Being one who has a terrible affliction of looking back, rather than looking forward, is not always such a bad thing. Otherwise how would we ever know about Deaf School and the Liverpool scruff phenom. Either I'm old or youth cultures today just aren't what they used to be. Found this article from Peter Hooton of The Farm farm on one of the blogs from a couple of years ago:
Retro Scallies by Peter Hooton
Everyone knows what 'retro' stands for in the 21st century but back in the dark distant past, well the mid 1980's to be exact, 'retro' wasn't the ubiquitous word we know now, used to describe anything from bathrooms to jeans, from furniture to clothing, from telephones to football kits. This was a world before retro trainers became big business and Adidas and Puma had marketed the concept to death. This strange breed the 'retro scal' came into existence around about the 1982/3 period and was completely unexpected. Fashionistas had started to write about football fans in designer clothing and The Face had printed their famous piece on 'Casuals' in 1983 so in many ways the 'retro scal' was a reaction to this popularisation of a street culture that had by-passed magazines and social commentators from 1978 until 1983.
Liverpool fashion terrorists had always had an elitist slant on things but it is too simplistic to state that this was a reaction to the new found fame of the 'designer clad football fan'. To really understand this phenomenon it is important to look at Liverpool as a major import/export centre, a place where 'drug culture' and the music associated with it took a firm hold in the late 70's and early 80's.
Five years had passed since young Liverpudlian's had embraced straight jeans, cagoules, and training shoes in the post-punk fall-out of 77/78. Punky –reggae party meets The Clash. Liverpool had that football/music crossover, it wasn't myth. It was reality with clubs such Checkmate, The Harrington, the Swinging
Apple and Kirkland's providing the soundtrack. The Clash met Steel Pulse, Iggy Pop, Dillinger and Joy Division. The Normals 'Warm Leatherette' played next to Bowies 'Heroes' and Ian Durys 'Sweet Jean Vincent'. Wedge haircuts mohair jumpers and plastic sandals, duffel coats and Fred Perry's. Manchester had a Bowie/Roxy room in Pips nightclub with Fred Perry clad youngsters but Liverpool was somehow different,. Similar but nonetheless different. Something was happening in the alleys of Liverpool and it had more of a New York feel than anything going on in Manchester or London.
Many heads into alternative music, punk, reggae, and the like went to the famous Erics in Mathew Street which attracted most of the 'new wave' bands on tour but it was more art-school bohemia than places like The Swinging Apple and Checkmate. When there was no gig on, only a handful of people would to go to Erics. Checkmate and the Apple on the other hand would be packed every Friday and Saturday as the football loving music fans rubbed shoulders with the avant-garde of the city. In the late 70's early 80's Liverpool and Everton's mobs were often dubbed 'soul boys' by Londoners who associated the wedge
hairstyle and casual clothing with the type of person who frequented 'soul' clubs in London, whereas in reality these were the same characters who would dance to The Skids and Joy Division! House music in the late 80's can't really claim to have been the catalyst for 'white men dancing'. Maybe that would be true with the wider population but 10 years earlier I had witnessed male-orientated dancing (on their own or with their mates) to Klu Klux Klan by Steel Pulse and Cokane by Dillinger! On another side of the club chart music would be played and on many occasions people would come into the 'alternative room' across a drawbridge/corridor to witness the freaks dancing. Some unfortunates from the disco side of the club mistook this dancing for gay activity unaware that they were picking on or trying to skit hardened football types and numerous fights resulted in the club being partitioned mainly to protect the squares who came in to look at the strange goings on in Checkmate.
By the early 80's 1982/83 to be precise articles began to appear in the press explaining a new breed of underground well-dressed football fans ignored up until now by the mainstream media. The London press dubbed these people 'Casuals' and soon every newspaper was in the UK was on the lookout for these social terrorists bedecked in 'Lilywhites' supplied designer clad sportswear who were rampaging around the country in organised gangs. It was around about this point that Liverpudlians decided enough was enough and the retro scal was born.
