"Clapton was the first skinhead!" say Slade

 

THEY LOOKED wrong. There they were, four merry little skinheads sprawled across deep Georgian chairs in one of those plush offices off Oxford Street.

Perhaps it was bound to happen. Slade are the first skinhead pop group. I walked into the room and was introduced to Jim and Dave. They smiled.

Jim Lea is the group's bass guitarist. He looks like the sort of bloke you see creating a bit of "bovver" on the terraces at West Ham every week — short hair to the point of where-is-it and big boots. Big black boots.

"Why the boots?" I asked.

"Because that's what skinheads are about" Jim replied. Which seemed fair enough to me.

Then I remembered what the Sunday Nasties had said about skinheads. All that about "aggro" and thumping hippies — and, come to that, thumping anyone with longer than cropped hair. So I asked about the "aggro".

Jim smiled. "Oh, you know what it's like. You're having a drink and someone comes over and spills it over you." He rolled his shoulders as though he was being hustled. "Then there's a bit of a scuffle. "But it's nothing new. That's always happened. All this 'aggro' is built up by the press. And hippies — well they don't work. They're all right I suppose, they're a different thing again. They're part of our audience."

I asked about football.

"That's the sort of thing I mean about being built up by the press. I don't even like football."

These are the kids of the 1950's. Elvis had made a monster reputation by the time they were five years old. The Beatles were number one when they were twelve. And now John Lennon is nearing thirty, and the Slade are not even out of their teens.

Said Jim: "Elvis was before our time. I mean, our older brothers and sisters tell us about him."

At this point we were joined by Dave Hill, the lead guitarist of the group. Big red boots this lime — and Ben Sherman shirts. "it's got to be Ben Sherman shirts, they last so well." Dave went on: "We got Royals — boots — and dockers, that's the turned up Levi's. It's a new style, that's all."

It's a new style for the group as well, who used to be called Ambrose Slade and looked like any other group. Said Jim: "We went home with our hair cut and all our mothers were pleased. 'Great', they thought. And then — the boots and the whole bit!"

Someone in the room put the Slade's first single, 'Wild Winds Are Blowing' on the record player. It is heavy rock music — not reggae or anything else we had been led to expect from skinheads.

So I asked Jim about his musical influences. And, guess what, not Desmond Dekker or Prince Buster or any West Indian, but Eric Clapton was number one. They're old Cream fans. Really. Even the hairyness of Clapton is forgiven.

"If you look at Clapton on that first Yardbirds LP you'll see his hair was short," said Jim — which was a new thought for the day — Clapton, the first of the skinheads.

The two other members of the group, Noddy who apparently sounds like Janis Joplin and Don Powell tho drummer, sat on a great oaken desk.

I bid them goodbye and walked out into the land of the hairies.