Teds & Punks: The history of

Having already seen the Rockers versus Mods battles on the seafronts of England in the late Sixties and skinhead football hooliganism in the early to mid seventies the nation now witnessed the very public battles on the Kings Road of London between the emerging Punks and the another existing youth group the Teddy Boys.
In true style the more press it got the more it attracted the idiots and increasingly inflammatory statements. Unbelievably go on Teddy Boy forums today (2007) and they're still harping on about it and how crap punk is (was). But for most of us old punks we love rock 'n' roll!!



Teddy Boys date back to the late forties when, following the war, a generation of youngsters with money to burn appropriated Edwardian (Teddy) clothing style currently in fashion on Saville Row and cranked it up a notch. In the beginning there were drapes and drainpipe trousers. Then that look was customised; the drapes with collar, cuff and pocket trimmings, even narrower trousers, crepe soled shoes or beetle crushers and hairstyle heavily greased into a quiff and shaped into a DA, or as it was popularly called, a ‘ducks arse’ as it resembled one!

They were the first real high profile rebel teenagers, who flaunted their clothes and attitude like a badge. It comes as no surprise then that the media was quick to paint them as a menace and violent based on a single incident. When teenager John Beckley was murdered in July 1953 by Teddy Boys, the Daily Mirror’s headline ‘Flick Knives, Dance Music and Edwardian Suits’ linked criminality to clothes.

More tales of teenage violence followed, luridly reported and no doubt exaggerated in the press.

Cinemas, dance halls and other places of entertainment in South east London are closing their doors to youths in ‘Edwardian’ suits because of gang hooliganism…The ban, which week by week is becoming more generally applied, is believed by the police to be one of the main reasons for the extension of the area in which fights with knuckle dusters, coshes, and similar weapons between bands of teenagers can now be anticipated…In cinemas, seats have been slashed with razors and had dozens of meat skewers stuck into them. Daily Mail, 27.4.54

In June 1955 the Sunday Dispatch headline was a typically sensationalist tabloid style with the following headline.

War on teddy boys.

Menace In The Streets Of Britain’s Cities Is being Cleaned Up At Last

In essence, the Teds were never more than a minority in their age group but they were the first to see themselves and to be seen by society as ‘teenagers’, the ‘bad guys’, and so a group apart. They also pre-dated, but came to be associated with rock ’n’ roll which of course itself became fresh fodder for the media offering more sex, drugs and violence stories. They were the Punks of the day and as startling and controversial. Twenty five years down the line in 1977 Teddy Boys had never quite died out and there was a
revival due to a resurgence of interest in rock ‘n’ roll. In the main, Teddy Boys were rigidly conservative and traditional and being a Ted often ran in the family.
Johnny Rotten (Sex Pistols) The Teds were different from the Punks in that there was so many ages - there was the older lot, all the dads, along with younger kids. The Punk thing was very young. It was like going out and fighting old men, kind of ridiculous really. John Lydon, No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs, 1993

Big John. “My old man was a Ted... I’ve been brought up with nothing else. Chris Welch, Fighting In the Streets, Melody Maker, 30.7.77
The important difference though between the 50’s and 70’s was, though the clothes and music may have stayed fundamentally the same, violence was more prevalent.

The second generation Teds’ obstinate fidelity to the traditional ‘bad-guy’ stereotypes appeared by contrast obvious and reactionary. To the sounds of records long since deleted, in clothes which qualified as virtual museum pieces, these latter day Teds resurrected a set of sexual mores (gallantry, courtship) and a swaggering machismo - that ‘quaint’ combination of chauvinism, Brylcreem and sudden violence - which was already enshrined in the parent culture as the model of masculine behaviour. Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning Of Style, 1979

While indeed Teds in the seventies were in a time warp it should be noted that there were new traditional rock ’n’ roll bands coming through like Crazy Caven and the Rhythm Rockers, the Flying Saucers and the Riot Rockers and new younger bands with a new style of rock ‘n’ roll, like Whirlwind, came up against these more traditional styles.

Nigel Dixon (Whirlwind) That’s the main trouble with them [the Teds]. Some of them think that all rock ’n’ roll stopped after 1959…and they still look now like they did twenty years ago. Some of them are still in their hillbilly gear. Zigzag, May 1978

How did they come to clash with Punks? Its origins are debatable but when you look at the two youth tribes you’ll see it was inevitable.

In 1977 these new Teddy Boys were younger and out to make a name for themselves. What better way to prove their youth credentials and the fact they were still around than the age old one of finding a more high profile enemy and beating it to a pulp? First Mods and Rockers; now Teds and Punks.

