Interview with a skinhead

"Skinhead" is a term used to indentify members of the skinhead subculture which became prevalent in the 1960s after originating in London. They were originally concerned with working-class ideals, and are believed to be an offshoot of the earlier mod subculture. They are characterised by their extremely closely cropped hair, from where the term skinhead is derived.


I spoke to Geoff, who identified himself as a member of this subculture during the mid 1970s.

Did you belong to any one particular group?

Yes, I was a skinhead.

What year did you become involved with this group?

Roughly I would have been 16, so around 1975.

How did you become aware of this group?

There were some groups into it, such a Slade, the music started it off for me. Some of my friends were into it, including some guys around 17 and 18 who were doing it, so we followed on from them, we had an influence from the older generation.

Did you know many people, or did you have many friends that also subscribed to this group?

Yes, quite a few, not all of my friends, but I would say around half of my friends did, it was fairly popular.

What was the primary ethos or mission of your group?

To me, it was the fashion, it was the fact you looked hard. “Don’t mess with me” was the message. We didn’t have an underlying cause, I think it was just about wanting to be in trouble. I got in trouble, we all did. Mainly fighting, all the time. I was fighting my shadow.

Was there a particular fashion associated with it? Can you describe it?

Doc Martin boots, oxblood, yellow laces, they were a must, the higher the length of boots the better. You’d turn up your jeans, drainpipes or levis or whatever. Ben Sherman shirt, that was the main one, and braces in a cross at the back, and they had to be narrow, they couldn’t be like your grandad’s braces. Everybody had a completely shaven head, or as close to it as you could get.

Did you or anyone you know ever buy clothes/accessories/makeup for the sole purpose of fitting in with the group?

You bought the associated gear, there was a sort of stipulated uniform for it, it was quite strict, had to be a checked Ben Sherman shirt, stay pressed trousers when you were going to a dance, turned up to suit the boots.

What kind of rituals would members of the group perform? (hair dying, piercings)

A lot of people had skinhead burns as they were called, they rubbed the backs of their hands until they burned. I think that was just a silly craze.

Were there any shops that catered to the kind of fashion your group had?

Most shops did, it was fashion, it was what they sold, levis were popular anyway, stay pressed came in different colours, the shops were aware of the trend and they took advantage, one shop in particular opened as a result of the skinhead trend, they totally catered, they opened the shop and filled it full of stuff for skinheads, on the basis of what was selling at the time. He did his research.

Was there any particular kind of music your group listened to?

To be honest, all kinds. At the time it was all discos and what was in the charts, it was nearing the point of glam rock, I got on the bandwagon late. In London they were more into ska reggae, that sort of thing.

Did you attend any events associated with your group?

Not really, we had discos, we met up in the high street, out and about, you were never in your house. We spent most of our time in the street. We drank underage, down the river, down the beach, before we went to the discos.

Were there any activities or behaviours associated with your group? Did you agree with them?

We fought a lot, it was a territorial thing, there were a lot of travellers that came and we fought them. Gangs, people from Forres or Elgin, they were more organized than we were, they fought for leadership and all this kind of thing.

How much money (roughly) do you think you spent?

Well, boots were £20, trousers about £15, then the shirts, roughly £15-£20, they bumped up the price of doc martins because of it. They were aware the trend had caught onto them.

Did you feel as if you belonged, or that your group was a family in any way?

Kind of, we were all different. I would say only 4 of us were proper skinheads, I was probably more insular with those 4. I think some of them were posers.

Was there any signalling?

Other than my clothes and the shaved head, not really, but that was all we needed.

What made you leave the group?

I think we all just left in the end. The older kids drifted into something different, and we followed them. Glam rock kind of came in, and it took over, it wasn’t strict a dress code for one thing.

Was there any point you felt the group was becoming too “corporate?” or commercial?

I never thought about it, it was commercial to begin with, you had to buy a certain kind of clothes.

Do you think your group kept it’s ethos toward the end?

To me, it was just a fashion trend, what I wanted to be was to be hard, to have an attitude, to cast an aura around me that said “don’t come near me, I’ll beat the shit out of you,” it was kind of a shallow interest I had, it was in it’s dying days when I got into it, it only lasted a year or so. We got into the clockwork orange side of things, we ended up dressing like them after a while, we had the checked trousers and Crombie coat, eventually the shops came out with checked stay pressed to meet THAT trend. We went into glam rock from there.

Like Denise, Geoff's experiences with his subculture seem to be somewhat muted as opposed to the experiences of someone living in one of the larger cities. Geoff was involved in the scene as it was beginning to diversify and be overshadowed by other trends. Nevertheless, his experience is interesting because it shows not only how the rural areas of Scotland dealt with subcultures from the south and how they were adapted for the area, but how local retailers began to specialise in fashions that were integral to the scene, and the costs involved in making oneself appropriate in terms of "uniform."