Glasgow Mods - R&B, British Beat Music, Motown, Northern Soul

Of course this is the movie which inspired a surge within the new mod revival which so many were a part of. The movie itself was very appealing to people like myself leaving school looking for an identity. I didn’t want to be doing the local gang stuff, glue sniffing and hanging about street corners, this was not my scene, I also locked myself in my own wee room with my computer, ZX80 and ZX Spectrum, but I needed another outlet, I was a teenager barely 16 years old and bored with all the glam rock and punk music which looked very bizarre to me. I needed something else. I was resigned to watching the usual Saturday afternoon morning telly when my friend who was busy copying VHS tapes of movies had left some behind. I seen this oddly named movie Quadrophenia next to another others called the warriors and wanderers, I slotted the Quad cassette into the machine and it whirred up, it went straight to Jimmy riding his scooter through London with the music, MY LIFE just changed. I was hooked and still am to this wonderful period of my life, I have put here a snippet of what it was that affected me for my whole life and its how I discovered REAL friends that even today 20 years plus on, we are still connected no matter where we are and no matter where our life has taken us, WELCOME to the unique group of people called the MODS, The GLASGOW MODS.

It’s London, 1964, and Jimmy is a member of a Mod gang (working class youths who imitate the attire of upper-class citizens, and ride Vespa and Lambretta scooters). The Mods are always fighting with Rockers, who in turn wear black leather and ride motorcycles. Disillusioned by his parents and a dead-end job as a runner in an advertising firm, Jimmy only finds an outlet for his teenage angst with his mod pals Dave, Chalky and Spider. However his angst and confusion are compounded by the fact that one of his Rocker rivals is in fact childhood friend Kevin (Ray Winstone), to whom he comments “I don’t wanna be like everybody else - that’s why I’m a Mod, see?”. A three-day bank holiday provides the excuse for the rivalry between the two gangs to come to a head, as they both descend upon the seaside town of Brighton.

But when Jimmy is arrested during the Brighton riot, which was based on the real life “Second Battle of Hastings” Brighton area Bank Holiday riot of 1964, his life begins to go downhill. He is fined and kicked out of his house by his mother, who found his stash of blues (blue pills of amphetamine). He then quits his job, blows his severance package on blues, and finds out that his crush, Steph is now the girlfriend of his mate Dave. After a short fight with Dave, he wrecks his scooter and finds out his idol, the suave Mod “poster boy” Ace Face (played by Sting), is in reality a bellboy. He steals Ace’s scooter and heads out to the cliffs, leading him to an uncertain fate…