Steve Goodman: an early seventies skinhead in 1988 (video)

The clip below, taken from an 80s student movie, was kindly forwarded to us by the filmmaker himself, who promised that there’s “more to come”. It features an interview with an early 70s skinhead at the first International Ska Festival, held at the Brixton Fridge in 1988. The skinhead isn’t exactly unknown: Steve ‘Grogger’ Goodman, editor of the 80s skinzine Chargesheet, author of the subculture novel England Belongs to Me (1994), and writer of the film script Pressure Drop (which is apparently still for sale if you fancy making an OG skinhead movie).

He says in the interview that he became a skinhead round about 1972, which strikes me as an odd year to adopt the style in London. The accepted narrative, after all – confirmed by numerous original skins over the years – is that the look had begun shifting towards suedehead by 1970, and then towards smoothie and bootboy in the following years. By 1972, the original skinhead style would have seemed hopelessly outmoded to most Greater London kids, who were probably Bowie boys or girls by then.

To complicate matters, some of the general populace continued to use the term ‘skinhead’ loosely in the 70s, applying it to anyone who looked a bit like a football fan. So if someone tells me they became a skinhead in, say, 1974 or 1975, I can’t help but wonder whether they actually looked more like a member of the Bay City Rollers.

There’s no rule without exceptions, of course. Take this Chelsea fan’s ticket for the 1975/76 football season, for example: clearly skinhead. Some argue he might have used an old picture, but the lad was 15 at the time. His look would have been equally out of place in London in 1973 – or even 1971 – and he certainly looks older than 11 or 12 in the photo. You do the math. Incidentally, Jeff Freeman still seems to be a skinhead and a Chelsea fan today.

But back to Steve Goodman. He recalls skinhead slowly coming back in 1975, when the Cactus record label – a subsidiary of Creole Records, which I believe operated from Harlesden, west London – started “releasing a lot of commercial reggae” (including records by Judge Dread and reissues such as Desmond Dekker’s Israelites). According to Goodman, after the ‘dead years’, when he saw only about two or three skinheads a year, there were roughly 15 of them in 1975. This is interesting, as it would predate the small early revival scene around people like Suggs, Gary Hodges and Gary Hitchcock, who remember it as starting in 1976, and equally the Grove skins, who apparently began meeting by the Cowshed Pub at 355 Ladbroke Grove in 1976.

Goodman also remembers “bands like The Press, Mobsters and Headline” playing the London circuit together with early Madness, who I assume were probably still called North London Invaders, in the period before 2 Tone broke. I’d never heard these names before, but it seems that in 1976–78 there was a small pre-2 Tone ska/reggae revival scene of bands that largely disappeared into obscurity – not just in London, but also e.g. in the Spurs overspill town of Stevenage, where a band called The Paint House (named after the 1972 sociology book on skinheads) were doing the rounds.

Goodman says he doesn’t like politics and, amusingly, has no idea what the term ‘bonehead’ is supposed to mean: he has it explained to him by the interviewer. But enough talk from me – watch the short but fascinating interview. Apparently, there’s more skinhead documentary footage from 1984 to come from the same filmmaker, and we’re on tenterhooks.

Matt Crombieboy