Teenagers | Another Nickel In The Machine

Posts Tagged ‘teenagers’

Errol Flynn and Beverly Aadland at the Lido Club in Swallow Street

Tuesday, June 16th, 2009

Errol Flynn and Beverly Aadland, 5th May 1959

Errol Flynn was purportedly to have once said: ‘I like my whisky old, and my women young’. The above photo, whilst not saying anything about his choice of whisky, although there is an impressive array of glasses in front of him, certainly says something about his taste in women, or should I say girls.

The picture of Flynn, taken in May 1959, was taken a month or so before his fiftieth birthday (it’s the 100th anniversary of his birth on 20th June this year). He’s accompanied in the photograph by his girlfriend, Beverly Aadland, who was a few months from her 16th birthday that September. According to Beverley’s mother, who wrote about Flynn and Aadland’s romance in a book called ‘The Big Love’, by the the time of this meal they had already been together for a year.

"For the last time, he's not my father...".

They are sharing a meal in The Lido Club which was situated in Swallow Street -- a little lane that runs between Piccadilly and Regent Street.

Flynn, who was born in Tasmania, went to school from the age of fourteen to fifteen in Barnes in South West London. It was a very minor public school, that has long since disappeared, called The South West London College. It was situated at numbers 99-101 Castelnau which is a road of regency villas that lead up to the Southern side of Hammersmith Bridge.

Errol Flynn at the South West London College circa 1923

99-101 Castelnau today

After a particularly unhappy time in London (imagine what it was like after living in Tasmania all his life) he left the school in 1925 and sailed back to Australia and a subsequent meteoric rise to fame and film stardom in the US. Incidentally Errol Flynn’s father, Theodore Flynn and noted zoologist, travelled the other way, from Tasmania to the UK, and became Professor of Marine Biology at Queen’s University in Belfast from 1930 until 1948.

I once read that Flynn wanted to call his autobiography ‘In Like Me’. Which would have been brilliant, unfortunately the publisher insisted on ‘My Wicked Wicked Ways’.

Errol Flynn is here on a Canadian programme called Front Page Challenge where the guests have to guess who he is. It was recorded in January 1959, a few months before his death. Incidentally one of the guests is the journalist Scott Young, Neil Young’s father.

I can’t find anything written about The Lido Club in Swallow Street. I wondered if anyone out there has heard of it, or has any information about the place?

Joe Turner -- Sweet Sixteen

Tags: girlfriend, gossip, sex, teenagers, underage, whisky
Posted in Barnes, West End | 16 Comments »

School’s Out in London and Steve ‘Ginger’ Finch

Wednesday, May 6th, 2009

Marching to Trafalgar Square, 17th May 1972

On the 4th May 1972 about 200 boys aged between 11 and 16, put down their pencils and rulers at Quinton Kynaston School in the Finchley Road near St John’s Wood in North London, in a protest over unpleasant school dinners, caning, and the conformity of school uniforms. They swarmed over the school wall and not knowing really what to do next, decided to all go home.

The headmaster, Mr Everest-Phillips protested to the press:

“They have a choice of meals and incidents of caning have been negligible. I have only used it three times since last September. School uniform in summer consists of only a blazer.”

Steve 'Ginger' Finch

A few days later 18 year old Steve ‘Ginger’ Finch a pupil from Rutherford School in Marylebone organised a small group of pupils from his school and nearby Sarah Siddons Girls’ School. The rally of about 60 school children met initially at Paddington Green but then started out on an eight mile march to enlist support from other schools.

A school girl from Paddington and Maida Vale High School joining the demo.

The pupil power demonstration was called by the rebel Schools’ Action Union, of which self-confessed Marxist Ginger Finch was a member, who were mainly against caning, detention, uniforms and ‘headmaster dictatorships’. Eventually 800 pupils had joined the demonstration and Finch was arrested, charged with using insulting behaviour and obstruction.

Prime Minister Edward Heath decided to take no risks, remember this was only four years after students in Paris had brought down the French Government, and ordered MI5 and Special Branch to monitor the schoolchildren revolutionaries. Mr Heath asked Margaret Thatcher, then the Education Secretary to compile a report which warned:

“Some boys and girls are already beginning to develop political attitudes in an immature way…”

A march of 10,000 pupils was organised by the Schools’ Action Union and the National Union of School Students for the 17th May. The Government wanted to take no chances but were struggling to find out the exact nature and route of the march. A Conservative MP called David Lane forwarded a report based on the accounts of a group of girl ’spies’ who had infiltrated a meeting.

“The leaders spoke with Cockney accents and spoke illogically. It seemed there were a number of middle-class kids who were dressing badly to look working-class.”

The march on the 17th May became the high point of a few weeks of pupil radical power.

