The diary of a mod

Some extracts from the personal diary of 18 year old Bernard Schofield – October 1964

(Originally published in Extraordinary Sensations fanzine 24 years ago)

October 3

Thank God for Saturday night. Downed five blues. Took a tube to the Dilly + waited for Maureen. She was dead late, I thought she’d never turn up.

We walked up to Wardour Street and met Mick + co. Something tells me Maureen fancies Mick, she kept glueing him in Smokies. Up the Disque watching those guys dancing and it’s quite easy to analyse, I hope I learn it soon. I mean I know the basics but I don’t want to look stupid out there.

Maureen had to go home so I walked her down to Charing Cross. I met Sniffer in his new suit, and me & Sniff walked round for a bit. There was plenty going on tonight. We saw a fire in Leicester Square and a fight near Charing Cross. We went back to the Disque, met Bob then made it round to The Scene. Spent some time up there tonight as Viv and Thelma were up there. Ralph pushed us some of those new yellow pills called Dexes which made you feel sick. I had to to have a Coke to settle my stomach but it only made it worse. Varnie said Ralph was on the con with those pills, he reckoned they were Pro-Plus. Whatever they were, they had piss-all effect and I felt ill. I really dug it up there tonight – plenty of people about.

October 7

Those photos arrived today, of me & Maureen in Hyde Park – Christ I look awful, like I was on some terrible come-down (probably was!). I was thinking about my very first fashion that got me hooked. It was Sinclair at school who came one day in a real sharp pair of Italian-cut Prince Of Wales check trousers and a pair of Denson Pointers. It seems like a life time ago, yet here I am, still out for fashion kicks!

October 8

I guess I’m really attached to Maureen now, yet still it’s not completely fixed. Tonight could be my big night. Met her in the evening and she was pleased with the photos. Had some kinky dress on. Eventually Dave left for the Disque and we got down to it straight away. Dammit, she just wouldn’t let me shag her, I just couldn’t get her sexed up. I soon had both her dress & my trousers off. She didn’t like my hairy legs at first but she got used to them afterwards. We had our usual row about why she won’t let me – I think it’s because I won’t use anything.

October 9

Feeling desesperate now, I’m literally wasting my time doing nothing, going nowhere.

I don’t fit in anywhere.

Bought a blue polo neck today.

I really must organise my life.

Back home Dave went up the Disque.

Not looking forward to Saturday and I’m not taking any pills…

October 10

Didn’t go to work today and my hair’s a bloody mess. Met Maureen down the Dilly – she had a smart polo neck and a grey skirt on. We decided on the Flamingo so that’s where we went. It was incredibly hot and packed. There was a guy doing the most fantastic dance and his girl was good too – really sexy – you should have seen her arse! The Supremes weren’t on ‘till midnight so we had to stomach the boring Chessmen and the Topics, who both played the most played out number in the ‘Mingo – Green Onions -.

We came out at one stage and met Bob, Dave & Pete – Bob was as stoned as a newt. Maureen had to go home (what a drag!) so I dropped her off at Leicester Square and made it back to Wardour Street. Bumped into Polly Perkins who was staying out all night. I was glad to see him, especially when he said Roma & Co were coming up too.

By the time we actually got to Wardour St. it was packed with people – the Whisky crowd stared down with disbelief at the mob in the street – it made me laugh really.

Saw Dave, he said the fuzz were about to raid the clubs again tonight – he’d just been searched again.

Somehow I didn’t fancy the risk tonights so I sodded off home …
I woke up to the usual invasion from the Disque. Dave walked in with Sniffer, Pete, Brenda and a load of others. That Jackie’s a right little darling. That love bite I gave Maureen was 3 inches square!

October 13

Maureen rang and said that the police had been round about that drinking fiasco & that they know all about our flat & our scene at Putney. They told her I would be best advised not to move – Bloody cheek!! Dave wants me to move up to the Kings Road with him & Ralph to some dive for a fiver a week. He’ll be lucky!