Then you have the points of contention.

First off Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s shop at 430 Kings Road, Chelsea opened in 1971 as ‘Let it Rock.’ To begin with it sold original fifties clothing, but they soon started to create their own brighter and more extravagant copies to sell.

By 1974 the name of the shop had been changed to ‘Sex’ and while still selling some Teddy Boy gear it came to predominantly sell fetish, PVC, leather and rubber gear and introducing what later became part of Punk fashion before changing the name in 1977 to ‘Seditionaries’. As such you had Punks appropriate, adapt, mix ‘n’ match and disfigure Teddy Boy clothes like the lurex socks, brothel creepers, drapes and drainpipes with fetish gear with bricolage like the safety pin.

This didn’t go down with the conservative Teds who saw their clothes as sacrosanct and the mutilation an insult. Titch the Ted, a character in Tony Parson’s ‘Stories We Could Tell’ sums it up.

‘We’ve been around a lot longer than anyone. They look like they’re not men. Just weird. Strange. Very odd. They nick our clobber – they’ll wear a drape – but they’ll rip it up. What’s that all about? Or they copy bits of our music – it’s rock and roll – but it’s not done right. They say they’re going to wipe Teds out. And we’re not having it. It’s out of order.’ Tony Parsons, Stories We Could Tell, 2005

And they did react violently.

Boy George. Punks bastardized drapes with safety pins and wore paint splashed brothel creepers to annoy the Teds. I was punched in the face and booted several times for wearing brothel creepers…They filled me with terror. Boy George, Take It Like A Man, 1995

Simone Stenfors (Roxygoer) I was coming back from a gig with a girlfriend. I really liked the look of the Teds and I mixed it and Punk all together in a mish mash. I was wearing a 50’s skirt with tights, lurex socks and black patent high heeled shoes with spikes and studs, a dog collar and a fluorescent pink drape. We got off the tube at Hammersmith and this Teddy Boy and Girl got off as well behind us. I heard ‘Oi slag!’ and the next thing one of them grabbed me by the hair, smashed my head against the wall and between them ripped a whole pocket off my drape.

And lastly plain old jealousy; you have the publicity given to Punk Rock as the new gang in town.

Brian Young (Rudi) Remember, at the time the Teds had been undergoing a huge revival amongst younger folks yet never got any press and very little radio exposure (hence the famous march in London when thousands of Teds marched on the BBC from all over the country demanding the BBC play some REAL rock ’n’ roll). In contrast if a Punk as much as farted in the outer Hebrides it was front page news - so I reckon the Teds were rightly jealous of these weirdo upstarts muscling in on their patch and challenging their position as the wildest cats in town.

Violence meant more publicity and a higher Ted profile, which meant more teenagers became attracted to becoming Teds.

Big John. The younger Teds have got more feeling about it than we have because they are out to build the image up again. It’s due to the younger ones we’re hearing more about the Teds these days. Chris Welch, Fighting In the Streets, Melody Maker, 30.7.77

And fight they did in pitched battles on a Saturday up the Kings Road, Chelsea while the newspapers and cameras would there to be catch it all. And if there was no story then the newspapers would sometimes fake it.

Anon. I mean I know people who were actually offered money by photographers to throw bricks at the Teddy boys, but it was arranged with the Teddy boys too, of course, just for the press. Peter Everett, You’ll Never Be 16 Again, 1986

However, don’t underestimate the situation; this was real violence with people getting hurt for no real reason. Joe Strummer, Tim Smith, geezer out of the boys and countless punks and teds encountered viloiemce. Often it was organised, as Ted, Rebel Eddie, explained about being asked to make an announcement at his disco.

I’ve got an announcement to make tonight ‘Punk bashing: Sloane Square this Saturday… All Teds. No weapons. Chris Welch, Fighting In the Streets, Melody Maker, 30.7.77

At any one time on the Kings Road you could have Punks, Teds and rival football factions in action.

Vicious street fighting broke out for the third week-end running in the Kings Road area on Saturday afternoon. The clashes were between rival gangs of Teddy Boys and Punk Rockers…The main trouble erupted when police moved in to try and arrest some of the crowd of over 100 Punks assembled in Sloane Square…the whole road was blocked by fighting…At about 3.30 p.m., the mob moved off, but the fighting went on till early evening. West London Observer, A Day Of Violence, 4.8.77

However not everyone fell for the violence Shtick. Leee Black Childers himself beaten up by punks while being mistaken for a Ted tried to organise a joint gig

The proposed Punk and Teds concert, planned for London Charing Cross Global Village on Tuesday of this week, was called off just three days after the initial announcement was made.

