Rocker (subculture)

Rockers, leather boys or ton-up boys are a biker subculture that originated in the United Kingdom during the 1950s. It was mainly centred around British cafe racer motorcycles and rock and roll music.

Rockers on cafe racers at a transport cafe in the UK.

A café racer is a type of motorcycle as well as a type of motorcyclist. Both meanings have their roots in the 1960s British counterculture group the Rockers, or the Ton-up boys, although they were also common in Italy, Germany, and other European countries. The term refers to a style of motorcycles that were and are used for fast rides from one coffee bar to another

Triton, Triumph engine and Norton Featherbed frame

This article is about the 1950s style of music. For the general rock music genre, see rock music. For other uses, see rock and roll (disambiguation). Trumpeter, bandleader and singer Louis Armstrong was a much-imitated innovator of early jazz.

Robert Johnson, an influential Delta blues musician

Rock and roll (often written as rock & roll or rock 'n' roll) is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s,primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music. Though elements of rock and roll can be heard in country records of the 1930s, and in blues records from the 1920s, rock and roll did not acquire its name until the 1950s.

The term "rock and roll" now has at least two different meanings, both in common usage. The American Heritage Dictionary and the MerriamWebster Dictionary both define rock and roll as synonymous with rock music. Encyclopædia Britannica, on the other hand, regards it as the music that originated in the mid-1950s and later developed "into the more encompassing international style known as rock music". For the purpose of differentiation, this article uses the second definition. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language

In the earliest rock and roll styles of the late 1940s and early 1950s, either the piano or saxophone was often the lead instrument, but these were generally replaced or supplemented by guitar in the middle to late 1950s. The beat is essentially a blues rhythm with an accentuated backbeat, the latter almost always provided by a snare drum. Classic rock and roll is usually played with one or two electric guitars (one lead, one rhythm), a string bass or (after the mid-1950s) an electric bass guitar, and a drum kit. It's got a backbeat, you can't lose it - Chuck Berry

Snare drum Bass guitar

The drum kit

Rock and roll began achieving wide popularity in the 1960s. The massive popularity and eventual worldwide view of rock and roll gave it a widespread social impact. Bobby Gillespie writes that "When Chuck Berry sang 'Hail, hail, rock and roll, deliver me from the days of old', that's exactly what the music was doing. Chuck Berry started the global psychic jailbreak that is rock'n'roll.“

Bobby Gillespie

Chuck Berry

Far beyond simply a musical style, rock and roll, as seen in movies and on television, influenced lifestyles, fashion, attitudes, and language. It went on to spawn various sub-genres, often without the initially characteristic backbeat, that are now more commonly called simply "rock music" or "rock".

Bill Haley and his Comets performing "Rock Around the Clock" on TV in 1955

Sign commemorating the role of Alan Freed and Cleveland, Ohio in the origins of rock and roll

"Rockabilly" usually (but not exclusively) refers to the type of rock and roll music which was played and recorded in the mid 1950s by white singers such as Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis, who drew mainly on the country roots of the music.[38] Many other popular rock and roll singers of the time, such as Fats Domino and Little Richard, came out of the black rhythm and blues tradition, making the music attractive to white audiences, and are not usually classed as "rockabilly".

Elvis Presley in a promotion shot for Jailhouse Rock in 1957

The Mods and Rockers were two conflicting British youth subcultures of the early-mid 1960s. Mods and rockers fighting in 1964 sparked a moral panic about British youths, and the two groups were seen as folk devils. The rockers were motorcyclists, wearing clothes such as black leather jackets. The mods were scooter riders, wearing suits and cleancut outfits. By the late 1960s, the two subcultures had faded from public view and media attention turned to two new emerging youth subcultures — the hippies and the skinheads.

A photograph of two mods on a customised scooter

The rocker subculture came about due to factors such as: the end of post-war rationing in the UK, a general rise in prosperity for working class youths, the recent availability of credit and financing for young people, the influence of American popular music and films, the construction of race track-like arterial roads around British cities, the development of transport cafes and a peak in British motorcycle engineering.

Hattie and other original rockers on Chelsea Bridge, London

Rocker-style youths existed in the 1950s,but were known as ton-up boys because ton-up was English slang for driving at a speed of 100 mph (160 km/h) or over. The Teddy boys were considered their "spiritual ancestors". The rockers or ton-up boys took what was essentially a sport and turned it into a lifestyle, dropping out of mainstream society and "rebelling at the points where their will crossed society's". It had a damaging effect on the public image of motorcycling in the UK, and led to the politicisation of the motorcycling community.

1980s Teddy Boys: Brian Setzer of the Stray Cats wears a dark-colored drape jacket and drainpipe jeans rather than the loud colors popular in the 70s

The mass media started targeting these socially powerless youths and cast them as "folk devils", creating a moral panic through highly exaggerated and ill-founded portrayals. From the 1960s on, due to the media fury surrounding the mods and rockers, motorcycling youths became more commonly known as rockers, a term previously little known outside of small groups. The public came to consider rockers as hopelessly naive, loutish, scruffy, motorized cowboys, loners or outsiders.