October 22

Up the Disque tonight with my girl. A fight flared up at one point and some guy got it in the back of the head with a bottle of Hubbly. We were watching the dancing. It drive me wild to see those guys move! I just can’t get those complicated steps.

Don Middleton turned up with Dave who had picked up some right old scrubber. Later we all made it back to the flat. Buckingham was already there with his sort. I went to bed but couldn’t sleep cos Don was setting to with the scrubber and Buckingham was humping away on the floor.Dave’s bed was creaking and groaning away ten to the dozen. I just can’t stand it any longer…

(Part two of Bernard’s tales of (lack of) sex and drugs and r&b follow soon …)

The Ace Face's Forgotten Story - Part One

Social revolution on Speed, Side Vents & The Scene club.

"I'm the face baby
Is that clear?
I'm the face
if you want it.

All the others are third class tickets by me

Baby is that clear?"

Pete Meaden for "The High Numbers" (1964).

The late Pete Meaden was he man who introduced The Who to the hardcore mod cult of 1963. He became their manager, christened them The High Numbers, and wrote their first record. These interviews uncover the sometimes disturbed visions of one of the leaders of the original mod movement.

By Steve Turner. (New Musical Express 17th november 1979).

Typing by Àlex M. Franquet.

(The story was reprinted in NME's Originals Mod issue - but some bits were missing ... so here's the first part of the unabridged article )

Towards the end of his life, Pete Meaden told me that he'd read an interview in which Nik Cohn, writer of the story that becaume "Saturday Night Fever", attributed the origins of the tale to his own memories of Shepherd's Bush mod society circa 1963.

In particular, it was from this experience that he took the idea of "The Face", an idea which focused itself in the movie when Travolta swept into the 2001 Odyssey disco to hushed whispers and respectful glances. Travolta was The Face.

The connection Meaden was making was that if the Goldhawk Club equalled 2001 Odyssey, and if The Face equalled The Face, then Pete Meaden was John Travolta. The last time something like this had happened was when The Who released "Quadrophenia" in 1973. He had listened to it and thought: "I am Jimmy. Townshend's writing about me!"

Even if neither connection was justified, Pete Meaden deserved to feel that he was the stuff of legend. After all, it was he who saw the possibility of calculatedly making a rock group the focal point of a teenage revolution. The Who, being the group. The mods, being the teenage revolution. Without his style, his "suss", it's doubtful whether The Who would carry the cultural weight they do today and it's doubtful whether Modism would have spread so far, so fast.

What Meaden had was a flair for image, a love of music and a gift for gauging the spirit of the times. What he didn't have was organisational ability and a tough business edge. His shortcomings saw him virtually giving The Who's management away just as the group were making it on the strength of his ideas.

I first met Meaden in the summer of 1975 when I was researching for a book, "A decade of The Who" (Fabulous Music Ltd.) After a series of 'phone calls, I tracked down the man nobody had heard of for years. He was a patient in a mental hospital just outside London.

Our first talk together on the 'phone got us off to a good start and resulted in the two interviews combined below – one of which took place in my flat, the other back at his room in the hospital. He’d talked to the press only once before and it was as though all the accumulated history was bursting out now he’d found someone to listen. He also seemed to feel that he’d found an opportunity to establish his role in the history of The Who.

Later I talked to Pete Townshend who admitted that there have been no Who as we know them today if it hadn’t have been for Meaden. Daltrey was too quick to confirm his role. “He didn’t really have to force his ideas on us very hard. He thought we could pick up on the mod thing and he was right because mods had no focal point at all and The Who became that, we became the spokesmen. When Kit and Chris took over management they basically just took Meaden’s ideas and made them bigger”.

I saw a lot of Pete Meaden during the three days following our interview. It was a time during which he pulled himself together after years of drug abuse, a nervous breakdown and a divorce. He got back into the music business co-managing The Steve Gibbons Band along with Who manager Bill Curbishley. A decade or more after The High Numbers, here he was back again in The Who camp.

