WE ARE THE MODS
KEN SHARP: You know, The Who always tried to present themselves
from 1964-65 as mods, but the Small Faces were real mods.
IAN MCLAGAN: (Interrupting) (Roger) Daltrey was a real mod. Pete
(Townshend) was at art school so he couldn't afford it -- you
had to have a job to afford the clothes. (John) Entwistle of course
wasn't ... Daltrey was a mod ... Daltrey was quite a heavy little
... a tough little bastard! But I wasn't a mod when I joined 'em.
I was at art school, I didn't have money for clothes, it was like
brown corduroy jacket and Levi's. I wasn't interested in mods
... there was a couple of guys at art school who had the parkas
and the scooters. I mean, I liked the jackets, the clothes, but
the parkas I thought were stupid.
STEVE MARRIOTT: I was a mod, I had me anorak (a parka). I think
to establish yourself, in the very early stages, clothes can really
set an image for you, really work for you, or, it can make you
a laughing stock. It was a good thing while it lasted, but it's
over now. Kids are always searching for something new, and I think
music has taken over from a lot of things... (from BBC radio,
July 1966).
KEN SHARP: Were the rest of the guys in the Small Faces mods?
Even Kenney?
IAN MCLAGAN: Oh yeah, oh yeah. They were from the East End. I
was from the other side of London, west of Oxford, Heathrow airport,
Hounslow.
KENNEY JONES: We was all mods before we were in the Small Faces.
Funnily enough, when we met up we were all already mods. We had
all identified individually with what we wanted to be before we
had actually met. It was absolutely amazing that when we all bumped
into each other we had absolutely similar fashion senses, absolutely
similar tastes, similar outlook. The reason is because we were
the first young generation after the war, and I remember growing
up as a kid in black and white. And really, everybody did wear
black and white, and we were the people to wear color, and it
was amazing. We started to wear all these bright things, and it
was alright to dye your hair then. A lot of mods actually dyed
their hair blonde. It wasn't called dyed, it was called bleaching
your hair then. Because it was the bleach, that was all we had
to do it with.
STEVE MARRIOTT: I just was one (a mod). There weren't a lot of
mods to begin with, there was only a few, and I just loved the
clothes. I used to save up all my dough and go down Carnaby Street.
The funny thing about the street was that it was only a couple
of dingy little shops, and they used to import all their stuff
from France, and a mate of mine, who I used to hang around with
at the Square Ring coffee bar in Manor Park, turned up wearing
all this gear, and he told me where to get it. It was expensive,
so I had to save up for it.
But really, we used to get laughed at. Me. Ronnie and a couple
of the others -- Mac and Kenney weren't really mods -- used to
get wolf whistles from geezers on building sites, and me old man
didn't like it at all. I mean, it took a lot of courage in those
days. But to be honest with you, I think there's a lot more mods
now than there was then, to begin with anyway. Now, every gig
I play I see mods; in those days it was a very select crowd. If
you went up North, there were no mods up there at all, to begin
with, but in the end they really took it up, I mean Manchester
and Sheffield became totally mod.
It was nice to be different, well, that's the way I felt about
it anyway. It's all to do with mates as well. I mean, you look
around and there's got to be one geezer that looks different,
you have a look, ask him where he got the gear (clothes) from,
he tells you, and you become a mod without really thinking. That's
the way it went.
KENNEY JONES: I had my mini then, and I'd get home, park outside
-- I was obsessed with this mini then, all I did was clean it
and polish it and put clocks on it and stuff. It was the extension
of the scooter, if you know what I mean.
KEN SHARP: Did you enjoy the mod image? The clothes?
IAN MCLAGAN: Yeah! We could go down to Carnaby Street and fill
a taxi with shirts and hats and stuff...
KEN SHARP: Do you ever look at pictures and wish you still had
some of those clothes?
IAN MCLAGAN: Oh yeah, yeah, I mean that green suede jacket with
the black leather collar that's on the cover of ... actually Kenney
wore it on one album then he gave it me and I wore it. And some
of the shoes, the suits ... yeah!
KENNEY JONES: I do that all the time. My mother had a load of
stuff, and I think some of it was given away or auctioned off
for charity, but there's not much now.
