Max Décharné reboots the golden age of the Teddy Boys

If a film director wanted to flag up incoming violence in the late ‘50s, the camera would fall upon a couple of Teds lurking in the street outside. The teenage Keith Richards remembers razors, bike chains and bloodshed at dance halls and there was an infamous Teddy Boy murder on Clapham Common that plunged the nation into frantic, media-led moral panic. Max Décharné sets out to reclaim the Teds from their “Cro-Magnon, knuckle-dragging cliché” in his new book Teddy Boys and relives this dangerously thrilling rock and roll revolution – the music, clothes, films, press stories, the birth of Ted, Peak Ted, its eventual demise and what’s kept the flame alive since. Things of note include …   … the full effect of Blackboard Jungle on a packed 4,000-seater cinema. ... that poignant sight of an old Ted pushing a pram with a woman with a beehive. … Joan Collins in ‘Cosh Boy’.   … the first UK rock and roll gig, Bill Haley & the Comets at the New Theatre Royal in Portsmouth in 1956.  … the crepe-soled, velvet-collared Duke of Edinburgh, unlikely ’50s fashion icon. … Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis at the London Rock and Roll Show at Wembley in 1972, a key point in the Ted revival. … Malcolm McLaren, Johnny Rotten, Wizzard and assorted Ted torch-carriers. … Viv Stanshall and ‘Teddy Boys Don’t Knit’. … fingertip drapes from Savile Row and how Teds subverted top-end fashion.   … Fleetwood Mac as Earl Vince & the Valiants doing ‘Somebody’s Gonna Get Their Head Kicked In Tonite’. … and how the Beatles and James Bond helped kick the Teds into touch. Order Max’s book here …https://www.amazon.co.uk/Teddy-Boys-Post-War-Britain-Revolution-ebook/dp/B0C3SFMTFHSubscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early - and ad-free - access to all of our content, plus a whole load more!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Mark Ellen and David Hepworth have been talking about and writing about music together and individually for a collective eighty years in magazines like Smash Hits, Mojo and The Word and on radio and TV programmes like "Rock On", "Whistle Test" and VH-1.Over thirteen years ago, when working on the late magazine The Word, they began producing podcasts. Some listeners have been kind enough to say these have been very special to them. When the magazine folded in 2012 they kept the spirit of those podcasts alive in regular Word In Your Ear evenings in which they spoke to musicians and authors in front of an audience. Over these years they've produced hundreds of hours of material. As of the Current Unpleasantness of 2020, they've produced yet hundreds of hours more with a little help from guests kind enough to digitally show them around their attics such as Danny Baker, Andy Partridge, Sir Tim Rice and Mark Lewisohn. For the full span of the Word In Your Ear world, visit wiyelondon.com. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.