Rockers

Youth tribe of the 1950s associated with a lifestyle, more than a fashion movement. It began to spread in London in May 1955 to the notes of Rock Around the Clock by Bill Haley and the Comets: theme song to the movie The Blackboard Jungle. The origins of this proletarian movement, a forerunner of the youth protest movement, dated back to postwar California. And specifically to Hollister, where in 1947 a group of hoodlums terrorized the village, riding in formation on powerful motorcycles through town and starting fights that resulted in the destruction of bars and restaurants. The choice of this sort of vehicle expressed a rejection of the automobile: the dream of the average American in those early postwar years. Likewise, every piece of clothing worn by these bands represented a challenge: the leather studded pilot jacket, worn by warriors of the skies, the provocatively exhibited and filthy motorcycle boots, propped up on the tables, the stained, torn work jeans, the pocket knife always close at hand and the neckerchief, always ready to cover the face, just like bandits from the Old West. With symptomatic simultaneity, these movements of rebellion were echoed in Europe by the movements of the Blouson Noirs in France, the Halbstarken in Germany, and the Teddy Boys in England. But the lowest common denominator, which in 1953 merged great protest energies in an international movement, was the movie, The Wild One directed by Laslo Benedek. The protagonist, Marlon Brando, leader of a gang that rapes and kills, immediately became the icon of a youth protest movement that attacked the establishment with behavior on the verge of delinquency. And if, in the United States it inspired the Hell’s Angels, in England it encouraged the establishment of the first group of rockers. What unleashed them was nothing other than the film Blackboard Jungle with its mix of race, country, and hillbilly music, entitled Rock Around the Clock: the veritable music banner of the movement in symbiosis with the motorcycle. To the energetic rhythm of the song by Bill Haley that would remain on the charts for five months, selling 22 million records, the hordes of rockers gathered and multiplied, especially in the counties of the mining districts to the north of London, where, in a geographic and cultural coincidence, the motorcycle industries also prospered, first among them the BSA of Birmingham, which would be featured on the cover of the record by the Rolling Stones, Rock’n’rolling. When in the 1960s, rockers would arrive in the major cities, they would brawl with the Mods: a rival gang that dressed with great care and acted very daintily, even though both groups were of working class origins. The tensions rose, coming to a climax in 1964 with the fights in Claxton to the south of London. It was not so much because of the dynamics of these incidents, which ended with more than 90 arrests, as much as because of the advance of the modernist spirits of the Mods, consumers of the new 45 rpm records, admirers of Italian elegance, constantly moving on Vespas, the rockers at the end of the 1960s finally succumbed. Despite their own views, they became a classic of youth revolt, a reference for the punk movement of the 1970s, the heavy metal and hard rock movements of the 1980s. In the decade that followed, they inspired the menswear collection, Fall-Winter 1994-95, by Dolce & Gabbana dedicated to Marlon Brando and the Rebels. The rockers remained, in particular, the first historic example of how a youth rebellion could be transformed into an extraordinary source of profits, for an industry that was attempting to supply the protest consumptions of the new generations.