Dexy's Midnight Runners frontman Kevin Rowland talks about his memories of skinheads, reggae, racism and style...
By 1969 people had kind of stopped calling it ska and the term reggae was being used. I remember hearing tunes like 'Al Capone' by Prince Buster and 'Last Train to Skaville' and Judge Dred in 1968 and still being played in '69 - but the new music - stuff by The Pioneers and by Desmond Dekker for example was being called reggae. There was a point in '69 when I only used to buy reggae. I know it sounds ridiculous - that lasted a few months.
But that was the music, that was the music of the moment. It exploded in the summer of '69 before it was in the papers. At the time everybody had short hair, everybody was wearing button downs and there was a walk, a couple of different walks that summer.There is this perception that the skinheads at the time were all racist, but I think really it was a time of integration. It became really cool to be Jamaican - black kids, black guys became really, really cool in the eyes of white kids. Contrary to popular belief it was a real turning point among young people.
It seemed to be cool to have black kids around in the gang. I went to school in Willesden, although I was living in Harrow. Some of the Willesden mob came over to Harrow one time - a few of them. I knew them and one of the top boys came over to me and there were these black kids wearing hats, with a really small rim and white rain coats. By this time everybody had this style - it became a uniform - everybody had wing tip shoes or something like. He went, "Ah right, I didn't know you had spades here" - that's the kind of language he used - and he was kinda impressed. There were a few Jamaican kids in Harrow, but there was one kid in particular who was actually an African kid, his parents were African. His father I think was a doctor and he'd hang around with all the West Indian kids and before long he started talking in this Jamaican accent.
I think that contrary to the popular myth, there certainly wasn't any trouble between blacks and whites - I think there was probably more integration going on there than anything else.There was conflict though in other respects - I remember going over to Alperton once and getting beaten up by the Alperton mob just because we went into their area - and that was black kids and white kids.
The first proper article was the end of August, beginning of September and then, after that all through that autumn there were loads of stories and interviews with skinheads. It was quite exciting to begin with, then of course the second generation sprung up over night and they were everywhere. The Daily Mirror was the first time I saw the word 'skinhead' being used - it had a drawing of a skinhead - unfortunately it looked a bit like a 'numbskull.' They had like white T-shirts, red braces, blue jeans and boots - kinda like a bovver boy - a numbskull look really.
Nobody really wore just white T-shirts and braces and boots you know - I mean somebody might have worn that to work or something, but that would never have been considered a look. Boots weren't worn that often - they were worn, but I don't think it was about kicking people, it was about the shine of the leather - a clean look. Back then people wore suits to football matches - mohair suits. How did racism associated with skinheads come about..? The first thing that I heard, or read was about East London and a culture of 'Paki-bashing.' There was a lot friction between the Asians and whites there in that period.
This is just a theory, but anybody who was anybody in East London, West London, North London or South London had short hair and was wearing those clothes or something like those clothes at that time - so I'm not convinced that those racist attacks - which there were - were anything to do with the fact that the people perpetrating them wore short hair and American clothes. Some ‘skinheads’ were racist, some weren’t. Just like some ravers were racist, some weren’t. The newspaper reports of 'Paki bashing', were then followed by copy-cat racist attacks - no question about it. Having been born in Wolverhampton, and having moved here at the age of ten, I still supported Wolves. I'd go back and watch them play. I'd hang out with my cousins and people I knew there. I'd go up there with a friend from London maybe and they'd always be about a year behind clothes-wise - or more in those days.
After you started to read about 'Paki bashing' in the papers happening here in London I remember then reading about how a few skinheads went to a Pakistani pub in Wolverhampton and went to bash up all the Pakistanis there, too. I talked to my cousin about it and he said "yeah a couple of hundred skins went down to bash them up.’ Skins was a midland and northern term. London kids never used it. Most didn’t even like the term ‘skinhead’ and I heard subsequently, that all the ‘skinheads' that did interviews in the newspapers, got beaten up by other short haired boys. 
But I think the Wolverhampton kids as well as ‘skinheads’ from other places and parts of London too, thought beating up Pakistanis was the thing to do, whereas the first generation were far too interested in themselves and their clothes and wouldn’t have been interested in that. I suppose it was 1970 by now because it first came in the papers in '69. Kevin Rowland.
