The Baby Boomer Generation (10 page)

We did occasionally step outside of our self-obsessed teenage bubbles to follow world events. We all took a great interest in news reports of the space race developing between Russia and the USA. Back in 1961, we were amazed to see the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becoming the first human to orbit the earth in outer space on board the
Vostok 1
spacecraft. We saw regular news reports of the Vietnam War and we were all very pleased that Britain showed no signs of being drawn into the conflict. However, when the Cuban Missile Crisis started on 14 October 1962 it seemed possible that the Cold War, primarily between the USA and the USSR, was getting closer to becoming a nuclear war, and this frightened us all, especially British teenage boys who were fearful that the government might bring back conscription, which had only ended a couple of years previously, on 31 December 1960. We knew that if the government were to reintroduce conscription then all of us post-war baby boomer boys would have been called up when we reached the age of 18 and sent off to war. Mind you, we also knew that we might not be around long enough to celebrate our 18th birthdays if there was to be a nuclear war. Fortunately, the Cuban Missile Crisis was short-lived and a joint agreement to resolve the situation was reached on 28 October 1962, thereby allowing all British teenage boys to rest easy again and get back to more important personal issues, like combing our hair and looking cool. We had grown up in a peaceful country and this was the closest we had ever come to knowing the fear of an impending world war. Thankfully, we were now able to return to our previous state of calm to await a more welcomed disturbance that would begin to happen in 1963, heralding the arrival of the exciting period of the 1960s that we all look back on so fondly. It was in that year that 20-year-old Jean Shrimpton hit the headlines and became the face of the sixties, knocking Jacqueline Kennedy off all of the magazine covers. At the same time, the new ‘mod' fashions were being sold in a growing number of London boutiques and these mod styles were starting to appear in national magazines; the mod culture was spreading countrywide. This year was the turning point when everything seemed to be changing from lacklustre to brilliant and The Beatles were among the front-runners of this new-wave cultural movement. Their 1962 single release, ‘
Love Me Do
', only reached number seventeen in the UK record charts, but they were now on the verge of greatness and about to start their long domination with the release of ‘
Please Please Me
' as an A-side single. That was in January 1963, and we didn't know it then but we were witnessing the birth of what was to become known as Beatlemania. Very soon, the eyes of the world would be on England and everyone would want to come here and visit places like Liverpool and especially London, to feel its special atmosphere and be a part of the liveliest and most trendy place on earth.

These cultural changes coincided with some very noticeable improvements in the majority of people's overall standards of living. At long last, we were starting to have baths and toilets fitted inside our houses and we were filling our homes with lots of modern household conveniences, or ‘mod cons' as we called them: from washing machines and fridges to central heating and instant hot water supplies. Gradually, we were having all these luxurious things installed in our homes, albeit decades behind the Americans. We were even getting our own personal telephones installed by the GPO (General Post Office) and in two-tone colours as well. Mind you, in the 1960s the demand for telephones was so great that many of us had to put up with sharing a telephone line with a neighbour; it was called a party-line, which meant that two or more subscribers shared the same pair of wires and only one party could make a call at a time. It was a terrible service but at least we had our own telephone, which meant we no longer needed to use the draughty public telephone boxes out in the street. Foreign holidays were also starting to become more affordable, enabling some of us to replace our annual week in Clacton-on-Sea with a trip to the sun-drenched Costa Brava. Suddenly, our living rooms were being adorned with lots of naff souvenir ornaments from all over Europe. Bob Dylan and Joan Baez-style folk singers became commonplace entertainers in coffee bars up and down the country and a new type of 1960s live music began to bellow out from high street pubs and basement clubs all over the place.

