“Youth of Today” - The Teds
Screen shot from “Special Enquiry: the Teddy Boys” - BBC Archive
I'm sure I've mentioned it before, but I LOVE anything to do with sub cultures and youth culture and contemporary music history. Particularly in recent years, it has fuelled my own work, bringing extra context to some my own images and informing some of the lectures and talks I give.
Which is why when footage like this comes my way - about Teddy Boys, I get very excited.
I first became aware of the Teds through the brilliant Magnum photographer Chris Steele-Perkins. They were a working class youth culture that began in the 50s, known for their love of tailor-made Georgian era “Dandy” clothing, quiffs and creepers. Music of choice for the Teds was Skiffle, jazz and Rock n Roll.
Chris talks about documenting the second wave of The Teds in the Seventies (+ youth cultures in general) extensively on this Magnum page where you can also find more of his excellent work.
London. Adam and Eve pub in Hackney. 1976.
© Chris Steele-Perkins/ Magnum Photos
Ken Russell also has a beautiful body of work of Teddy Girls aka “Judies” (currently showing at Lucy Bell Fine Art Contemporary in St Leonards).
I absolutely love the combination of attitude, sass, style and straight up beauty and could pore over the images for hours.
(c) Ken Russell/Topfoto - In Your Dreams (this is the print I would buy if I could afford it!)
This BBC archive film gives voice to the Teds that can’t be transmitted through photographs. It's shot incredibly well, as stylishly as the Teds themselves and touches on that age old conflict between older generations, press and “the youth of today.”
“Me, I believe there is a god and there is such a place as heaven.
What puts me off going to church is that you see people come home from church, get drunk, start swearing, they got the cheek to look and you and say, Oh look at that Teddy Boy, I’m sure he’ll go to hell when he dies.
”
Nothing about the men featured in the documentary seems particularly troublesome. Sure, there’s a slight cockiness that often comes with youth, but to me they’re just whole-heartedly occupied in the construction of a way of looking and being that places them outside of the “norm.” The pushing of the “norm” by young people is surely what keeps societies and cultures evolving and thriving. Without young people and youth culture, where and what would we be?