The last time I saw him was in June 1978, when he came along to hear me read my poetry at a small theatre club in Waterloo. He was full of smiles but there was a vacancy behind it all. We went for a drink and his conversation was disjoined, abstract. All I can remember now are some apocryphal visions of the end of the world and some questions about religion: “Who’s the one then – Meher Baba or Jesus?”

Within a month, he was found dead in bed of barbiturate poisoning. He was 36 and back living with his parents in the home where he’d dreamed up The High Numbers and written “I am the face”. The coroner passed an open verdict although close friends feel that Meaden knew too much about drugs to die of a careless mistake.

It seemed a very mod place to die, a cramped terraced house in an Edmonton cul-de-sac, and also a very mod way to die. Before his death he’d been feeding in ideas to the writers and producers of Quadrophenia. I think he would have liked the result but I can’t imagine him being more than amused at the mod revival: the spirit of modism was after also much against re-creating the past. Modism was pushing forward.

- Where do we begin?

- Existing is what it’s all about because with society as we know it breaking down, I think that survival is of the utmost importance. It’s all very well being immensely talented, having a good time and making great music – but not being able to sustain it. This sustaining bit is the most important of all, and The Who are survivors. That’s what I’m interested in, what I’ve always been interested in. There was a long period of time when The Who didn’t have any hit records at all, but their music is survival music, by the pure power of sustaining, sustaining power. That’s what you have to say about The Who. This is what I built on in the first place. I say I, because I think nodody’s had more effect on their career, as I did, in putting together The High Numbers. I met them with a guy called Bob Druce and another feller called Helmut Gordon. Bob Druce was an agent who booked them and he said he had a contract on The Who in his desk. I was introduced to The Who by my barber, via a friend of mine who was a mutual friend called Phil The Greek. Phil The Greek was later to appear on television on Ready, Steady, Go! with a loaded sawn-off shotgun, you know? He was one of the great legends of folklore and pop history.

- Do you think the Mod thing is still alive?

- I wonder actually where all the old Mods went. They’re probably all in garages, second-hand car outfits, scrap-yards, something like that. ‘Cos there’s such a thing as Mod Suss – you know – sussing out a situation. That’s what Mods are about – suss out a situation immediately, its potential, controlling it. Rather than letting the potential control you. So I would think they’d get in the car game – that’s were most money is made very quickly.

- Are you in touch with some of your old mates?

- Yeah, one’s a coke dealer, one’s in prison, and another one’s Phil The Greek, the guy who appeared on TV with a shotgun with The Who on Ready, Steady, Go! who was a great Mod leader of them all. Pete Townshend and I talk about him often.

The black girls are Mod chicks of today. Those little spade chicks you see running round in stacked heels and wedges, wearing sort of Ossie Clarke clothes. The blacks were always there in ’64, there weren’t so many of them – they were late-night kids like us – you’d go out on a three-day bender, you know? Hit out on a Friday night, high on speed, down to Ready, Steady, Go!, down to The Scene Club, dance all night till Saturday morning. Saturday, you’d go shopping, to buy a pullover, or scarf, or something – pair of socks, ‘cos your feet hurt dancing all night in Desert boots. And then all through Saturday night again at The Scene Club all through to Sunday morning, that’s when the come-down comes down, ‘cos you can’t sustain it much more than three days, two nights. Three days and you start heading home to Mama’s place, you know ‘cos you live at home, you can’t afford to live anywhere else. And then you crash, round about Sunday morning, if you can get a lift home to North London, where I was. And that was the life – It was the most amazing sort of life you could imagine – it was so amazing.

- What do you mean when you say ‘you got The Who together?

- I got them together in that I love the life so much. I got The Who and I dressed them up in Mod clothes, gave them all the jingoism and all the paraphernalia of Modism, boxing boots and fashionable things, right on the buttom, timing just right, ‘cos timing is where it’s at.

- You were already a Mod by then?

