Sawdust Caesar

The early to mid-'60s was when youth ran wild for the first time. Schoolboys, school-leavers, mere kids, took to wearing brightly coloured clothes - often handmade by West End tailors - the likes of which had never been seen before: red, yellow, blue and green leather and suede overcoats; two-tone handmade shoes and boots; pastel-coloured trousers worn three inches above the ankle and gaudy shirts in a multitude of audacious styles. Imagine the ridicule they received from the older Rockers, who saw them as a pushover. But many of these kids were of tough stock, coming from Britain's backstreets and council estates, and were more than a match for anyone who fancied a fight. In direct contrast to the white music beloved of Rockers, these 'Mods' - as they were soon to be labelled by the media - listened to little but the music of their black friends in the clubs of Soho and the basement parties of Brixton. Black and white youngsters mixed freely, becoming friends in a way perhaps unparalleled in history. Blue beat and ska dominated the subculture for years.
This was a period of spontaneous and exuberant rebellion untouched and unadulterated by market forces, which paved the way for a host of less pure but more celebrated cults: hippies, yippies and punks for example, which, with the grateful help of the media bandwagon, achieved far greater and perhaps less-deserved notoriety. In "Sawdust Caesar", Howard Baker charts this little-known period of popular culture and records the fashions, the music and the ideologies of the time.