Blaze Of Glory

This comic ran for 4 Issues that were published by Marvel Comics in 2000.

The writer is John Ostrander with artist credits going to Leonardo Manco.

The story is about the town of Wonderment and it's inhabitants of ex-slaves and poor whites who have built a successful life for themselves.

The town is attacked by a bunch of white hooded Nightriders who are intent on destroying everything and everyone.

Enter the Western Heroes a kind of Magnificent 7 - western characters from the 40s to the 60s.

Kid Colt, The Two-Gun Kid, Rawhide Kid, Reno Jones, Caleb Hammer, Red Wolf and The Outlaw Kid. Also, there are appearances by Wyatt Earp, Buffalo Bill and Wild Bill Hickock.

For me the arrival of the original Ghost Rider was a good moment.

The comic book says: "There is the west of fact. There is the west of legend. This story falls somewhere in between."

'Blaze Of Glory' is worth tracking down - if you like a good western yarn.

Quadrophenia

Just to show that I am not biased - QUADROPHENIA - is the best (well, it is the only film to be made on the subject) depiction of the Mod culture.

Phil Daniels is excellent in this film and I believed in his character.

There is a great moment when Daniels meets up with an old friend in the public baths. They do some catching up on old times and they plan to go down to the local cafe - that is until the friend emerges in his leather jacket.

This was the way it happened - friends became distanced because of who they were and the culture that they followed.

The film ends with the Battle of Brighton and is, surprisingly, accurate.

The music is from the time with contributions from The Who - though classed as a Mod group, 'My Generation' was played in Rocker Cafes as well.

Rockers by Johnny Stuart

Probably, the best book on the Rocker era.

Not many books have been written about this but Johnny Stuart does do a creditable job.

He talks about the rock 'n' roll music and how it changed and the history of the motorcycle cult.

The only flaw is the claim that the Rockers speak with their own voices - and the interviews have the flavour of the old TV interviews that had people calling the Rocker morons.

Apart from that on a historical basis well worth finding.

The book contains many photographs.

Jack Giles 3 - The Rebel - 1962 to 1969

In September 2007 my wife and I took our fifteen year old granddaughter down to Brighton. It was a hot, sunny day and Madeira Drive was crowded. Lambrettas rubbed shoulders with Harley Davidsons and Vespas with Triumph Bonnevilles. Angels and Outlaws; old school rockers and mods mingled with families and holidaymakers.

So differant to that Bank Holiday in 1964.

In 1964 there were no happy families or holiday makers lazing away on that stretch of beach between Brighton's two piers. Back then the only people on the beach were a bunch of Rockers - some skimming stones out to sea while others talked or messed about - as we did. Up on the promenade the Mods were on the march. Suddenly, they were swarming down the slipways and down the steps and charged the Rockers on three sides pinning them against the sea. The chase and the Battle of Brighton had begun.

I always had a passion for motorbikes. This was born when my Uncle Peter used to give me a lift home, on the back of his Royal Enfield, from cubs. When I grew up I wanted my own bike but my parents were against the idea but they paid out for driving lessons. I took my first lesson on the 29th September 1962 and passed my test on the 17th October 1962 - much to the surprise of everybody including me.

There I was with a full licence to drive a car but amongst all the other categories I discovered that I had a licence to ride a motorbike.

Before I go any further - prior to 1963 young people who rode motorbikes were known as Leather Boys or Ton-Up Boys or Cafe Cowboys. Bikers we were not - that is a modern term and the term Rocker did not come into fashion until the arrival of the Mods.

The cowboy idiom came about because the early Cafe Cowboys wore denim jackets, Levi's and boots. The denim jacket was replaced by the black leather jacket but the white silk scarf was worn either across the lower face or knotted to one side. Brylcreamed hair combed into a quiff and sideburns finished the picture.

And they got into the saddle and flicked the handlebars around like reins.

My friend Tony - I had known him through school. We had met up one day while collecting wood for a bonfire for Firework night. A large branch had fallen through a hedge - I was on one side and Tony on the other. Neither of us was aware of the other until we started a tug of war which led to a punch up until we just sat down laughing wiping blood from our noses.

In 1962 Tony bought himself a bright blue BSA and I would ride pillion. Sometimes I would ride it myself but well away from home.

1962 started out pretty uneventful and we'd had a pretty good summer. During September I started Evening School and was ready to knuckle down and study for a couple more GCEs. That was until the Russians decided to send missiles to Cuba. John F Kennedy, the President of the USA said that that wasn't going to happen - and Nikita Krushchev of the USSR said oh yes it was. And so it went on and all the time the Russian ships were closing in on Cuba and the USA were sending ships to intercept or sink them.