Basically the 'retro scal' look was a reaction to expensive sportswear and was epitomised by the 'old man look'. Bemused staff at Dunne & Co a traditional gentlemen's outfitters in Liverpool didn't know what had hit them as young scallies demanded a Harris Tweed of the bottle green variety. The classic look would have been a Harris Tweed or green Barbour coat (before Sloane Rangers popularised Barbour coats a look adopted by Italian Ultras) a Marks & Spencer
lambs wool crew neck with button collared shirt underneath, a pair of slightly faded jeans and Clarks suede boots, cord shoes/brogues or Stan Smith training shoes. Cardigans were worn as an alternative to the crew neck and cord jackets were also worn as fashion crazy youngsters unwittingly discovered 'the Sicilian peasant look' twenty years before Armani. Coupled with this a new found admiration for their fathers or even their grandfathers' wardrobe they also looked back at the previous generations music collections. Graffiti sprang up everywhere and 'Pink Floyd' and especially 'The Wall' adorned many walls of the city as young pot smokers paid homage to their new found heroes. It didn't just stop at Floyd. Soon any group that you could 'buzz' off were sought and proclaimed as 'better'. Simon & Garfunkal. Supertramp, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Roy Harper and Marillion to name but a few.
By 1983 heroin had taken hold in the working-class heartlands of the city and the inevitability of the drug culture and music collision was all too apparent. The retro scal basically dressed down and hair tended to get a bit longer (a sort of John Power/Zutons head) and criminal gangs confused the look as gangs of dippers adopted the 'Barbour Country look' so they could mingle at Ascot and Cheltenham and fill their coats' cavernous pockets. Liverpool, which up until
1983 had been a haven for dope smokers, was hit by a tidal wave of 'smack'. Graffiti even appeared on walls 'Where has all the pot gone' as a city shortage took hold. On the other hand 'heroin' was openly available for the first time. It is important to know that in those days nobody had ever heard of 'smack' and only very few people knew what it was. It was my job to know- as I was a 'youth worker' at the time and specialised in drug issues. I remember a very attractive girl, a barmaid in fact, who was taking a half-an hour break from working in a notorious pub in Dovecot/ Huyton area of Liverpool chasing the dragon in one of the pubs alcoves. I asked her what she was doing and she replied its only 'smack'. 'You mean heroin' I replied and she said 'nah its something called smack but you don't get addicted, you can take it or leave it you don't inject it like heroin'. Oh the innocence of youth. I saw the girl several years later her model like looks ravaged by the drug she thought was in control of! Whether dealers had deliberately caused the pot shortage and promoted 'smack' as non-addictive is open for question but only 18 months after the worst civil disorder this country had ever witnessed heroin swamped the estates. 'Whisky to the Indians' was the first thing that came to mind.
This 83-86 period was the heyday of the retro scal fuelled by the drug culture and the music that went with it. The look was changing constantly from jeans to jumbo cords from tweed to cord jackets but the common denominator was it was label and sportswear free. Think stereotypical geography teacher look with a taste for all things prog-rock and you'll get the idea! Groups even emerged to cater for young Liverpudlians hunger for what was regarded by music journalists
of the period as 'hippy music'. Groups like Groundpig became massive in the city playing a collection of Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Lindisfarne, Simon and Garfunkal, Cat Stevens and Peter Gabriel. Groundpig played at a 1000 capacity bierkellar every Fri/Sat for about a two-year period selling out the venue on most occasions with queues around the block and hundreds locked out. All the girls were 'glammed up' whereas most of the males looked as if they'd just come back from Glastonbury. This was a real youth phenomenon undocumented apart from one single article in The Face called 'Dark side of The Mersey' by John Mc Cready. James Brown who was working for the NME at the time and later went on to start 'Loaded' witnessed the scenes at a Groundpig concert and couldn't believe his eyes. The mayhem had a profound effect on him but he told me the NME couldn't cover it as no one will understand it or more importantly -believe it. John Peel
who was DJ'ing at the same event called it 'absolutely extraordinary'. After 1986 everything seemed to go all mountaineering as Timberland boots and shoes which were only available in one shop in Liverpool and a couple in London at the time. An Observer article at the time stated that London accounted for 30% of sales of Timberland and the rest was in Liverpool something which the journalist couldn't understand but put it down to Liverpool's close proximity to Snowdonia and the Lake District- oh how I laughed! Just as the traditional men swear shops had been bemused with the 'retros' now all of a sudden specialist mountaineering shop were over-run in Liverpool city centre by the masses but that's another story!
Deaf School from Punk 77
