[PREV - THE_REAL_FACE] [TOP]
OUTSIDE_MOD_BARNES
December 29, 2025
In the Quadrophenia Documentary from 2012
"Quadrophenia: Can You See the Real Me?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaETQJDElf4
There's a three way conversation between
Pete Townsend and Irish Jack and this THE_REAL_FACE
fellow Richard Barnes who is the the
author of the book "Mods!"...
But, it turns out that Richard Barnes was back
in the days of the Mods was another art school
kid like Townsend, and he was a flatmate of
Townsend back when Peter Meaden was trying to
work with an early version of The Who and sell
them as The High Numbers.
So it could be that Barnes is *another* guy
who's one step removed from the Mods, later
belatedly becoming The Expert.
Still, the Mods did not do so well at articulating
what they were about so this may be the best we can
do to get a picture of the scene:
A key factor was that in the early 60s,
kids could get a job. They suddenly had
money to spend on stuff like fashion.
To be a Face, you had to have a job to have
the money to maintain your position. So the Mods, like
the Japanese Otaku
Jargon: a leader was a Face (and in were a consumerist
Quadrophenia the top dog was "The Ace subculture.
Face"). The other kids were just more of
the Numbers-- and the real beginners were OTAKU_REBELS
"The Tickets".
The "7 and 6s" were named after the price
of their cheap Woolworth shirts.
A strong influence on Mods was Italian fashion,
Barnes says Italian tourists provided the model.
Interestingly: The Mods could *pass* as straight, to
an outsider they looked like neatly dressed kids who
were going places-- they were ready for promotion to
management. There were always subtle hints in their
fashion though, signals to other Mods-- they could Goths of the 90s
identify each other. called this "being
a stealth goth"
Richard Barnes:
"If you saw a Teddy Boy, you'd know him as a Teddy Boy,
but if you saw a Mod, your Mod could go and work in an
advertising [firm] and no one would know they were a Mod,
because they just looked like a *neat kid*. But to other
Mods, they gave off the signals--"
Townsend:
"But maybe a slightly effeminate
kid, and that was where I thought The fights with the rockers
the real courage came in." evidently grew out of this
perception-- the leather boys
Richard Barnes: would accuse the dandies of being
queer, and so they'd fight.
"They used to do their own
sewing and stuff--" But Townsend comments that the
*cool* mods hated the beach
violence. "Bunch of wankers."
Richard Barnes:
"You've got to put it in the context of the time,
it was about people identifying with this new,
modern, clean world."
Some material from the Richard Barnes book "Mods!" (2016)
https://books.google.com/books?id=RBbdDAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
He begins with one night hanging around
at a place named "The Scene":
"... I fully realised that there existed a complete Mode way of life.
I'd been involved with Mods and Mod fashions and music and been
carried along by it all, but that night it hit me how all-embracing
the lifestyle was, and how committed and intense everyone was about it."
"I wasn't a Mod and never thought of being a Mod. I was at
Art School. My involvement with Mods came because my freind
from Art School, with whom I shared a flat, platyed in a group which
had recently come under the co-management of Pete Meaden,
and Pete Meaden, lived, ate and slept Mod. He was in the process
of masterminding the group into a Mod Group."
"The Mod way of life consisted ooof total devotion to looking and
being 'cool'. Spending practically all your money on clotes and all
your after work hours in clubs and dance halls. To be part-time was
really to miss the point."
"The Scene wasn't licensed and only sold orange juice.
It wasn't considered particularly cool to smoke or dring anyway ..."
"We'd been overwhelmed by Pete Meaden when we first met him.
He was English but talked like an American radio disc jockey,
really fast and slick. He called everybody 'Baby!' ... "
"Pete Meaden was hired as a publicist. ... They were to be called
the 'High Numbers', All very Mod and esoteric. There was
a lot of talk about 'Image' and 'Direction'. He was going to try to
establish the group in the most important Soho Mod clubs. "
"It was incredible to me that the fashions were constantly changing,
and the frequency with which they did. I wondered who thought them up.
I was convinced that there was an inner clique of policy-making Mods
who dictated fashion. ... I realize how naïve my suspicons were."
Barnes talks about the post-war period, young period with more
disposible income becoming obsessed with American Rock 'n Roll:
"This craze grew and grew. Soon there was a booming teenage
market as businessmen realized the kids had a lot of money
and nothing to spend it on. They adopted and adapted the
Edwardian look and the press named them Teddy Boys.
All of a sudden teenagers were discovered, and soon after this
'juvenile delinquency' arrived."
"The Teddy Boys had got very violent and mornic and ripped up
cinema seats with cut-throat razors. The 'look' had spread all over
the country, but then id died out. Drape jackets and brothel
creepers were very dated by about 1958. At this time the Italian
look came in for teenagers. Italian suits has short box jackets
and narrow trousers with no turn-ups, and were worn with winklepicker
shoes. The jackets were so short they were named 'bumfreezer' jackets.
They had two or three buttons and very narrow lapels. If they were
double-breated the crossover was only about 2 inches. It was this
look that the early originators of the Mods took to and developed."
"These teenage Dandies were reacting against the fifties yobbishness.
They hated its coarsness and garishness. They identified with
what was new and sophisticated. They wanted to be part of all the
very modern things that were happening in 1959 and 1960.
England at that time was in the middle of the Traditional Jazz
(Trad) craze. The charts were full of English version of Dixieland jazz. ... "
"They identifies with Modern Jazz and its clean, new, smooth
image. They would buy albums by people like the Modern Jazz
Quartet, Charlie Mingus, Gerry Mulligan and Dave Brubeck."
"It was from their Modern Jazz tastes that they named themselves.
They called themselves Modernists"
"Then in 1962, _Town magazine_ printed photographs and an
interview with some 'faces' from Stamford Hill. One of these
was a 15-year-old Mark Feld (who later became Marc Bolan ...)."
"The Town magazine article was the first media coverage of
these young devotees of fashion, and it was inspiration
and confirmation for all the others. It was in 1962 that
all the individual and diverse elements finally fused
into the overall Mod style."
--------
[NEXT - MODS_SING_THE_BLUES]