Art, Mods, Music.

t r A

Mods

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Choosing a particular period from 1800 to the present, in what ways has art or design responded to the changing social and cultural forces of that period?

In the 1960’s during a wave of post war affluence lots of social and cultural changes emerged such as the young become more affluent, and even the working class youth earning twice as much as they were before the war, this led to changes in behaviour, music, fashion and beliefs. This created a whole new youth culture that forced its way into society and formed its own identity;

“having its own economic, political and moral agenda that postulated more pluralist patterns of production and consumption. The intervention of youth in the market place and design was manifest in two separate waves of activity beginning in the 1950’s.” (Jobling & Crowley, 1996, p211) The most forceful and visible showing of this was the emergence of the ‘mods’ in 1962.

“Newspaper reports of the mods, the fashion obsessed

and hedonistic cult of the hyper-cool which emerged in the early 1960s, for example, almost invariably referred to the financial investment spelled out in pounds, shilling and pence that they made in clothes and other accoutrements of style. An underlying tone of disapproval ran throughout these articles which, though recognising young people as skilled an knowing consumers, also characterised them as obsessive: the Daily Mail recorded that one mod interviewed ‘used to go without food to buy clothes’.” (Jobling & Crowley, 1996, p212).

After the war there was a wave of post war affluence, where teenagers and young people had lots of disposable income. This let to Britain’s teenagers having lots of disposable income, in “1955 fifteen to nineteen year olds constituted 6.5% of the population, which rose to

8% by 1963.” (Jobling & Crowley, 1996, p211) This combined with the amount of disposable income teenagers had given rise to a plethora of subculture, the most notable one being the “mods”, who emerged in 1962.

The mods pushed the barriers of what was seen as conventional behaviour and also gave themselves an identity in the types of clothes they wore and the style they had, they were seen as the cool of the cool in the early 1960’s.

“They wore apparently conservative suits in respectable colours, they were fastidiously neat and tidy.

Hair was generally short and clean, and the mods preferred to maintain the stylish contours of an impeccable ‘French Crew’ with invisible lacquer rather than the obvious grease favoured by the more masculine rockers. The mods invented a style which enabled them to negotiate smoothly between school work and lei-

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sure…Somewhere on the way home from school or work the mods went missing: they were absorbed into a ‘noonday underground’ of cellar clubs, discotheques, boutiques and record shops.” (Hebdige, 1979, p52)

The music and the style went hand in hand and the mod exemplified “pure, unadulterated style, the essence of style…the pastiche of mod style was both self conscious and self effacing, and it transformed the original object of desire at every level of the mod experience.” (Jobling & Crowley, 1996, p213) This meant that the “union jack became one of the floating signifiers in the context of pop design, at one extreme being used by Pete Townsend of The Who as fabric for a jacket.” (Jobling & Crowley, 1996, p213)

Graphic design was seen as a major device at these times and it was the pop music industry that it was used most influentially in the marketing of bands and on the image they portrayed on their record sleeves. “Graphic Design was of particular significance within this context, since it was both an affordable and an extremely versatile means of self-expression – visibly ubiquitous as posers, record sleeves, packaging, printed ephemera and magazines.”

(Jobling & Crowley, 1996, p212). The man that realised this was paramount was Brain Epstein manager of The Beatles. Being such an influential band that had began to change the music industry with their music they now started a revolution in record

sleeve design.

This started with the cover for “Please, Please Me” in 1963.

Which used a photograph of the band looking down a stairway in EMI headquarters and was photographed by Angus McBean a well-known fashion photographer. The difference between this and other record covers was that it was commissioned and had an idea behind it, it represented the new movement in graphic design. Also the type on the cover is very modernist which fitted in with the 60’s and the themes within other graphic design then.

And using all these things marketed The Beatles exactly where they wanted to be and send the message out that they were the new big thing, they were fashionable and the future of popular music,

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which of course they were.

Although the cover “has been dismissed by historians of the period as being unimaginative and muddled, yet in essence formed a stark, conceptual contrast to most of the unadventurous album covers which were released either before or after it by other artistes.”

(Jobling & Crowley, 1996, p215).

For the youth movement and mod bands such as the Small Faces, The Who, Yardbirds and The Everly Brothers; portraying their image through their record sleeves was very important.

