The Baby Boomer Generation (11 page)

The miniskirt, The Beatles and the E-Type Jaguar immediately spring to mind when recalling icons of the 1960s, but they were just the icing on the cake. The decade was crammed full of special people and events that would forever be regarded as symbols of the 1960s. England won the football World Cup in 1966 and we have revelled in that glory ever since, but at the time we didn't fully appreciate and celebrate the achievement as we would if England won it today; there was so much else going on in 1966. This was a very special time, a period of social, economic and political history that will always be fondly remembered, and the music and fashions of the 1960s will always be admired. From the mini skirt to the topless swimsuit, the 1960s revolutionised twentieth-century fashions, and many items have survived the test of time and still remain at the height of fashion. There are also lots of 1960s singer/songwriters, including Bob Dylan and Paul McCartney, who are still recording and entertaining us today.

The 1960s were all about war and peace, and everything in between; from the Vietnam War to flower power and the summer of love; from the twist to the locomotion, and from the Mersey Sound to blue beat, the 1960s were never boring.

‘If you can remember anything about the sixties, you weren't really there,' is a famous quote by Paul Kantner, the American psychedelic rock musician. However, there are still many people around today who did manage to get through that magical decade without succumbing to the drug-fuelled dream world that scrambled the minds of some. Yes, I remember the sixties and I was really there; it was a great time to be a teenager living in London. To borrow a couple of lines from Mary Hopkin's hit song of 1968 (English lyrics by Gene Raskin),
‘
Those were the days, my friend! We thought they'd never end. Those were the days. Oh yes, those were the days!'

Kipper Ties, Shagpile and Discontent

I
t was very sad having to wave goodbye to the 1960s, and for many of us the saddest moment of all was waking up on New Year's Day and having to face up to the fact that we were now in the 1970s. We really did believe that the atmosphere of the 1960s would go on forever. At the very least, we expected the mood to carry on into the next decade, but end it did, and as if in an instant, pretty much everything changed and we baby boomers came down to earth with a terrible bump. There were certainly plenty of clues around in the late 1960s to show that our sense of fashion was starting to wane when we began flirting with things like hot pants, tie-dyed shirts and frayed bell-bottomed jeans. Women had taken to wearing brightly patterned, polyester jumpsuits, sometimes referred to as hostess pyjamas, with culottes-style of flared leggings, and there was even a short-lived craze for women's disposable paper knickers. However, there were a number of late 1960s fashion disasters that went on to become very popular 1970s fads. Many of these would have been regarded as cringeworthy in the mid-1960s but they were perfectly suited to the new wacky world of hotchpotch 1970s style. The new-wave fashion gurus of the 1970s were keen to have a style revolution that would be as ground-breaking and far-reaching as the 1960s one had been. We certainly saw some strange sights on our streets during the 1960s but none so strange as we were about to witness in the 1970s world of all things weird and wonderful. All at once, we seemed to lose any sense of style and good taste and we appeared to be oblivious to what was happening. Our trend-setting teenage years were now just distant memories and we became feeble followers of fashion rather than the leaders we once were. Perhaps we just lost interest in it all and stood back to allow a younger generation to make their own sweeping changes as we had done ten years before. Whatever the reason, surely us baby boomers cannot be held responsible for the succession of embarrassing outfits and styles that paraded our streets during the 1970s. Yes, we did succumb to wearing such things as kipper ties but only because it was hard to find anything else in the shops at the time.

The clean-cut hairstyles of the 1960s were abandoned and we allowed our hair to grow excessively long. Men's hairstyles now ranged from the perfectly cut, blow-dry look to that of a neglected shaggy dog. There was also a lot of strangely sculptured facial hair, which did nothing to improve the image of the 1970s man. We also began to see exaggerated versions of the mullet hairstyle emerge, similar to that worn by Tom Jones for a period in the late 1960s. Although the style didn't reach the peak of its popularity until the 1980s, the likes of David Bowie and Paul McCartney proudly sported this short-top-and-sides and long-at-the back mullet cut during the 1970s. As always, women did their best to be creative, using large rollers to shape and create volume in the hair, then landscaping it with all sorts of lacquered flicks and curls. Later in the 1970s, women tended to use much less lacquer and hairstyles became more free-flowing and wispy in appearance, typified by the three girls in the 1970s
Charlie's Angels
television series. The large Afro-style, ball-shaped hairdo was very popular among black men and women and many black entertainers adopted the style to its extreme, as with some members of 1970s pop groups, like The Jackson Five and The Stylistics. The miniskirts of the 1960s remained fashionable throughout the 1970s, thank goodness, but flashing back to what we remember of the 1970s fashion revolution tends to evoke less-favourable images: things like the aforementioned kipper ties and the snug-fitting tank-tops that were matched with colourful bell-bottomed ankle-swingers that looked down on peculiar-looking platform shoes. As far as fashion was concerned, the 1970s could be described as the era of ‘big hair and big flare'. We were exposed to the extraordinary sights of glam rock with men in makeup, and punks who wore safety pins and spiked collars as jewellery. There was also a nationwide army of Bay City Roller fans who wore tartan ankle swingers in homage to their pop idols. The period is commonly referred to as ‘the decade that style forgot'. A little harsh perhaps, but some of those 1970s fashions were simply unforgivable, and for that reason it might be wise for us to keep our old photograph albums hidden away in a dusty corner of the attic where nobody is likely to find them.