Berry performing live in 1997

George Melly

Gene Vincent Rockers, like the ton-up boys before them, were immersed in 1950s rock and roll music and fashions, and became known as much for their devotion to music as they were to their motorcycles. Many rockers favored 1950s and early-1960s rock and roll by artists such as Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran and Chuck Berry; music that George Melly called "screw and smash" music

Two groups emerged, one identifying with Marlon Brando's image in The Wild One, hanging around transport cafes, projecting nomadic romanticism, violence, antiauthoritarianism and anti-domesticity; the other being non-riders, similar in image but less involved in the cult of the motorbike

Madame Tussauds waxwork exhibit of Brando in The Wild One albeit with a later 1957/8 model Triumph Thunderbird. Marlon Brando

The term cafe racer originated in the 1950s, when bikers often frequented transport cafes, using them as starting and finishing points for road races. A cafe racer is a motorcycle that has been modified for speed and good handling rather than for comfort.[16] Features include: a single racing seat, low handlebars (such as ace bars or one-sided clip-ons mounted directly onto the front forks for control and aerodynamics), half or full race fairings, large racing petrol tanks (aluminum ones were often polished and left unpainted), swept-back exhaust pipes, and rear-set footpegs (to give better clearance while cornering at high speeds). These motorcycles were lean, light and handled various road surfaces well. The most defining machine of the rocker heyday was the Triton, which was a custom motorcycle made of a Norton Featherbed frame and a Triumph Bonneville engine. It used the most common and fastest racing engine combined with the best handling frame of its day.

Triumph Bonneville

Rockers in the 2000s tend to ride classic British motorcycles such as a Triumph, Norton, or Triton hybrid of the two. Other popular motorcycle brands include Birmingham Small Arms Company (BSA), Royal Enfield and Matchless from the 1960s. Classically styled European cafe racers are now also seen, sometimes using Moto Guzzi, Ducati or classic Japanese engines with British-made frames, such as those made by Rickman.

1935 magazine advert for the BSA range of motorcycles and 3-wheeler cars

Matchless Royal Enfield Crusader

The rockers' look and attitude influenced pop groups in the 1960s, such as The Beatles, as well as hard rock and punk rock bands and fans in the late 1970s. The look of the ton-up boy and rocker was accurately portrayed in the 1964 film The Leather Boys. The rocker subculture has also influenced the rockabilly revival and the psychobilly subculture. Led Zeppelin live at Chicago Stadium, January 1975.

The Beatles

The Ramones' 1976 debut album laid down the musical "blueprint for punk",[1] while its cover image had a similarly formative influence on punk visual style.[2

The Meteors are considered the first verifiable psychobilly band.

Many contemporary rockers still wear engineer boots or full-length motorcycle boots, but Winklepickers (sharp pointed shoes) are no longer common. Some wear Dr. Martens boots, brothel creepers (originally worn by Teddy Boys), Converse All-Star sneakers or military combat boots. Rockers have continued to wear leather motorcycle jackets, often adorned with patches, studs or spikes; jeans or leather trousers; and white silk scarves. Leather caps adorned with metal studs and chains, common among rockers in the 1950s and 1960s, are rarely seen any more. Instead, some contemporary rockers wear a classic woollen flat cap.

Winklepicker boots, 2009

Pair of classic black leather Dr. Martens boots, with distinctive yellow stitching around sole. Chuck Taylor All Stars

Flat Cap Side View Flat Cap Frontal

In the early 1970s, the British rocker and hardcore motorcycle scene fractured and evolved under new influences coming from California: the hippies and the Hells Angels.[25] The remaining rockers became known as greasers, and the scene had all but died out in form, but not in spirit.

New York Hells Angels patch

In the early 1980s, The Rocker Reunion Club was started by Lennie Paterson (an original 59 Club member) and a handful of original rockerswho were "Chelsea Bridge Boys" that had continued to meet over the previous 20 or more years at the tea stall on the bridge. They organized nostalgic rocker reunion dances called piss-ups, which attracted individuals from as far as Europe, America and Japanand runs to nostalgic locations. The first rocker reunion motorcycle run of 70 classic British motorcycles rode to Pitsea.

Pitsea

Following runs went to other destinations with historic relevance to Rockers such as Brighton, Southend and Southsea which, in 1988, attracted over 7,000 bikes. They established a model which has become a worldwide movement. Within a few years, these events attracted 10,000 to 12,000 revivalists, gaining widespread media attention and new converts. In 1993/1994 discussions between Lennie, Mark Wilsmore and others led to idea of doing a Chelsea Bridge Reunion and then a 25th Anniversary Ace Cafe Reunion, the reopening of the cafe and Wilsmore's taking over the stewardship of the reunion events. The events now attract up to 40,000 riders

The Ace Cafe, as it looked in 2004