Boys having a crafty fag at Hyde Park, 17th May 1972

Girls having a crafty fag at Hyde Park

With the absence of Ginger Finch (after his arrest a few days previously) and no real leadership, the event started with confusion with half of the pupils marching to Hyde Park and half marching along the South Bank to County Hall chanting “attack the pigs,” and “we want a riot.”

Speakers' corner, 17th May 1972

The final mini riot at Trafalgar Square

The protesters had planned to hand a letter of protest to County hall, home of the Inner London Education Authority commonly known as the ILEA, but after arriving at their destination they realised the letter had been lost. In fact no one really knew who had the letter in the first place. The protesters subsequently marched on to Trafalgar Square where the demonstration eventually fizzled out.

Sir Philip Allen, Permanent Secretary at the Home Office said that although the march turned out totally disorganised, it shouldn’t detract from its significance “as a symptom of subversive influence”. However, and rather disappointingly really, the era of pupil-power was over almost before it had begun. The looming oil crisis and proper grown-up militancy became more important than whether school dinners were edible and school uniforms caused everyone to look the same.

Of all the original aims of the militant school-children from 1972, only the banning of corporal punishment in British schools has universally been achieved. Not at home though of course.

School Girl from Holland Park, May 1972

Slade – Look Wot You Dun

Alice Cooper – School’s Out

The Faces – Stay With Me

Mott The Hoople – Original Mixed-Up Kid

Tags: demonstration, kids, protest, riot, school, students, teenagers
Posted in London, Marylebone, Trafalgar Square | 9 Comments »

A Rave on Eel Pie Island in August 1960

Tuesday, April 28th, 2009

Eel Pie Island, 31st August 1960

I found these rather fantastic photographs from Google’s Life magazine collection. They feature some teenagers at a ‘rave’ on Eel Pie Island at Twickenham on a Wednesday night August 31 1960. There is practically no other information other than the photographs were taken by a Peter Hall (I’m presuming not the theatre impresario who became Sir Peter Hall).

Does anyone know anything about the parties held on the island at the time and what kind of music would they have been listening to? Was it some kind of jazz? There seems to be a sort of young scruffy beatnik sort of style going on.

Two girls called Marian Dawson and Kathleen Mayo, the original caption makes sure that we know that Kathleen is holding her boyfriend's drink while they are drinking apple juice.

Two girls called Marian Dawson and Kathleen Mayo, the original caption made sure we knew that Kathleen is holding her boyfriend's drink while drinking apple juice.

Dirty feet on Eel Pie Island

The wall decoration is described as 'beatnik graffiti'.

The two girls would be around sixty eight now.

The two girls would be in their late sixties now.

Charles Mingus – Boogie Stop Shuffle
Charles Mingus – Better Git It In Your Soul

Buy Charles Mingus’s Ah Um here

Peter Hall’s Eel Pie Island photos are here

Tags: dancing, drink, jazz, party, rave, sixties, teenagers
Posted in Eel Pie Island, Twickenham | 14 Comments »

Soho and the 2 i’s coffee bar

Thursday, July 3rd, 2008

“Soho is a place where all the things they say happen, do” – Colin Macinnes

The 2 i's Coffee Bar in Old Compton Street

In 1953 the Italian actress Gina Lollobrigida opened the Moka coffee bar at 29 Frith Street in Soho which provided London with its first Gaggia expresso coffee machine. Some have argued that the simple opening of this West End coffee bar was the early morning double-expresso that London needed to kick-start its way out of the grey post-war depression, setting itself up to become the world’s trendiest city in only a decade’s time.

Quickly other coffee bars sprung up around Soho, often providing live music, these included the Top Ten in Berwick Street and the Heaven and Hell bar in Old Compton Street, but the most famous of all, and next door to the Heaven and Hell, was the 2 i’s at number 59.

Almost over night young people, who now for the first time were starting to be known as ‘teen-agers’ had somewhere to go they could call their own. The coffee shops were unlicensed and there was nothing to stop teenagers coming to Soho to listen to music, live, or on the jukebox. If you were young, Soho was suddenly the place to be.

Gina Lollobrigida in 1953

The Moka coffee bar in 1953, seemingly offering a free electric shave

Skiffle band playing on an old bomb site in Soho 1956

'teen-agers' in Soho 1956

Soho Square 1956

Lonnie Donegan September 1956

The Two i’s was bought in 1955 by an Australia wrestler called Paul Lincoln (Dr Death when in the ring – and one of the sport’s first masked wrestlers,cleverly enabling him to fight twice on the same bill, and thus doubling his fee). The name of the bar came from the two brothers called Irani he had bought it from.