The gig was to have co-headlined Johnny Thunders’ Heartbreakers and Shakin’ Stevens & The Sunsets, and was an attempt to reconcile the two opposing musical factions. But it seems the management got cold feet, when they heard rumours of a threatened punch-up on the night. NME, 1.10.77

Johnny Rotten famously posed in Teddy Boy clothes, went to the Roxy and almost got beaten up by punks who didn't recognise him and claimed to attend Teddy Boy gigs unmolested.


To confuse things even more, love even got a look in around early 1978 when there was a temporary craze for hooking up with the opposite sex and the opposite youth group; Ted and Punkette and Punk and Teddy Girl! Journalist Steve Walsh explained this strange state of affairs in an NME feature.

Time was, when blood used to flow between Punk and Ted with far greater regularity than it does now…I seem to remember that the first members of either tribe, to proffer any kind of olive branch were the ‘dear little Punkettes’, prostrating themselves with an uneasy mixture of diplomacy and coy masochism before the creepers of whichever burly, drape-coated ruffian had just sent their ‘wimp’ boyfriends packing, tails between their strides. It got to the point where a Ted on yer arm was as ‘de rigueur’ as yer ‘Boy’ bondage pants. NME ,1.3.78

In books and records Teds and Punks slugged it out and loved it up - the potential Romeo and Juliet aspect not lost on authors and songwriters. In the novel ‘The Punk’ by Gideon Sams, its doomed lovers Thelma and Adolph both come to a bloody end on the Kings Road after being attacked and stabbed by Teds.

…the Ted slapped Thelma round the face. She fell back in surprise. Adolph furiously punched the Ted in the mouth, but before he could blink again, all the Teds set onto him. The five Teddy girls started beating up Thelma. Gideon Sams, The Punk, 1977

In music you had Wayne County’s tale of love caught on the single ‘Eddie & Sheena’. Eddie is a Teddy Boy and Sheena is a Punk.

Eddie & Sheena...starts off as a tongue in cheek 50's rock'n'roll ballad after we learn that Eddie and Sheena have married and 'named the little brat Elvis...Rottennnnnnnnn!' It explodes into a mad race as they pogoed the night away. Summer Salt Fanzine, 1978

And lastly Don E Sibley’s strange rockabilly indie smash 'Punk Bashin' Boogie.' Nice!

Sounds Letter Page 19.11.77

And just as suddenly it all died out. The press moved on and found more tits and arse and shock horror stories to shock titillate the nation, Punk moved on and soon it would be time for a Skinhead/Mod/Rocker reprise and back in the papers again.

Teds & Punks - The Phoney War

I hate the punks.They are skinny little bleeders and half of them are queer…They should not be allowed to walk on the same streets as ordinary people (Jimmy ‘Elvis’ Smart: Why I hate the punks. The Sun 28/8/77)

Windsor was a place of mild extremity. A short drive from Heathrow Airport and Londons Western suburbs, there was (is?) the Queen,the Castle, the Long Walk and the Great Park, hordes of tourists and the exclusive St.Leonard’s Hill with its ‘Private Road’ signs. Then: the yearly Horse Show, sprawling sleepy middle class suburbs shrouded by whispers of wife-swapping, two barracks (one for the Irish Guards), pissed squaddies rucking on the grass outside the castle with white-helmeted MPs wading in, council estates and even a lone high-rise (one of the tenants was Chelsea football legend Peter Osgood: these days he would have owned the block), the Windsor Hells Angels, the legendary Windsor Valley Boys (the graffiti lasted well into the 80’s, but who were they?), the yearly fair by the river that forever ended in free-for-alls between locals, squaddies and gypsies (a tough call for those of us who ticked two of the above boxes), ‘Granny’ Waters and the epic myth that was the FA Cup tie between the local non-league side and a pre-Premiership Wimbledon, where hundreds tried to take apart the old Plough Lane in sedate South London (the local paper printed a front-page ‘Parade of Shame’, apparently).