The Everly Brothers – Songs Our Daddy Taught Us, was “produced in a very ad hoc manner, featuring straightforward head and shoulders portraits or studio photographs

which were after elaborated with lettering or other graphic devices” (Jobling & Crowley, 1996, p215).

The Small Faces where a massive band who were born out of mod subculture they had the mod look, great tunes which let them to become one of the biggest mod bands around, their first album “Whatcha Gonna Do About It”, the record cover showed the band at a bowling alley, in their signature mod style of muted colours, blazers, shirts, and the infamous 60’s mod haircut. The cover followed a fairly simple format from a graphic design point of view with just using a photograph of the band and boldly placing the name of the band at the top using a sans-serif typeface and then just the album name. But it wasn’t the

graphic design aspect that mattered to the consumer it was the style and vibe the band gave of, with the mods it was their signature style.

The Who were another great band associated with the mods, their debut record cover for “My Generation” also followed virtually the same format as the aforementioned Small Faces cover. It was simply just an aerial photograph of the band and the name of the band and album in the top left and bottom right corners respectively. But it was all about what the band looked like and the fashion they had on, Pete Townsend had on the jacket he used the union jack as material for, the union jack being “one of the floating signifiers in the context of pop design” (Jobling

& Crowley, 1996, p213), and the colours being heavily associated with the mods. The rest of the band had muted coloured suits on, portraying that smart but easily versatile style of the mods, and of course they all sported the infamous haircut of the long side burns, straight cut fringe sort of bowl cut look.

The band where seen as an iconic band of the 60’s.

The Jam were also a great mod band, who came about in the 70’s and started the mod revival, fronted by Paul Weller who is know as the Modfather, they pioneered that rocky mod sound, there record sleeves also represented this.

Their album “This Modern World” showed the band high up in a building block looking

out on the world. This was a show on the cultural and social changes that the mods brought about, it showed how they believed that they would challenge conventional behaviour and do what they wanted. The fact that The Jam were relatively young showed how young people thought they could do anything and be successful at it. This has stayed with society forever and now everyone believes that if you want to do something you can go and achieve it. They still sported the mod fashion, which was especially shown in there haircut and this has lived on for Weller ever since and he has been dubbed “The Modfather”.

“The Jam wore smartly tailored suits rather than ripped clothes, and they incorporated a number of mainstream

1960s rock influences rather than rejecting them, placing The Jam at the forefront of the mod revival movement…

The trio was known for its melodic pop songs, its distinctly English flavour and its mod image.” (BBC Music, The Jam) Overall, it seems that the change in art and design, and the change in cultural forces go hand in hand. They seem to have a direct bearing on each other, the style of the mods contributed to a different style of art and design.

The way this came about was the use of fashion and music to create avenues for different types of design, wether it be posters, record sleeves, packaging, printed ephemera or magazines, it allowed an avenue for the whole movement in cultural forces and art

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and design to be shown and for the connections between the two to be shown.

To show an example I will use The Beatles and the craze that was Beatlemania, the change in style, music and the arts was shown in every aspect

by The Beatles there record sleeves were ubiquitous of the times, “The Beatles could, therfore be said to have completley transformed the visual appeal and symbolism of the record sleeve during the 1960s. But the impact of Beatlemania on graphic design did not just generate a more inventive and thoughtful approach to record covers; it can also be seen to have contributed to the development of new types of pop photojournals.� (Jobling & Crowley, 1996, p 218).

Bibliography Hebdige, Dick (1979), Subculture The Meaning Of Style, New York, Routledge Jobling, Paul/Crowley, David (1996), Graphic Design: Reproduction and Representation, Manchester, Manchester University Press Jackson, Lesley (2000), The Sixties: Decade of Design Revolution, London, Phaidon Jackson, Lesley (2000), Sixties Design, Cologne, Taschen Barnes, Richard (1991), Mods!, London, Plexus Gareth Brown (2010), Mods and Rockers, England, Independent Music Press Mellor, David (1993), The Sixties Art Scene in London,

London, Phaidon BBC Music – The Jam (http:// www.bbc.co.uk/music/ artists/23228f18-01d5-493e94ce-cfcde82a8db2)

Gregory Ball Graphic Design