It is hard to imagine how radical Teds were when they first appeared in the conventional, austere, post-war 50’s - Hair styles borrowed and exaggerated from American rock and film stars, music from the new, loud, sexual, rock ‘n roll music , velvet cuffed Drape coats which were exaggerated from high Edwardian style (hence the Teddy), tight trousers, attitude magnified from British truculence, and shoes from...Mars?
Certainly my father, the most conservative of men, considered them beyond the pale, threatening that “I didn’t want to turn out like one of them!” But I sort of did. I was too young and too scared of them then, but I did cultivate a brylcreme quiff and bought a pair of winkle-pickers, which my father threw on the fire. And that was more or less it.
It all started again when I was asked to photograph the Teddy Boy revival in the 70’s for New Society magazine. I teamed up with my friend and writer, Richard Smith, and both of us were intrigued by what we found; the energy, the style, the kitsch, the buzz, the hedonistic fuck-youness of it all. And the music was good - not cutting edge, but good. A night out with the Ted was generally a good crack, sometimes some violence, some vomit on the carpet, but generally a rock ‘n roll party. I wasn’t a Ted but it was easy enough to fit in. I was the bloke who took photographs.
The book of the work we did came out in 1979 as The Teds and became a bit of a cult. the book is now re published by Dewi Lewis. I went back to find some of the characters who were in the book. It was almost like going back to a school re-union - "Whatever happened to...."
I went down to a Teddy Boy Weekender in Reading. I did not realise these things still went on but I was told by some of the Teds there that there were too many of these kinds of events; it was getting diluted. It was certainly getting old. Few quiffs now, quiffs would require a hair transplant, and some. Mike Warner from Guilford now sported a skull headed walking stick. His wife Peggy was covered in music tattoos: Elvis, Buddy Holly, Bill Haley. "Only one’s not musical." She pulls up her skirt to reveal a tattoo of a dog; a pet that had died. Bill and Maureen Stephenson were not jiving. Bill revealed, "My knee’s fucked, I’m having a replacement operation." Memphis Paul was DJing, going strong since 1962. I asked him if there were any young people coming into the scene "Yeah, my son, ask him, he’s 19." But this was strictly a family business, the only young people there were Teds from France and Germany.
I tracked down Tongue Tied Danny through Val who had organised the Weekender. When I had done the book he was one of the best know DJs, in demand around the country, and I had photographed his wedding to Sue 24 years ago. Danny was out of the scene for many years. He got fed up with it, his equipment was being stolen, car trashed, he had enough. He got into historical re-enactments and building computers. But the pull of the Teds was strong, and through some old friends he met he gradually got back into the Ted scene.
Danny now has to use a walking stick and Sue is permanently in a wheelchair and often in great pain, but still is active in the residents association. She collects porcelain dolls. Danny still gets down to the Galleon pub and the Pavilion in Battersea for rock ‘n roll nights. I arrange to meet him in the Galleon where he tells me there might be some people who were in the book. Outside the pub a group of kids are hanging about in the street, kids the age of the teds I had once photographed in the 70’s. This lot is busy throwing fireworks at each other. When I go in DJ Tom Hogan is playing music. He is a die-hard Ted. "I made a vow to myself that I would remain a Ted all my life and when I go to collect my first pension cheque in a couple of years’ time, I’m going down the post office in my drape. the full Ted gear. I promise you." Tom’s there with family. His 19 year old granddaughter Dionne does a neat bit of jiving, pairing with her gran.
A group of us are sitting at a table with Danny when one of them says that he was in the book, twice. I look at him and cannot place him. "Y’know that picture you took of us pissing on the coach trip at the end of the book?" "Yes, of course." "Well, that’s me. I’m the one with the biggest knob." prettiest Ted girls; young love. Geordie Bill.
I go through the book with them. "Never see him any more....he’s dead....Flash, yes, he’s bald now....he’s dead now, crazy, mad. Drank. Died of a perforated ulcer....yeah, seen him, Stan the Man, he’s about....Ah, Ron, he died y’know? 5,000 at his funeral, Hells Angels as outriders, the police let them ride without helmets. Y’know he had an equity card?....Freddy’s around, still plays piano, now lights a fire on his head." A lot of dead Teds.
Freddy "Fingers" Lee lives in Consett. He is still popular on the continent and has just come back from a gig in Barcelona, but he’s got no bookings in the UK except one for charity. A pity because he is a tremendous piano player and entertainer. He is planning to retire in a couple of years, but now he still records his new songs in the Old Miner’s Hall, which has been converted into a sound studio, and sells his CDs directly through the rock ’n roll press.
Fifties Flash used to have a fine quiff, but now his bald dome is decorated by a few strands of hair tied together at the back. He still loves the music and he still loves the scene where he isa regular DJ, but in these days it is not a living so he drives an early morning delivery van to survive. I meet him at the old rockers’ hang out, The Ace Cafe on the North Circular. The Cafe has had a makeover, but is still a shrine to youth culture grown old, even featuring a Mod night which draws groans from some of the Teds who are there. Unlike Danny, Flash never left the scene and you sense that he never will, and that he would like to have a gravestone that is carved as a giant quiff.
These days John Morris prefers leather, but there is no escaping the quiff. When I first photographed him, and wrongly identified him as Studs, he was 14 and had the most enormous tubular quiff horning out of the front of his head. Now it has thinned a lot, but the spirit remains. He is not a die-hard Ted, but is still on the margins of the scene. John worked for years on Camden Market as a street trader, but has now moved up and with his wife Arden runs Stitch Up, a 50s flavoured boutique in Camden.
Jailhouse John has stopped being a Ted and now has a good job as a BT Systems Manager. He used to operate with the Wild Wax Show as a DJ but those days have long gone. Now portly and managerial he seems a bit defensive when I remark that he is the only Ted from the time of my book that I have tracked down, who is not still a Ted. "Well," he says, "I still like the music."
The Teddy Boy Weekender had been my first encounter with the Teds for more than 20 years and I left feeling sad. Feeling it was a sad event for sad people lost in time. Having reimmersed myself more deeply in the scene I realise I was wrong. They weren’t sad, they were enjoying themselves, having a good time. They were doing their thing, not afraid to be who they wanted to be. Being a Ted had been one of the defining experience in these peoples’ lives. Now some were responsible fathers or grandfathers, still carrying a flame, determined to go on, like Tom, marching towards pensioner hood defiantly draped.
They formed a strange kind of community, but it had been that strange community which had first fascinated me all those years ago. They held on to something that was important to them. Kept faith. Those markers that once quickened our youth can still drive our dotage.
So, we move on, the planets turn, we change, grow older and remain more resolutely the same. I still take photographs. Long live rock ‘n roll.
Chris Steele-Perkins / Magnum
Chris Steele-Perkins 2002