Punk appeared in late 1976, the first devotees fanatical soul boys who travelled up to London and returned bearing dark, mysterious tales of exclusive night clubs and a strange, bizarrely-attired new cult, before introducing us to the delights of amyl nitrate and bars that stayed open beyond midnight (a revelation in the days of Sunday closing, shots shut at 5pm sharp, last orders at 10). Then there was Jo S-, with jet-black hair and cobalt blue eyes like the Mediterranean, so strikingly beautiful that the first time I tried to speak to her (immaculately dressed, she surveyed my early attempts at punk frippery with a withering, deserved contempt) I uttered a dislocated gabble of sound only vaguely related to the English language. And there were the Teds, a distantly-menacing gaggle of figures occasionally seen on the bus or walking down Peascod Street, subject of a curious disdain on our part, but also a muted, grudging respect, last remnants as they were of all the skinheads/hippies/ football hooligans that lived on only in old photographs seen on the mantelpieces of older brothers. There was an afternoon skived off school, bunking the train to Slough and the Inter-City to Paddington, Circle Line to Sloane Square, a walk up to Seditionaries, then suddenly a mob-roar and the throng of people scattering this way and that, fists and boots flying, police, the scared faces of afternoon shoppers, and dodging into a shop to watch a lad left lying on the pavement with his DA irreparably splayed out on the concrete and a trickle of blood painting his lips (look how long his hair really is, we marvelled, like a Sikh without his turban).

Walking back from a 999 gig at the Sundown on Charing Cross Road, Teddy Boys mooching around the fountain at Trafalgar Square, one or two in tears. Elvis is dead, someone says. Some punks jeer and throw cans.

As a group of us straggled into Windsor railway station one Saturday evening (it consisted of a pungent public urinal, a fag shop and the mandatory barbers where various balding middle-aged Italian men practiced their vast tonsorial repertoire of a No.1, a No.2, a No.3 and No.4 crop and short back & sides), a slightly older, brawnier and more skinhead/squaddie type cannonballed through us shouting ‘Punks!’ derisorily. He was pissed, we were sober, which gave him the element of bravado. We fragmented, reassembled and continued with a collective growl, noticing only a tall Teddy Boy following in his wake but looking more than a little embarrassed. Was this War, we wondered idly, the opening gambit, the prelude to watching your back on the rickety local bus service, of strength in numbers, of tactical preliminaries in the few dimly-lit backstreet boozers that would have us? We had the advantage of fluidity and of having no base-camp, whereas everyone knew the Teds lived in the Donkey House, a pub down by the Thames where only the slickest of DA’s and loudest brothel creepers gained you entry. The Ted in question was John S-, over 6ft tall, with jet-black hair that glistened like Elvis in his prime. His sartorial elegance was so impeccable that my sister (a younger punk) and her friends sighed with repressed desire whenever he and his equally statuesque, but blonde and more Rockabilly-orientated, pal Mick R- passed in the street. But they’re Teds, we hissed, hopelessly. As the press began to feed on the frenzy that was 1977, the ‘Punk-Ted Wars’ were grist to their greasy mill, a cauldron to stir and keep bubbling at will. In fact the reality was that we spent far more time dodging soul boys or squaddies, but the local gigs buzzed with rumour, accusation and counter-accusation regardless. Broken heads, gangs lying in wait, knives and bottles. The reality was less prosaic:The Jam and New Hearts at Bracknell Sports Centre, the Stranglers at same (only trouble JJ Burnel flying offstage after an errant gobber), Open Sore and The Rage at Slough College (headliners The Adverts didn’t turn up for two years, some fights ensued), then Bracknell again with, reputedly, ‘gangs of Teds’ outside the Elvis Costello gig (Elvis Costello?!). White Riot, my arse.

Summer 1977 I was working on a hot dog stall outside the Marina in Old Windsor. The owner was a pissed Kiwi who left me alone until afternoon closing-time. I would turn on the color gas heater to start warming the water, open the industrial-sized cans of hot dogs, and slice some buns whilst waiting for the truck drivers to pull in. Every Wednesday morning I’d rush into the nearby newsagent to buy Sounds, NME or Melody Maker (or all three), then spend the day poring over them obsessively inbetween serving the passing traffic. Like most other 16/17 year-olds I dreamt of escape, or at least seeing my band in print.

Cranked up by a venal Press and word of mouth, pre-internet such rumour, hype and gossip was every bit as pernicious in a small-town UK fuelled by petty rivalry and tribal feuding. In Windsor itself low-level resentments stewed between Trevelyan School and the Grammar, in Slough it was Britwell Park/Langley and occasional Sikh:Pakistani flare-ups. In Windsor town itself the squaddies alternately warred with the local soul patrol and football lads, or with each other (Irish Guards v. Blues & Royals or Lifejackets). Everyone took a pop at the Eton boys, to the point they were ‘confined to quarters’ or advised to stay on the Eton side of the bridge dividing the two. Most of it was bollocks of course, small scuffles and inflated rumour. Punks v Teds. In reality we shared the same streets of a small town, and the same last bus home to suburban sterility when the pubs shut.