We delighted in being able to see all of our new-style 1960s pop idols perform at the local town hall and cinema venues, and at affordable prices. Whereas today it is common practice for pop concerts to be held at large venues like the O2 Arena or Wembley Stadium with one main act and a support act, in the 1960s a pop concert would be staged very much like one of the reunion tours that take place today; the most likely venue would be a cinema rather than a stadium and the concert would usually include half a dozen top recording artists of the day. For example, The Beatles first Christmas show at the Finsbury Park Astoria in London also featured Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas, Tommy Quickley, The Fourmost, The Barron Knights, Duke D'Mond, Rolf Harris and Cilla Black. There were two performances each night, at 6.00 p.m. and at 9.00 p.m., and ticket prices were 5/-, 7/6 and 10/- (5
s
, 7
s
and sixpence, and 10
s
). Unfortunately, the sound system, stage set and lighting were nothing compared to what is available today but the atmosphere was electric; we had never seen or heard anything like it before. The Beatles were lowered onto a brightly lit stage in a fake helicopter, which was considered to be amazing at the time and a real break with tradition. The concerts back then may not have been the slick, huge-budget shows we have today but they were much more intimate. The fans could actually see the stars of the day up close. We could clearly see the beads of sweat on artistes' brows and there was no need to have giant screens showing the action because it was right there in front of us. The money-spinning merchandise business was still in its infancy in the UK and there wasn't any pressure on us to buy expensive printed t-shirts, albums and programmes. We didn't feel we were being ripped off and we had every chance of getting an autograph at the stage door after the show.

In the early to mid-1960s, we were leaving secondary school in our droves and many of us were still only 15. Most had opted to leave without any qualifications and yet nearly all managed to get fixed up some kind of job or apprenticeship fairly quickly. The rest stayed on at school to take O Level GCEs and some went on to take A Level GCEs (the highest school-leaving qualifications), but few went on to university. At that time, a university education was a choice reserved only for the upper classes and a few exceptionally clever middle-class academics. Some who were less academically inclined but who had good practical skills went on to further education in technical colleges or colleges of advanced technology, as they were officially known. In the early 1960s, the number of students in any form of higher education hovered around 200,000, only about 5% of the UK school population.

It was fairly easy for young school leavers to get a job when they left education. The newspapers were jam-packed with job vacancies. Many got themselves fixed up beforehand, often leaving school on the Friday and starting work on the following Monday. We had much greater ambitions and expectations than our parents' generation but we were still naive in terms of what a career actually was. Most saw ambition as wanting to earn as much as possible as soon as possible. Britain was as close to full employment as you could get, and whatever your age or qualifications, you were in with a good chance of a job. Mind you, you had to work hard when you got a job because these were the days when it was very easy for employers to get rid of you if you were lazy or no good.

There were restrictions as to the type of job you could get depending upon what part of Britain you lived in, and whether you lived in town or country areas, but jobs were plentiful and there was usually some overtime available to boost wage packets. Everything was still very labour intensive back then. There were no computerised production lines; instead, our factories were filled with workers and lots of them – more workers than machines. The situation was very similar in offices; they were often full to the brim with office workers and filing cabinets, and there were clipboards all over the place. Large companies would have several large, open-plan rooms to accommodate row upon row of typists and accounts clerks. Britain was still in the business of making things and it was fairly easy for a 15- or 16-year-old boy to get on some kind of apprenticeship scheme. Boys who wanted to become tradesmen could join a local firm as an apprentice plumber, electrician, bricklayer or whatever best suited them. Tradesmen were as the name implies, ‘men'; these were not considered to be suitable jobs for women. Girls were still very much compartmentalised into certain jobs, such as shop assistants, machinists and typists, and they were still being paid less than men for doing the same type of work, but things were slowly changing for the better.

School leavers didn't command very high wages and for the first couple of years they were usually expected to act as general skivvies and gofers (go for this and go for that). Between the ages of 15 and 18, workers would get paid about £5 to £10 a week (most people got paid weekly then), but that would be enough for them to give their mum some housekeeping money, pay their fares to work, buy clothes and have a couple of nights out during the week. In the mid-1960s, a pint of beer cost about 1
s
9
d
(about 8p in today's money). However, fashionable clothes were very expensive and teenagers usually had to save up before they could buy any new item of clothing; there were no TK Maxx or Primark stores in those days. Youngsters who wanted to keep up with fashion, like the 1960s mods, often bought their clothes on credit, paying a fixed amount each week. Alternatively, you could have something made-to-measure and pay it off weekly in advance before collecting it from the shop.