- Yeah, I was a Mod. It was my life. There was as little club called The Scene, just a Ham Yard, off of Great Windmill Street, and there, on several nights a week the greatest records you can imagine were being played. There were records like “Ain’t love good, ain’t love proud” by Tony Clarke; Major Lance’s stuff; Smokey Robinson, early Curtis Mayfield’s Impressions stuff, you know, which was eminently danceable by people who where not emotionally involved with other people. There was a lack of women in those things. I mean we all dig women, but if you are in the West End, you know that you pay for your women, and well, you don’t get them, ‘cos the girls that come up are mysteries, right. You get girls that come up and dance around, little girls that just dance around in the pubs, just having a little dance, just having a little groove. The records were played by loud over those big speakers, like fairground speakers, and in a small room, which was what The Scene Club was, with concrete walls, so it comes bouncing back, hitting off the floor – there was no wooden floor, hits off the ceiling, so you’re getting saturated with sound, and then they start pulling down the stops, you’re getting a psychedelic record in ’64. So you’re picking up on the body all the time. This is what Mods are about, they’re very physical people. Drynamil is a drug for Mods, because it’s a functional drug, it’s a drug you can work on, you can steal in the shops on it, do all the things you need to do, you can dance on it – you lose all lack of confidence, you lose guilt. It opens up the capillary vessels of the body, therefore, with the aid of this drug you have your own society, you have Nirvana, in a single purple heart pill. Plus you got your togs, which is your clothes, you have the confidence, plus you have the sustaining power three days up, two nights up. I think it’s a groove, I think it’s fabulous, man!

- When did you first notice all this happening?

- When my doctor gave me Drynamil for anxiety. She gave me the original Drynamil, the original Purple Hearts. And I went back that night to my place, my parent’s house where I was working from, and I took one. It’s probably doing something physically way down your system and you don’t notice it. Then, suddenly, Bang! I was free! I was unburdened by chains of resistance. I was able to write and draw and do all the things I wanted to do, without the restraints of normal civilisation bothering me, like feeling it’s late, and having to go to bed. It was just as simple as that. I sat up through the night and finished the book in that one night.

- Were pills very popular then?

- No, well this is how I discovered them. This was 1962, actually.

- So the Mods weren’t in existence then?

- No, they weren’t in existence, but Jack Kerouac was. So anyway, I took the Drynamil. I finished the book that night and I was up for three nights trying to wear my energy off. My own personal feeling is that the debt you have to pay for drugs is too much to compensate for taking the drug in the first place. I always say don’t take the drug whatsoever. A few smokes, a few beers, speed a little bit now and again, be careful with anything else. That’s all.

- Did you sort of think that you were the king Mod at the time?

- No. I was the feller who saw the potential in Modism, which is the greatest form of life-style you can imagine – it’s so totally free – totally anti-family London – In so much as that there were lonely people having a great time. Not having to be lonely, not having to be worried about relationships, being able to get into the most fantastic interesting, beautiful situations, just out of music. You could dance by yourself, you could groove around. I saw this as a weekend. I mean, imagine this, on a Friday night I would go to Ready, Steady, Go! groove around there, and one weekend I had three people on there: I had The Crystals, Chuck Berry and The Rolling Stones – doing publicity for those three people. They used to say, The Weekend Starts Here and weekend would begin there. I would get my speed and go down there, I would go up to the Green Room, and watch my people, that I was working for having a great time at television. There’d be all the faces and people I knew. A face is just someone you recognise, you might not even know his name, but he’s known as a face.

Sid Price's Birmingham memories

I first knew I wanted to be a Mod at the end of 1963 early 64 at the age of 17. I was working in the centre of Birmingham at the time and opposite my place of work there was a hairdresser where I used to get my haircut. It was unisex hair salon where Mods from all over Birmingham used to come and get their hair cut. I used to go and chat to them, it was then I knew I wanted to become a Mod.

I found I had a lot in common in their taste of music, fashion and the way they looked at life. Later, when I went to work at Cadburys I met 3 lads who were also Mods and got to go about with them and that is where I met my girlfriend who eventually became my wife in 1969.