The 2 i’s wasn’t a particularly busy place initially and it was quickly losing money, but this all changed when Lincoln started to put on skiffle groups that were becoming popular with teenagers, especially after Lonnie Donegan’s Rock Island Line had become a hit. Skiffle was suited totally to the new coffee shops due to the minimal, cheap and un-amplified instruments the bands used and thus able to fit into the tiniest, sweatiest cellar.

When a skiffle group called The Vipers came to play one night at the 2 i’s, a friend of theirs called Tommy Hicks helped them out with some vocals and so impressed a watching record producer from Decca that it was Hicks who was signed to his label. Hicks was quickly taken on and managed by a former shopkeeper called Larry Parnes, who persuaded him to change his name to Tommy Steele. The name stuck and a hit single called ‘Rock with the Caveman’ soon followed and literally within days Tommy Steele became Britain’s first genuine teenage pop idol.

Tommy Steele 25th February 1957

Tommy Steele at the Bread Basker 1957

An acned Tommy Steele performing in Soho 1957

Tommy Steele performing in Soho 1957. How young he was is written all over his face.

Steele’s overnight success made the basement of the 2 I’s coffee shop the most famous music venue in the country. It was only a small place though, and like the other Soho venues was usually very hot and sweaty, with a small 18 inch stage at one end, one microphone, and some speakers up on the wall.

Clutching their guitars, teenagers, from all over the country, started coming to the 2 I’s, or even Soho in general, to try and find fame and fortune. Cliff Richard and the Shadows (initially the Drifters) all met by being regulars at the cafe. Bruce Welch of the Shadows once said:

“The Two I’s was the place to be discovered. If it was good enough for Tommy Steele it was good enough for us.”

Larry Parnes, considering himself an ‘impresario’ and known to many as ‘Mr Parnes, Shillings and Pence’, started to manage other singers and after the success of Steele insisted on creating cartoonish pseudonyms, thus Reg Smith became Marty Wilde, Ronald Wycherley became Billy Fury and Clive Powell became Georgie Fame. Joe Brown, however rejected his Parnes’ name of Elmer Twitch (not surprisingly) and solely, it seems, had a music career with the name with which he was born.

Billy Fury and Larry Parnes

Joe Brown

Mr Parnes Shillings and Pence

Clive Powell aka Georgie Fame

Reg Smith aka Marty Wilde and a young Kim Wilde

Roy Taylor aka Vince Eager

Larry Parnes wasn’t known as the ‘beat svengali’ for nothing, and his relationship with his proteges was ‘fatherly’ at the very least. Vince Eager at one point was wondering why he hadn’t received any record royalties:

“You’re not entitled to any,” Larry Parnes told him. “But it says in my contract that I am,” Eager protested. “It also says I have power of attorney over you, and I’ve decided you’re not getting any,” Parnes replied.

Parnes’ power in the music business swiftly declined with the rise of the Beatles (indeed he rejected them as a backing group for Billy Fury at one point) and, always happier with family entertainment, he went on to produce theatre shows. However the mid to late fifties was an incredibly exciting and creative time for British music and the attraction of rock ‘n’ roll brought talented (and, to be fair, not so talented) teenagers from all over the country to try their hand at a new musical fashion.

It seemed, at last, that anyone from any backgrould could make it. Only Punk, perhaps, echoed the musical ‘can do’ atmosphere of this period, just two decades later.

Frith Street in 1956, known as Froth Street in the heyday of the coffee bars

Leon Bell and the Bell Cats and some hand-jiving kittens

Doing what teenagers do best, hanging around. In Soho

The skiffle group City Ramblers in 1955

Bill Kent entertaining the ladies at the 2 I's coffee bar

It’s now over fifty years since the heyday of the 2 I’s coffee bar in Old Compton Street. A lot of the Soho cafes, like everywhere else, are either closing down or becoming part of the ubiquitous Starbucks chain. Starbucks, of course, branched last year and started their own record label featuring cutting edge artists such as Carly Simon and James Taylor.

The ubiquitous coffee chain also signed Paul McCartney, who fifty years ago was inspired by the skiffle boom created by the Soho Coffee shops to join John Lennon’s skiffle band The Quarrymen and we all know what happened to them.

The Quarrymen in 1958

A long way from the Moka coffee bar and Gina Lollobrigida

If you’ve only heard the novelty songs of Donegan, you will be surprised by his version of Frankie and Johnny – his voice, by the end of the song, ends up almost going insane. It was one of John Peel’s all time favourite songs if I’m not mistaken (in fact I know it was because he told me). I have also included the Peter Sellers sketch which includes ,what is apparently, an extremely accurate impression of Larry Parnes. It’s also very funny and written by Denis Norden and Frank Muir.

Anybody know what happened to the skiffle guitarist and ladies man Bill Kent?