A group of us were walking up to the school and, being young, we were cracking jokes. But one of our group wasn't laughing. Quite suddenly, he stopped and yelled: "What's the matter with you lot? Don't you care that we could all be dead tomorrow?"

" Then what the hell are you doing here?" I asked. "If I knew for certain that I'd be dead - then I wouldn't be here. I'd be down town looking to do something that I'd miss out on."

Besides, who would have been stupid enough to press the button.

In the end Kennedy didn't have missiles in his backyard and Krushchev got rid of the missiles in his frontyard.

The confrontation, though, made me angry to think that a bunch of politicians could play with the lives of millions like that.

Also there was a hostile reaction to teenagers by older people who made being teenage like a disease. Rock 'n' Roll had come and gone - but the beat went on. We were criticised for what we wore and the 'culture' that we followed.

Into this mix came a rock 'n' roll band who had wowed the audience in Hamburg, Germany. They had worn leather jackets and jeans - but, by the time, they hit the big time they had ditched the gear for suits and mop tops. With The Beatles came the Mods.

And I donned a leather and rode a Triumph 250 - and, because my parents disapproved, I kept the bike and gear at Tony's house.

We used to meet up at Div's (Divitos) in Orpington High Street. If we weren't there then it was Johnsons up near Brands Hatch, or The 'Gale (The Nightingale) or the Salt Box over at Biggin Hill. After a while we could be found on Chelsea Bridge on our way to or from The Ace Cafe.

It was a time of burn ups and general fun to do with bikes and, like all groups, there were those that caused a few problems.

Whichever way you look at it the Leather Boys were trouble.

When I did the ton I was riding a friend's Bonnie and I was taking it home from for him from Johnsons Cafe. I just opened the throttle and away I went - straight down Death Hill without a care in the world. Well, you only get one life so live it to the full before some idiot pressed the button that would end it all.

There had been so many accidents and fatalities on Death Hill that it seemed as though an ambulance had been permanently stationed at the bottom.

I did that ton and it was the only time that I did it. I never saw the point in doing the ton again because the rush wouldn't be the same.

As I have said with The Beatles came the Mods with their nice suits and clean looks. The newspapers with nothing to report now that Missile Crisis was over made a big deal about both The Beatles and the Mods.

In simple terms: Mods were middle class and office workers - Rockers (a newspaper term) were lower class, factory workers and slackers, dirty and greasy. Not sure where I fit in, then, I worked in an office - another of the regulars worked in an estate agents and another in the accounts dept of the local council.

Mods rode scooters that they embelished with fox tails, mirrors and headlights.

No mention of how the 'Rocker' worked on his bike and because some parts were expensive made their own parts. Or that it was the ordinary 'Rocker' who had taken a Norton frame and combined the best bits of a Triumph on it. Then added a larger, squared fuel tank to create the first of the Tritons. Later, the Triton was manufactured.

The Norton Dominator was a great road holder while the Triumph Bonneville had a great burst of speed. The Triton was the best of both worlds.

That's newspapers for you. They hyped the Mod and put down the Rocker so when there was a clash at Clacton in 1964 it looked as though the poor Mods had been set upon by the apelike Rockers.

The scene was set for The Battle Of Brighton - and, I still believe, that it was the press and television that engineered the whole thing. For once the fight was over and the newspapers got the quotes like 'teddy boys with their flick knives' and the famous ' sawdust caesers' they lost interest in the Mods and Rockers. We all got lumped together as out of control teenagers.

By 1966 the Mods had disappeared and the moral victory went to the Rockers who carried on riding their bikes.

In 1966 I wrote my first ever novel called 'The Rebel'. As can be imagined it was the story of a Rocker and stretched from the Cuba Crisis to just after the Battle of Brighton. The story was accurate and true. I collected a number of rejection slips - so I re-read and re-wrote it but still collected rejection slips. The best of these were the comment that the book was not realistic and did not conform to the facts.

Oh! Well! At least I had tried and decided that I was not destined to be a writer.

I swapped my bike for a white Mini - and, out of boredom, joined the Young Conservatives. They wanted someone to do a weekly piece for the local newspaper and I, reluctantly, volunteered. These little pieces were my first in print but that was all the writing that I did.

One good thing to come out of the Young Conservatives - I met the girl who became my wife.

A good thing - considering my next recollections.

Jack Giles 2. Learning To Write

Orpington, Kent in the 1950s was like a small country town surrounded by open areas and countryside within a few minutes walk.
The housing situation following the second world war was desperate and to compensate two big estates were being built at St. Paul's Cray and Ramsden.
When we arrived in Orpington to look for a house we went straight to Ramsden - a huge muddy lot that would one day become a sprawl of private and council houses.
The queue of people hoping to get their feet on the housing rung just stretched and stretched and it took hours of patient waiting to get to the site office - and by then we were too late. All the available plots had been taken up but there was one advantage my dad had as he was a carpenter and therefore one of 'the trade'. He was put in touch with a small builder who was building six new houses up Tubbenden Lane on the site of the old Cooks Farm - of Buff Orpington fame. Dad got a pick of the plots and we went home happy.
The Orpington I lived in looked very much as the picture above.
It was a wrench to leave my friends back in Finchley and I would have loved it if my parents had chosen to go back there.
The move to Orpington was made at a time when London's overspill began to pour into St.Paul's Cray and Ramsden. Public opinion in Orpington was very anti - and I encountered prejudice from both fellow pupils and teachers - I wasn't one of 'them'.
The road that I lived in was unmade and at the bottom of a steep hill - great for sledding down in the winter and the road thick with snow. Even better for riding down on my new Hercules racing bike - until I came off my bike halfway down and slicing my right arm open. I cleaned up the cut but it soon became infected and swollen. My mum applied an 'old wives remedy' poultice to the swelling but it was too hot and in the morning the inside of my right arm from elbow to just above the wrist was blistered. We went to the hospital where the blister was cut away and I watched as I saw a glimpse of bone - that was how deep the scald had burned. For the next 18 months my arm was bound up so stiffly that I could not use it. I was in and out of hospital for all that time having the dressing changed.
As my right arm was unuseable I had to become left-handed and had my knuckles rapped for not writing fast or completing schoolwork. What with all the prejudice and this problem with my right arm I began to withdraw into myself and escaped into books and movies. During those eighteen months I made no friends apart from an older boy, who like me, had come from north London.
The prejudice would dog my tail into secondary school - but there I would meet up with a gang of older boys - a mixture of gypsies, East and North Londoners. From the moment I arrived I was warned to stay away from that gang but it was they who approached me. I had befriended one of the gang at Primary school so I was 'in'.
There was one master who taught history who bragged about his experiences in Malaya - to the extent that it could be assumed that he 'won' that theatre of war. But when the Suez crisis blew up I saw another side to him when he began to fear that he would be called up again.
His favourite punishment was the slipper - the slightest excuse and he would use it. One day I was so fed up with this form of punishment that I hid it on the rafter above his desk. What I did forget is that size 11 plimpsolls came in pairs. He did, eventually, find his original slipper - or rather it found him. During a violent thunderstorm the slipper was dislodged from the rafter and hit him on the head.
I was once slippered by him for correcting him. He was teaching us about the English Civil War and talking about firearms ' .....not like in the American Civil War when they had repeating rifles...' So, I corrected him, got the slipper and a reputation for being argumentative.
The third year was good and so, life improved from thereon.
Mr Bethell taught English and would read stories from various authors like O.Henry and Sherlock Holmes stories by Conan-Doyle. The Holmes' story 'Silver Blaze' stuck in my mind.
From then on every composition I had to write had to be a story. For example write something about a drawing pin became a mystery thriller in which the description of a drawing pin is wrapped around the disappearence of a micro-dot.
Of course, my school report claimed that I allowed my 'imagination to get out of hand'.
And my reading went in other directions as I picked up books by D.H.Lawrence (I still have a pre-trial 1960 Penguin book of 'Lady Chatterley's Lover'.)
This book would in turn lead to an interesting discussion when I, as a butcher boy, delivered meat to a certain Margaret Thatcher. She thought that I had just read the 'dirty bits'. My response was that that would be pointless - the whole book would have to be read to appreciate it.
In the fourth year I was taught English by Mr. Keeble. He liked my short stories to the extent that he thought that I should get them published. I thanked him but said I wouldn't bother - authors were all older and more experienced than me. But he did say-'one day you will be a writer'.
But, I had eyes on another idea. I had picked up a book called ' Criminal Law In A Nutshell'. A fascinating book that led me to borrowing more law books that I read tucked behind the Bible during Religious Instruction lessons. The Law of England had more to interest me than the Law of God.
When the careers oficer came around and I had my interview with him and he asked me what I wanted to do - I told him straight that I wanted to go into the legal profession. After my interview I was summonsed to the headmaster's office where the careers officer was telling him about our interview. The headmaster looked at me sternly and told me to be serious and that he, personally, would see to it that I took up an apprenticeship in some factory.
I just shrugged.
He could do what he liked - I was the one who knew what I wanted.
I left school and went to work as a junior clerk in the Parks Department of a local council. Where I got into trouble for a) giving a chap an allotment without putting him on a non-existant waiting list and b) going over the Department head to get a job in the Council's legal department. After 6 months I was given the sack.
A week later I was working as an outdoor clerk for a firm of solicitors.
This job would give me a funny aftermath.
My headmaster was, also, a Justice of the Peace. I was attending the local county court when he walked in. On seeing me he said ' Ah, Foster, I thought you'd end up in front of me.' 'Yes sir, I'm here representing the Plaintiff - told you I was going into the legal profession'. His face dropped -but I had not intended my comment as a jibe - just a statement of fact.
On the whole school was good. There was plenty of school playground trade going on. War comic or comics in general were swapped around. My own choice were for books - traded for comics or rare bubble gum wrappers.
After school I went to night school - to improve on my goals I needed to improve on my education. I continued to write short stories that went into the bin after a while - I just liked to write but I don't think that I had found a voice or a reason to be serious about writing. What kid didn't think about writing THE novel - a bestseller that became a movie etc.
What I didn't know, as 1962 dawned, was that events were going to occur that would change a lot of lives. For the good or the bad I still don't know.

Jack Giles 2: Orpington

Forgotten Books - The Leather Boys by Gillian Freeman

Okay - I've done the movie now it's the turn of the book.

Gillian Freeman was born in London in 1929 and wrote both the book and the screenplay for 'The Leather Boys'. The original was printed by 4 Square books under the author's alias of Elliot George. NEL reprinted it in the 1970s.

Sadly, this is a neglected book - and the selling features of the edition shown do not do the book the right justice. What the blurbs states is that this is a book about ' Britain's Wild Ones -the motorcycle cowboys who live for fast machines and faster girls..........THE LEATHER BOYS is a savage, brilliantly told novel of these aimless young men and women.....and a strange, twisted love....'

Just the sort of blurb that would make me put the book straight back on the shelf.

Why?

Because I know that that is not the basis of the book.

The importance of the book is that within it's 126 pages is a snapshot of life in the early sixties. From the dark crumbling houses with an outside loo - they did still exist back then to a youth culture that was in it's birth pangs. A time when teenagers wore leather jackets and rode motorcycles - anything from a 250cc up. Nobody had stuck a label on them calling them 'Rockers', 'Greasers' etc. - but they did live under the legacy of the Teddy Boys (who wore drapes, drainpipes and brothel creepers) and they did get labelled that way.

Though the themes remain the same the film and the book are differant - and the book continues where the film leaves off.

The story concerns Dick who is an insecure person who tries to be everybody's friend and Reggie who marries too young to Dot. Dot makes life a misery for her husband and is completely unaware that she is the author of her own misfortunes. Reggie, on the other hand, married for sex and his idea of a good time is going out with his mates down at Ned's Cafe. And a good time included admiring each others bikes and having a conversation over a cup of coffee or a Coke.

Against this background the reader is introduced to the general prejudices of the time against youth, the quest for a bit more elbow room. Dot's own me-me-me attitude begins to reflect these prejudices as she tries to force Reggie to 'grow up'.

The more the pressure is put on Dick so he turns to Reggie, who lives with his grandmother, and they begin some male bonding and moves in with him. In the end they decide to get away from the situation and the squalor. They go to Southampton to find work on a ship and meet up with a group of men that makes Reggie think.

"Dick thought of the ugly, middle aged powdered faces. He had never seen homosexuals like them before. He had never thought of his relationship with Reggie as being homosexual."

And so Dick returns home alone.

That is where the film ends - but the book continues on for Reggie chases after him and they plan to rob the local cinema and get away together. But lurking in the background are former friends who have suspicions about the closeness of the two friends and it is this that leads to tragedy.

In the 1980s the Gay Press issued a copy of this book - I suppose that the assumption is that it is a book errs in that direction.

Even today having re-read the book I'm not sure that that is it's sole selling point. It's more a book about a fragment of time, about prejudices and their consequences. Certainly, Reggie and Dick become more dependant on each other - their weaknesses are counter balanced by their respective strengths. While Reggie may want the relationship to go further, I feel that Dick did not and was just content with a male bonded friendship.

Is the book relevant today? I think so, for as the book is read, the reader picks up on something and thinks -and if a book makes you stop and think - then it has to be relevant.