Kings of Vintage: Rockers

With their love for motorcycles, leather and beer, Rockers have always had a bad reputation, even when they first began to emerge in post-war Britain. Christopher Raymond Brocklebank takes a look at a youth culture phenomenon which still fascinates us today.

Rockers have been suffering from a mistaken subcultural identity for over fifty years. Teds, those frothily-quiffed dandy thugs in Technicolor facsimiles of Granddad’s 1911 sunday best, were not Rockers. And though the Greaser tag eventually became interchangeable with Rocker, flowing alongside Rockabilly and later Psychobilly, into one big, grease-slicked reservoir, Rockers were at first out there on their own, a very pre-Swinging Sixties phenomenon. Their roots were in the immediate post-war era; an historical incubating period for nearly every youth cult, big or small for the next 25 years.

Between 1945 and 1950, the average wage of teens in Britain increased at twice the average rate of the adult wage. This new prosperity collided with the explosion of American Rock ‘n’ Roll, Hollywood’s take on insubordinate youth in The Wild One, Blackboard Jungle and Rebel without a Cause, and, oddly, the construction of arterial roads around major British cities – veritable racetracks with the circumference of a metropolis.

British motorcycle building hit a peak in these years too, and the youths who roared up and down the freshly set concrete on these gleaming monsters became known as ‘Ton-Up Boys’ (Ton-Up being slang for driving at 100mph), whizzing by in a phalanx of smoky leather, smoggy exhaust smoke and inky blue denim.

By the early Sixties, the Ton-Ups had become as well known – if not better known – for their devotion to Rockabilly and a singular style of dress, as for their motorcycles, and the Rockers were born (Teds, conversely, had by now passed into history – at least as a visible youth cult). Rockers now began to strip down and soup up their bog-standard factory motorcycles, which ended up closely resembling racer bikes: speed not comfort was the desired end.

Read on!

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Tags: featured, Greaser, Psychobilly, Rockabilly, Rockers, Ton-Ups

Category: 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, Vintage news, Vintage Style Icons