JOHN HELLIER: During the Sixties, clothes played a major part
in the mod culture, did the Small Faces ever try to impress an
image, or was that just the way you were?
STEVE MARRIOTT: No, it's just the way we were, mate. I think
the difference between us and groups like The Who, was that the
Who actually had a manager, who saw Mod, and dressed them that
way. We were just of the street. The Small Faces were what they
were before anyone discovered them. We were just a little moddy
band, whereas The Who actually got things bought for them. I thought
(The Who) were great. It's only in retrospect that you can look
back and see that Pete Meadon (The Who's first manager) -- a great
mate of mine -- the way that him and Kit Lambert kitted them out.
But then, you had the legitimate (Mod) bands like The Action,
they were the same age as the Small Faces, they were just of the
streets, they weren't groomed. There were a lot of bands like
Grapefruit, John's Children, and the Gods that were groomed that
way. They were sent to go and get all these clothes from this
particular shop. There was a lot of rotten horrible bands that
had a lot of money spent on them and amounted to fuck all, really.
So out of that quagmire of bands, The Small Faces came to the
top because they were legitimate, and I think it showed.
KEN SHARP: Because with the Small Faces it wasn't just the music,
it was the clothes, the image, everything intertwined.....
IAN MCLAGAN: The big part of it to me -- I mean the clothes were
alot of fun -- it was great to be able to have a lot of great
clothes and shoes and always have a choice of what to wear. I
don't have that choice these days, I wish I did, if I see clothes
I won't buy 'em. I mean, Rod, he goes out and spends $7000 on
clothes just like it was nothing. But the music was really the
focus of the Small Faces. The core of it was Muddy Waters, Marvin
Gaye, Booker T. & the MG's, Otis -- that's what the Small
Faces were. There's all kinds of inluences around, but that's
what we were, it wasn't clothes.
STEVE MARRIOTT: Mod meant money. A way of life gone wrong. It
went up its own ass, see. As soon as too much money gets involved,
the people who are in it can't get into it any more -- as soon
as it starts to cost money. Mod never really did cost money at
first. You'd buy the cheapest things, but in the style you wanted.
And then they'd start producing it because they realized there's
a demand for it, and upped the price. The whole thing was to be
individual, and as soon as they started mass-marketing the stuff
and up-pricing the hell out of it, then the thing of being an
individual is lost. Mod was individual at the time. It's like
saying that you wanted to be an individual but within a group.
That's a contradiction, but it's a good one. You want to be an
individual, just a little bit, but not too much -- just that little
niche. It is down to the individual what they want to wear within
some set rules. There were some set rules, no doubt about it,
like the length of trousers, colour of socks, length and style
of hair, that kind of thing. But the rest is up to you. Always
with the hair, the trouser length, and the shoes -- you had to
have that. That was a code that said you were. The rest of what
you covered your body with didn't matter so much. But then it
got out of hand, and like anything, as soon as it got out of hand
it was lost.
KEN SHARP: Do you still follow the mod movement a little bit?
KENNEY JONES: Oh yeah, the great thing about the mod movement
is that it'll never die, even if it goes out of fashion, there'll
always be that spark movement, and that'll always keep it alight.
And every time it comes back, it'll get stronger. Because it's
the sentiment behind the movement of the mods, not just fashions,
but the mod statement, which was we are here, take notice of us,
we're just people in a group and we're having fun. And it's all
right to have fun! Nothing wrong with it. And if we get a little
bit outrageous we don't mean it to upset anyone. Stay cool....
KEN SHARP: And you guys are like the Godfathers of Mod right
now...
KENNEY JONES: I think it's great that we're finally seen as being
... while this was going on everybody was sort of hyping The Beatles
and The Stones, and there we were. And now everybody's realized
all these years later that the biggest fashion ... the biggest
statement made in the Sixties was by the Small Faces. We were
ahead of our time, no doubt.
STEVE MARRIOTT: The media gave us the name and called us Mods.
We didn't know what the fuck it was, y'know, we just liked button
downs, and when I look back it was fucking great! But I couldn't
do it myself now. I'd be like a cartoon of myself, a parody. No,
I'll leave it up to others to carry that flag. If I did it now
I'd look stupid. I'd be like an old man dressed up in young clothes.
It would be stupid.