We certainly had peculiar ideas of what looked good in the 1970s, and this peculiarity was not restricted to the clothes we wore. We acquired an all-round tasteless streak that affected our ability to distinguish between what was chic and what was tacky, and we managed to combine these two features to create an overall impression of bad taste. We began to decorate and furnish our homes differently, with trendy geometrically patterned wallpapers, glass-topped chrome tables and yards and yards of shagpile carpet. Our homes were awash with all shades of purple, orange and brown. We became obsessed with the colour brown; from bedspreads to curtains, we just couldn't get enough of it. We ripped out the traditional white enamelled, cast-iron bathtubs and replaced them with new mass-produced, lightweight acrylic ones. We could now buy complete bathroom suites in all sorts of colours, from the reddish purple of maroon to avocado shades of green, and of course chocolate brown was one of the most popular colours. The bathroom was no longer seen as just a utility room – a cold wash place that we nipped in and out of as quickly as possible. It was now a room in which we could spend time and relax while pampering ourselves with fragrant bubble baths and splashes of Brut cologne. We installed heating in the bathroom, applied mirror tiles to the walls and we even laid fitted carpets – very chic but impractical and not very hygienic. We went on to create feature walls in our living rooms, which we clad in tongue-and-grooved pine panels, wood grain wallboards and cork tiles. The brown epidemic of the early 1970s quickly spread to our wardrobes and very soon we found ourselves dressed from head to toe in all shades of brown, and preferably in fabrics made from synthetic materials that would create a lot of static electricity to make our hair stand on end and surprise us with electric shocks when we touched something metal – it was the sparkling 1970s in more ways than one.

Many of us baby boomers may well be able to distance ourselves from the worst of the clothing fashion blunders of the 1970s because, by then, we were too old to get caught up in any of the extreme teenybopper crazes that came and went in the passing years. As long as those dusty old photograph albums never see the light of day then we can boast that we managed to resist the temptation of wearing any of those dodgy patterned tank tops, gaudy dungarees and flared satin trousers. We can unashamedly claim to have maintained our dignity and sense of style throughout the 1970s by dressing only in sophisticated and classic styles, which fortunately could still be found in some of the high street shops. In retrospect, it seems reasonable for modern-day critics to label the 1970s as ‘the decade that style forgot', but at the time I suppose we all fell into the trap of thinking it was all very innovative and progressive. There was certainly nothing wrong in trendsetters trying to establish a special 1970s identity. Well, they did that all right!

A lot of the 1970s bashing is actually done tongue in cheek, but it is as well that we are a self-deprecating nation and by nature find it easy to laugh at ourselves; we can't really do much else when there is so much photographic evidence to show what 1970s Britain was like. Apart from the wonderful long, hot summer of 1976, which cheered our spirits, much of the decade was clouded in an atmosphere of gloom and we needed plenty of frivolous distractions to give us reasons to smile. Many people have grounds to look back fondly on the period and they will remember it as being a fun and exciting decade. These are usually the 1970s children and teenagers who were living at home with mum and dad at the time, and were too young to have first-hand experience of the serious side of the decade, with all of the associated unrest and hardship. We all like to think of our own childhood and teenage years as being the best of times and it is no different for the generation that grew up in the 1970s. This was before technological gadgetry began to dominate young people's lives; when youngsters were still very active and playing outside a lot. They played all the traditional games that we used to play and they had additional playthings that had been made possible through the skills of innovative designers using advanced manufacturing processes; from space hoppers to skateboards, they had a much greater choice of toys than ever before and they had plenty to occupy themselves. For the older kids and young adults, there was a lot going on in popular culture to provide enjoyment and help smooth their way through the years: from the seemingly innocence teenage pop idols like The Osmonds and David Cassidy to the larger-than-life singers and musicians such as David Bowie, Elton John and Queen, and of course Abba, the most successful musical act of the 1970s. We baby boomers might by then have been too dignified or perhaps too old to be seen shaking our booties around the disco dance floors, but we were young enough to appreciate the best of 1970s popular music and we have our own lasting memories of wall-to-wall funk and disco music. And then, in August 1977, we shed a tear and said goodbye to Elvis Presley, the King of rock and roll. His music had been a timeline in our lives and now he was gone. Very soon after Elvis' sad death, our hearts were cheered with images of John Travolta strutting his stuff to the sounds of The Bee Gees in the film
Saturday Night Fever
. Those dance floor images will remain etched in our minds forevermore. While the younger generation were absorbed in glam, punk rock and heavy metal, most of us baby boomers remained loyal to 1960s music, especially Tamla Motown, R&B and much of the Mersey Sound. We have to acknowledge that there was a lot of good new-sounding popular music around in the 1970s and the enormous catalogue now has an easily identifiable genre of its own. Even if you know next to nothing about popular music, you only have to hear a 1970s record on the radio and you can immediately recognise it as being from that era.

We should also credit the mood of the 1970s for having inspired talented filmmakers to produce large numbers of ground-breaking films. Many of the 1970s blockbuster films are now regarded as classics. There are far too many to mention them all by name but here a few of the noteworthy ones: