Clothes. Obviously, they aren’t high in my list of things to be concerned about these days, like most 63-year-olds. I say that but I suppose I am to a degree in that I know I don’t want to look like my dad in beige blousons and Marks and Spencer shirts and I try to preserve the scruffy philosophy that has been my lifelong ‘style.’
But back in the day, in what turned out to be a life long thing, they mattered much more , though I would never have admitted it. I think the driving force was to look like you wanted nothing to do with fashion, or at least fashion as I perceived it. We rock generation were a loosely assembled tribe largely identified by clothes and hair.
Hair was important, had to be long or wild and unkempt. There was a lad who was always in Newcastle’s ‘hairy’ pubs who had hair to his waist but it was clearly vigorously brushed; a curtain of hair which he had it spilling down his back and stood in a ramrod fashion as though it was important it didn’t fall forward. We thought it was funny, you couldn’t be neat and tidy and have long hair. That wasn’t important.
These were different times; so different, when out with Dawn, we’d often get whistled at by the white van types who thought from behind we were two girls, who were then embarrassed when they saw my bearded face.
Your clothing choices were fairly limited and I suspect that’s one of the things I liked. Knackered and pitched jeans were de rigour and a newer unpatched pair for ‘smart’ cheesecloth shirt, t-shirt, baseball boots, a denim jacket or army jacket. If it was cold in winter (it used to be) jumpers were more of a problem because jumpers didn’t seem very rock n roll. I had a roll neck knitted out of yellow, orange, red and brown space-dyed wool so I looked like a mutant wasp. I wore that for weeks on end, which, when you consider we spent our time in pubs thick with smoke, was ambitious. I had a range of frankly homemade jumpers and a load of denim shirts. Owning an afghan which I bet we all did at one point and smelled of dead dogs was another option.
And that was it, topped off with exploding unkempt hair and patchouli oil. Then again, that was a male thing, more choices were available for girls. Dawn used to make clothes and jewelry for Minerva, a local hippy store. In the late 70s, crimped hair was popular. But basically, the female version was similar to males but with added embroidery, flowers and colour.
These looks were so important, the fact you could work for British Rail or the Post Office with long hair, qualified them as desirable jobs. Of course, this look identified you to those who liked to kick your head in, but that didn’t deter me. Belonging to the tribe was more important and I’m not quite sure I thought I stood out as much as I did in new romantic Britain.
It took several years to get over this until I went through a brief late 80s big hair glam-rock phase before coming to rest at a slightly less unkempt version of the 70s self. It all seemed so very important at the time, a way of establishing who you were. Maybe, in a way, it still does