I have always thought Mod and never wavered from it, it has always been with me, once a Mod always a Mod that is my belief. I am 61 now and still think the same as I did when I was 18, much more mature now but still with my beliefs. I know people that are still into the Rock & Roll scene, who are older than me and still ride motorbikes.

I still dress fashionably with suits and smart casual wear, Smedley tops, Levi 501’s, tailored shirts and trousers and listen to the music I listened to in the 60’s, and still go to Mod rallies. I don’t think there are many who think Mod as I do at my age.

The music I listened to back in the sixties was Soul, Rhythm and Blues and British Beat. My favourite soul was STAX and Tamla Motown. Artists like Ottis Redding, Sam & Dave, Booker T and the MG’s, Eddie Floyd, The Four Tops and The Temptations etc. Also British Soul: Geno Washington, Jimmy James and the Vagabonds. Also British bands: Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames, The Small Faces, The Who and The Yardbirds. My Favourite band from Birmingham was The Spencer Davis Group, who were an R&B and blues band.

The clubs I used to go to were mainly in the centre of Birmingham, clubs like The Le Metro which was situated under some railway arches and was like a cellar similar to the cavern in Liverpool. The Rainbow Suite where the smartest Mods used to go, and where some of the best music was played.

I saw John Lee Hooker and my favourite band Spencer Davis at a club called the Whisky a Go-Go. We used to meet every Thursday evening at our works (Cadburys) club, where DJ’s and our own local R&B band called The Cock- a- Hoops, who had an Hammond organ which I love the sound of, played.

We never got to any of the clubs in London as it was too expensive to travel, but a lot of the London Mods used to come up to the clubs in Birmingham.

I also saw The Small Faces at our local theatre called the Odeon.

Mods came to this venue from all over the country, at the same theatre I saw a STAX show featuring Booker T, Sam and Dave, Jimmy Ruffin, Arthur Conley, Wilson Pickett and The Bar-Kay’s.

I also saw at the Rainbow Suite, a band called “Listen” whose lead singer was Robert Plant who was a Mod at the time and later fronted Led Zeppelin.

I used to and still do wear Smart Mohair Italian Style suits, three covered buttons, 8 inch side or centre vents, button down collared fitted shirts mainly Ben Sherman. I also had a three buttoned burgundy and grey boating blazer, Fred Perry polo shirts and John Smedley three buttoned polo Knitwear.

Later around 1965 I wore hipsters, my favourite pair of hipsters were a Rupert Bear check in a camel colour that I wore with a polo neck or turtle neck sweater and desert boots. Also had a grey short Military coat, grey with a mandarin collar, centre vent and patch pockets. I wore this with a black polo neck sweater. Shoes I wore were mainly loafers, desert boots and bowling shoes. In the early sixties we used to wear striped or plain shirts with detachable collars which were fastened with a stud, it was very tricky as you had to fasten one at the front of the collar and one at the back, wore with slim knitted ties.

The Sixties Mod scene was brilliant we all liked the same sort of things, Fashion, Music, Scooters whether it be a Lambretta or Vespa, my preference was a Lambretta as they looked more streamlined. Mods also went Ten Pin Bowling, we had a local bowling alley where we used to go once a week, hence the bowling shoes being fashionable.

There was always something to talk about, always something new happening which is what the Mod scene was all about, and always somewhere to go whether it was clubs or a weekend trip to the seaside, which was a Mod thing to do. Also riding your scooter through the streets dressed really smart gave you a buzz!! Sometimes we had encounters with Rockers but it never ever come to much. The clubs were superb we all loved dancing with always a new dance to learn virtually every week. It was a really cool scene.

Drugs raised their ugly heads sometimes - they weren’t hard drugs though. Uppers and Downers were taken by some to get through all-nighters, and also Bluey’s which were a bit stronger. Not all Mods took drugs and neither myself nor my girlfriend now wife ever touched them.

This is how the scene was every one had there own taste and individuality and it changed all the time. All the Mods I knew were dedicated to the scene and what it meant.

Thanks to Sid for the article and photos ... also thanks to Claudio.