Scooter Boys: The Evolution of the Species

By Gareth Brown

Thirty years have passed since Gareth Brown’s homage to a two-wheeled, two-stroke way of life was published.

The first edition of his acclaimed book Scooter Boys, highlighting youth culture spanning half a century, was first published when Margaret Thatcher’s reign as the Eighties Iron Lady was drawing to a close.

Now, three decades on, Brown’s book is back to enlighten and entertain a new generation – and rekindle memories for those who were scooter boys and girls back in the day. His informed knowledge of the initial Scooter Boy era has resulted in the 30th Anniversary Edition of Scooter Boys being refreshingly updated and published by Mortons, the home of Scootering and Classic Scooterist magazines.

Brown has been a ‘face’ on the scooter scene since the 1970s, when he was legally able to ride a motor scooter on the road, and scooter ownership and riding scooters has been a passion ever since. He rose to prominence in the 1980s as the scooter rally correspondent and later editor of Scootering magazine, which led to his book – a unique take on the Scooter Boy movement, history, traditions and culture.

Scooter Boys charts the development of the early scooters and the post-Second World War arrival of the Italian scooters from Vespa and Lambretta, followed by the chronicling of the rise of 1950s teenage consumerism which led to the Mod versus Rocker riots of the 1960s. It outlines the intervening years before the massed Mod revival of 1979 onwards, when the Northern Soul scene kept the scooter movement alive, and traces the emergence of the unsung street heroes of the late 20th century and beyond.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Banovallum
• Release date: Dec 27, 2019
• ISBN: 9781911658689

Gareth Brown

Gareth Brown wanted to be a writer from a very young age, and he completed his first novel as a teenager. For the last twenty years he has worked in the UK Civil Service and the National Health Service while writing in his spare time. When not working or writing, Gareth loves travelling, especially the whirlwind first few hours in a new city and long road trips through beautiful landscapes. He enjoys barbecues, patisseries, playing pool, and falling asleep in front of the television like an old man. Gareth lives with his wife and two impudent and highly excitable Skye terriers near Edinburgh in Scotland. The Book of Doors is his first published novel.

Book preview

Contents

Title

Copyright

Dedication

The Postmodern Condition?

Sowing the Seeds

The Swinging Sixties

From Punk to Paisley

Keep On Keeping On

Let the Good Times Roll

Rolling Back the Years

Pictures

Music listened to on the 1980s Scooter Rally scene

Something Better Change

Love Machines

Scooter Boys in Europe

Who Aren’t the New Mods?

A Way of Life

Remember When?

Credits

Bibliography

Gareth Brown

Published in Great Britain in 2019

by Banovallum Books

an imprint of Mortons Books Ltd.

Media Centre

Morton Way

Horncastle LN9 6JR

www.mortonsbooks.co.uk

Copyright © Banovallum Books, 2019

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording, or any information storage retrieval system without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

ISBN 978 1 911658 37 5

The right of Gareth Brown to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Typeset by Kelvin Clements

Ebook production by Darren Hendley

"It was a sweltering hot Saturday afternoon  in the summer of ’65. Dad was driving us  back to our home in Essex following a family  day trip to London. We (my sister, my Mother, my Dad and I) were in the family’s pride and  joy: our two-tone green and cream Vauxhall Wyvern motor car.

I was asleep on the Wyvern’s maroon vinyl covered back seat next to my sister, when as we passed through Ilford, I was suddenly  awoken by my parents’ incredulous exclamations of awe and amusement at what they saw before them.

For coming towards us accompanied by the tight torqued tweak of a well-balanced two-stroke single cylinder engine and trailing plume of pale blue smoke, was a shining silver scooter, a Vespa, fully bedecked and adorned with an abundance of chromed mirrors and lights.

With its white Fred Perry T-shirt wearing helmetless rider hidden behind his sunglasses, this Vespa – this magical apparition – just  purred past as I stared on in impressionable pre-teen wonder.

Coupled with an infatuation for Sandie Shaw which I developed in the second half of the Sixties, my impressionable young mind had subconsciously ensured that in later years, this clearly captured imagery would influence  me greatly, but I had no idea then, to just

what extent."

Gareth Brown

The Postmodern Condition?

Before diving into the history and development of the motor scooter and the evolution of the motor scooter’s followers (essential for the telling of the Scooter Boy story), first, I thought it I would start this the 30th Anniversary Edition of Scooter Boys with something of a voxpop overview, so please humour and indulge me?

