CycleChat Investigates - Mods v Rockers

[Dave7]

I bought a 125cc,or was it a 175cc🤔 Vespa during the mod revival in the late 1970's. i came off it a few times,then when a fellow scooter rider and a moped riding lad i knew from football away matches were both killed, in July 1980 and September 1980 respectively i sold the thing. Both were the same age as me and both are lying in the local cemetery having died aged 18.
I'm still a 'mod' type and will be till the day i die,even though i haven't been on a scooter for 41 years. You don't have to own a scooter to be a mod. Music wise i actually prefer 'rock' music to 'mod type music'.

Very sobering that
I would hazard a guess that we all knew at least one person killed while riding a motor bike.
I also knew one that died while riding a scooter when he picked an arguement with a bus.

 

[Dave7]

What was I......answers on a postcard please.
1964
Rode a m bike.
Wore.....ice blue jeans, button down shirt, blue serge waist coat, beatle boots.
Music. Mainly Stones, blues eg Smoke Stack Lightning plus Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis.
Ohh yes.....my helmet had those big stick on eyes at the back.

No idea what that made me

 

[FrankCrank]

My biking period was late seventies/early eighties. One of my bikes was a Triumph Thunderbird, modded something like the Fonz bike, so I fall into the Rocker gang I guess. Never really encountered any Mods, Punk being the nascent tribe at that time. Had to have the 'look' with the leather jacket and denim cutoff over the top. The cutoff was used to clean the grease off your hands, and all sorts really. Took ages to build up a respectable patina, then one day my mum decided it needed a visit to the washing machine - I was gutted. All seems so silly now looking back, but great memories all the same.

 

[welsh dragon]

Amazing how things change ain't it

Shut it you

 

[Illaveago]

Rocker here. Big bikes, leather jacket, rock n roll. If I could grow any hair I'd have a quiff.

Have you put brass studs in your lycra cycling gear?

 

[Illaveago]

I had small Ducati 160 in the early 70's . My friend was a bit of a skinhead and had a scooter, but we gave each other lifts.
I have sprayed motorbikes and scooters, there are less panels to spray on early motorbikes than scooters , excluding Ariel Leaders. Vespa's are easier to spray than Lambrettas due to there being less panels to spray although I think the Lambrettas look better.

 

[Drago]

Well, time for a sitrep.

The Rockers are clearly top of the foodchain, smiting all before them.

The mods, all three of them, are running away as fast as their brogues will let them.

But the last bastion of ordinaray decent folk are still making their voices heard and are coming up the Mods rear.

Exciting stuff.

Im sure youre all looming forward to next weeks skinheads v new romantics expose.

 

[craigwend]

I remember this being in various Sociology books...

Also an indie band called the Folk Devils but not one called MORAL PANIC...

Perhaps @Drago can start a CC house band of the same name

 

[Deleted User]

I'm still a 'mod' type and will be till the day i die,even though i haven't been on a scooter for 41 years. You don't have to own a scooter to be a mod.

 

[MontyVeda]

Sounds like a Mod walks amongst us and is trying to rewirite history! Get 'im lads!

Absolutely not. The Jam were a decent band but Weller's a complete twonk... and when The Jam were a decent band, I was busy trying to be a nine year old teddy boy (then i discovered Black Sabbath).

 

[gbb]

My teenage years were the early 70s so missed the mods rockers thing but had a foot in both camps perhaps...
Denim jacket with brass studs, we used to go down the motorcycle shop in Newark and buy handfuls of them, as said up post, silly with hindsight , although at 14 /15 we thought it was cool of course.
About the same time, someone rescued (a tenuous explanation) an abandoned Lambretta TV175 from a garage on the airbase we lived at, we used to rag it until it died. Imagine what thats be worth now, I gather the TVs are worth serious money now.
From that point on I always had a soft spot for scooter, never had any desire for a motorbike, hate the Jam / Paul Weller etc, love metal.

 

[Hacienda71]

A lot of the 1970's to 1980's rock bands were heavily influenced by the 1960's mod bands and music or simply were mods who grew up . Led Zeppelin were originally The New Yardbirds the Yardbirds had a mod following. A load of Led Zeppelin records were pretty faithful copies of blues tracks by the likes of Howling Wolf. Eric slow hand Clapton was in various mod followed bands. The Faces included Rod the mod Stewart and Ronnie Wood. Chris Squire started out in an R and B band. The Who obviously and The Stones were playing to mod audiences in their formative years. I don't think that the development of heavy metal would have happened as it has without the adoption of what the mods had made popular. Stairway to Heaven would have sounded very different if Led Zep had come from Be Bop a Lu La and Rock Around the Clock.

 

[Smokin Joe]

Mods and Rockers were so very British, teenage rebels who grew up to be bank managers, accountants and social workers. The Yanks did it properly -

 

[twentysix by twentyfive]

I don't remember the 60's. So I was either there or not it's hard to tell.

 

[gavroche]

Can't make any comments on this subject as I wasn't living in the UK in the 60's and don't think we had this trend over the channel.