One day, John S- approached us in the street and invited us to the Donkey House. See how we live, he said, fuck the press and their imaginary divisions (or did he say “It’s all just rock’n’roll” ala Danny Baker in Sniffin’ Glue in words to that effect?). So, one night we went down to the Donkey House, feeling our way with mild trepidation along the misty, murky riverside on a gloomy weeknight, visions of ‘Warriors’ in our head. The interior was grimy, smoky and everything a pub today isn’t, sadly. The landlord was an ex-boxer from the East End with a no-bullshit demeanour hewn into his craggy features. A few middle-aged teds surveyed us suspiciously from the bar, and the jukebox blared out rock ’n’ roll 45s with barely a track made after my date of birth. After a few pints and some animated conversation we all realised just how much of this so-called tribalism had been foisted upon us from outside sources, none of which had our best interests at heart. In fact the same idiots, namely the local squaddies, tried to make sport of harassing us all, Punk or Ted. The jukebox was full of great, raw music, not a hint of post-GI Elvis or,god forbid, ‘My Ding-a-ling’; a world away from the sanitised, corporate disco or prog-rock we each fashionably derided. Whilst the elders with their enormous sideburns retained a healthy, if grumpy, suspicion of our hairstyles and the occasional heretical safety-pin bedecked drape jacket amidst our wardrobes, the younger ones (the majority) were in fact just like us, passionate about music. That we considered ourselves more Modern was down to the times (or was it just that our guitars had fuzzboxes?); within a few months everyone knew everyone else and within a few years it was punks/teds/ rockabillies/skinnyheads, Andy Weatherall (whatever he was that week, bless him) and the odd Mod drinking together in the same pubs. Did any of us have a prophetic vision amid the fug of beer and tobacco smoke that night? I doubt it, wrapped as we were in our comforting inner sanctum of youthful arrogance that brokered no hint of adult concerns. The Donkey House is probably now a sparkling Cappuccino bar for fashionable droogs in all-weather sunglasses and identikit high street togs, but 30 years on I somehow hope that the Teds of Windsor aren’t slouched in front of Sky Sports with beer bellies and tracksuit bottoms, that a trace of their professional and sartorial pride lingers, that they haven’t dissolved like everything else into dull homogeneity

Later on, a few bands and even a fanzine or two popped up. Even later, the Old Trout briefly revived the tradition of the Ricky Tick Club, which operated in the early 1960’s out of venerable old dumps like the Star & Garter, hosting the Rolling Stones 39 times between 1962-64 alongside other luminaries like Tina Turner, Cream, Rod Stewart, Jimi Hendrix and a thousand others. The Only Ones came to Windsor College in 1979 (John Ashton of the Psychedelic Furs appeared with his girlfriend, the one who later ran off to manage Martian Dance, and asked me afterwards: Where’s the nightlife then? to which I shrugged bleakly, that was it), the same college wrecked a year or two later during the same feud with Maidenhead Mods that saw Slough College suffer a similar fate during a Chords gig in 1981, as the real violence (as opposed to 1977’s posturing) kicked in with a vengeance. Also gone is Revolution Records, to whom (along with Bits & Pieces, a junk shop run by a Mungo Jerry doppelganger who sold piles of cheap albums and the second-hand guitars that got us all playing in the first place) I owe most of my dubious musical education. A few 2nd generation punks like Revolt, Void (not to be confused with the excellent London outfit of the same name who operated between 1977-79: anyone know anything about them??) and Disease occurred in 1980-82, Windsor Arts Centre hosting the latter one fractious evening following a one-off by an electronic band led by future superstar DJ Andy Weatherall.

Time passed, Teds and Punks became just two names in an overcrowded marketplace. As some punks became rockabillies or psychobillies, the Teds had the last laugh. For all the talk of their dated style, the ‘stick-in-the-mud’ jibes about reactionaries and revivalists, 30 years on, with ‘Holidays In The Sun’ (sorry, ’Rebellion’!) and the Pistols milking it one last time, the joke could well be on you, punk.

(The late Tony Wilson once said that, in a choice between the truth and the legend, take the legend every time. Of course, I’m using poetic license and some mild element of exaggeration here. It was all a long time ago. End)

Punk 77