NME 1979 Bank Holiday battles revisited

From the Anglozine archive, a truly iconic cover from the New Musical Express published 14th April 1979.  This cover was included in the top 100 NME covers from the once weekly music journal.  There have been some fantastic music magazine covers over the years, all etched in our memory, a sort of barometer to a point in time to what we were wearing, listening to, clubs, and haircuts and the likes. I have to say I'm surprised our copy has lasted this long but the paper they used back then was like ye old parchment. I've found a box with some more NME & Melody Makers and so I've got another blog post planned pretty soon.

I'm not going to write about the content of this rare copy of the NME, I'll leave the mod musings to the likes of:  Paul 'Smiler' Anderson, Paolo Hewitt and Dave Walker, Terry Rawlings, Richard Barnes et al. Besides it’s all in here for you to read at your leisure.  I should also state here that some of the articles are written from a 1960’s perspective and so some of the content isn’t acceptable for print in this day and age, I didn’t want to redact the scan and start censoring a newspaper from 1979. The cover shot and most of the images are also from the 1960's, the revival was fresh at this point, there were no photographs to really speak of other than bands.  The final page features revival imagery, all others are circa 1964.

The reason for posting this NME issue now, is that this weekend and more importantly Monday is a bank holiday here in the U.K, namely Whitsun bank holiday.  The majority of images not owned by Getty of the mods, rockers, mockers and the deck chairs at dawn that get shown over and over, are from Whitsun weekend.  Captured in coastal towns like: Brighton, Clacton, Hastings, Southend, Bognor Regis, Bournemouth and Margate all these spots are a relatively short distance on an Italian scooter.

I might head down to Margate this bank holiday, if you are heading down on your scooter ride safely, if you need a little more storage, don't forget to check out our new spare wheel cover  

Here are all the pages warts and all from this top 100  issue:

Never noticed the An ‘NME Special’ stamp before on the scans found across the web

Beardy Pegley is pretty un-mod like to be fair not that I'd say that to his face, but facial hair and mods ? discuss ?  Not to be confused with Ken the Beard of the Hackney Boys Teddy Boy gang of 1952. Funny all the beard connections with Hackney.  Now its all hipsters with beards and Japanese branded running baseball caps in this neck of the woods.

To give some context Chris Pegley was one of the three original mods, the other being Lee Davis, Mickey Tenner all from Hackney. Chris grew a beard when he was just 16 in 1962 due to an aparent skin condition. The nickname 'Beardy' was coined and it stuck with him throughout his modernist career until late 1966, when he went to prison for his part in shooting a rocker.

I've heard of the shooting tale on Mare street, it all seems a little over the top now, but best to fight for style than 'my gods bigger than your god'.  Pegley lived off Victoria Park Road in South Hackney E9, I've lived in the area for twenty five plus years and talking to one local resident in particular, she believes it was most probably Banbury Road.  

The story goes that Hackney mods had a confrontation with some greasers outside the Regal Cinema on Mare Street (102-110 Mare Street now an Iceland Supermarket).  The two gangs cordially arranged a tear-up for later that evening, so both parties took time to gather their weapons, some a little too heavy handed.  The mods and rockers violent rendez-vous sprawled into the street, gang members duffed up left, right and centre.  The leader of the Hackney rockers 'Buttons' Walsh ran at Pegley with a metal bar in charge mode, Beardy Pegleys right hand man was carrying a pistol and managed to get a shot off at Walsh just in time. Thankfully Walsh survived and went onto join the Hells Angels and no doubt many years smashing up mods.  Beardy Pegley got a 6 months prison sentence for his involvement in the shooting, as the clear leader of the Hackney mods.

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The Young Mods Forgotten Story article was written by Penny Reel aka Mr Peter Simons (1948-2018) born and bread Shacklewell East London. Peter was NME's in house reggae expert and wrote extensively about UK and Jamaican reggae amassing a collection of 40,000 reggae records. He was widely regarded as one of the best writers and an authority on the music genre.

Below are closer excerpts of this NME centre spread

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Scan within a scan of the Margate clashes Monday May 18 1964

Mod folklore 'modlore' has it that some of the skirmishes at this time were orchestrated and paid for in pounds, shillings and pence by the tabloid press. Sure there were fights but for newspapers to really grab the headlines they needed a well balanced shot of these sawdust Ceasers.

The final page is dedicated to the film that lit the fuse on the 1979 mod revival Quadrophenia.  I've watched the film gazillions of times on Beta Max, VHS, DVD, Blu-Ray, Youtube and Apps, I've even wheeled my scooter into the lounge and watched it sat astride it. Quadrophenia is a brilliant youth film don't get me wrong, but now with the dreaded hindsight the: settings, street scenes, clothing, even scooters were clearly 1970's and not as the film was supposedly set 1964 - but its a great film, don't get all Beardy Pegley on me.