by brands found everywhere else. Keith Moon (19461978) is memorialized by a plaque outside what was the Marquee Club and is now Soho Lofts.
Last year, the elfin model once dubbed “the face of 1966” was the focus of a Marks & Spencer department store ad campaign. That was Lesley Hornby, the 66-yearold grandma still known as Twiggy.
This was when and where the Rolling Stones played their first gig and Pete Townsend smashed his first guitar. John met Yoko and Paul met Linda.