Young teenage workers usually lived carefree lives and fully enjoyed the mood of the 1960s, ever mindful of being part of a new, optimistic generation. We were fortunate to have been around at the right time as part of an increasingly affluent society. During our 1950s austere upbringing we were teased about there being a better life on the horizon but later we would be criticised for too readily grabbing hold of the opportunities that became available to us in the 1960s. As young people, we were fortunate to enjoy a long period of growing prosperity and spend much of our young lives without the burden of a major economic recession. We made the most of it at the time, but we will be forever criticised for having done so. There will always be some blinkered political pundits looking to brand the baby boomer generation as the luckiest and most powerful generation the world has ever seen. We will be criticised for enjoying what will come to be described as the selfish excesses of the 1960s, and it is likely that we will be blamed for everything bad that ever happens in the world forevermore.

The television period drama series,
Heartbeat
, which ran from 1992 to 2010, was a wonderful, nostalgic look at sleepy village life in Yorkshire back then, but it didn't show anything resembling the true mood of the 1960s. And where did they get those clothes? A sleepy country village where three policemen have time to investigate every reported case from a broken window to a lost dog, and a local doctor who pops around to see all and sundry to cure everything from pimples to runny noses; it might be said that the
Heartbeat
series didn't even reflect what rural village life was like, let alone the whole mood of Britain in the 1960s. However, it was gentle and enjoyable to watch – just a drama series; pretend; make believe; not reality. The true atmosphere of the 1960s pulsated through towns and cities across the country, especially London – the heart of everything, the centre of all the action and the driving force behind the whole ‘Swinging Sixties' phenomenon. London was indeed the music and fashion capital of the world. From Kings Road to Carnaby Street, the West End pavements were heaving with visitors looking to feel the vibe and be a part of what swinging London was all about. The decade overflowed with a wealth of originality and style in every aspect of life, from the E-Type Jag to the Mini car, from Twiggy to Quant, from The Rolling Stones to The Beatles, from Radio Caroline to Radio London, from mods and rockers to the hippies, from the Marquee Club to The Scene, and from
Thank Your Lucky Stars
to
Ready Steady Go!
We had protest singers, peace movements, women's lib and even space exploration. We had everything and it was all happening in the 1960s.

The cultural explosion of the 1960s has left an indelible mark on the memories of those of us who were lucky enough to have been around at the time, and we continue to reminisce fondly of those heady days. Fifty years down the line, the post-1960s generations continue to show great interest and fascination in the music, fashions and events of the decade that is still affectionately known as the ‘Swinging Sixties'.

I grew up in 1950s London, where we were spoon-fed a diet of rock and roll music through movies, radio, specialist magazines and the BBC's ground-breaking television shows
Six-Five-Special
,
Cool For Cats
,
Oh Boy!
, and
Juke Box Jury
. It was all very exciting for us post Second World War, baby boomer kids, but nothing was to prepare us for the avalanche of eclectic styles of music that were heading our way as we moved through the early '60s. We had no idea how much our lives would change and we never expected the decade to provide such great experiences. I remember the springtime of 1960, being holed-up in a coffee bar and sharing one bottle of Coca-Cola with half a dozen of my mates while listening to the Everly Brothers' song, ‘Cathy's Clown', being repeatedly played on the jukebox. I recall the heavy thump of the needle hitting the record and the scratchy bass sound as it made its way across the record's grooves to the start of those unmistakable first few haunting bars of that song. I also remember the beautiful sound of The Percy Faith Orchestra's instrumental, ‘Theme from a Summer Place', which often echoed around the walls of the same coffee bar. I was approaching the gateway of my teenage years without knowing that this was to be the best ever decade in which to be a teenager.