Cult status surrounding aspects of scooter ownership started with the  post-WWII Italian made machines of the 1940s. Since then, scooter ownership has always had an aligned contemporary culture. This has been an organic entity ever since. For cult scooter ownership has over the decades constantly striven  to embrace new ideologies and styles, has sub-divided where necessary to  accommodate conflicting identities and, popular peaks apart, enjoyed a continual level of modest self-perpetuation since the 1950s.

Modest self-perpetuation was a definite understatement in Britain during the 1960s, the late 1970s, and the mid 1990s, however, as those three eras saw major explosions in scooter culture among the young, with the latter two being spawned by Mod and scooter revivals based on the endeavours of the inaugural en-masse scooter-riding pioneers of 1960s Britain: the original Mods.

In each of the aforementioned instances, and each for unique reasons

attributed to their own time, each of these fresh generations adopted and adapted aspects of scooter imagery for themselves, and made them their own.

Regarding the revivalist incarnations, however, the first of these, the late 70s revival, remains unrivalled in its size and influence (but more, much much more on this further on).

As with the late 1970s revival, the 1990s revival was largely fuelled by the ‘then’ British-led music scene of the period with its aligned ‘Cool Britannia’ ethos, which at that time (mid 1990s) was being musically championed by bands like Blur, Oasis, Cast, Ocean Colour Scene and Supergrass to list but a few. These acts along with the ongoing music of Paul Weller (whose band The Jam had been key during the 1970s revival) helped bring modernism and scooter culture back into the lime light for a further aspiring generation.

Interestingly, at that time (1990s), it can be argued that it was the Mod revival bands of the 1970s like The Jam (plus The Chords, The Purple Hearts, The Lambrettas and Secret Affair etc) who provided the musical building blocks which the emerging 1990s Britpop Scene drew on for inspiration, and not just the sounds of the 1960s bands associated with Mod (but this may just be calculated conjecture).

So to recap, the mid 1990s saw resurging fresh interest in the scooter

scene due to a new wave of Britpop. This was not because of elements of 60s revivalism though (although facets of this helped), but as stated, because of the new breed of British beat which was coming to prominence, as in many instances, its musical proponents were openly extolling the virtues of the motor scooter.

One of the most noted bands from the 1990s who were doing this were Oasis, as mentioned above – and as pictured hereabouts with their Italjet scooters outside Earls Court in London (photo kindly release for use by the photographer Jill Furmanovsky following a request from Oasis to be included in this book from the fourth edition on).

The main reason that Oasis were up for this photograph being included here is, for me, far more poignant than that of them simply being a popular band. You see each member of Oasis pictured actually owned and rode the scooter they were photographed astride at that time. This was because they had a passion for scooters which pre-dated their musical fame, ergo these scooters were not mere record company props.

This is highlighted by the following extract from Paolo Hewitt’s interview with Oasis as published in SELECT magazine, issue No.71, May 1996:

‘Noel comes up from the back of the coach and passes Guigsy a book on scooters and a large toy scooter he’d bought that morning ... Scooters are a big thing with this band. Liam has a 1954 Vespa at home and Guigsy went on scooter runs when he was 16. Last year on holiday, Noel bought each band member a scooter. I’m going to get a flight case made and take it on the next tour, reckons Noel. (Liam) What about mine?

The scooters which Noel brought his fellow Oasis band members back from Italy were the Italjet scooters as mentioned and pictured. Although these were not the archetypical Italian Vespas and Lambrettas associated with the on-going traditional face of scootering (as explained further on), these Italjets were at least two-stroke, and did hail from Italy, and so brought to the fore a facet of change which until that time would not have been entertained: notwithstanding the quirky scooters from Britain and Germany which some scooterists acquired to complement their Italian Stallions, the riding of non two-stroke, and/or non manually geared non Lambretta or Vespa scooters by lifestyle scooterists pre this period, simply was not happening. These days though, such taboos are  not so strictly adhered to, as many 21st century scooterists are buying  machinery other than the traditionally accepted makes or styles, for many are buying the four-stroke automatic scooters from Scomadi and Royal Alloy along with those from Vespa (do a Google), for reasons of practicality and availability. To highlight this, I myself ran a Gilera Runner 180cc automatic scooter alongside my Lambretta GP200 and Vespa PX for many years, and am currently after a Vespa GT 300cc four-stroke automatic to use for touring.

But for all the above ups and downs to happen around the scooter scene, first, there had to be a scooter scene. In the 1960s, as said, this was dominated by the original Mods. In the early 1970s by the original Skinheads and by the early 1980s predominantly by the revivalist Mods and the subject of this book, the Scooter Boy.

Each of these factions are commented on chronologically as this book unfolds. It is not essential to read the following in any give