About
Jason Brummell - in his own words.......
I was
born in Guildford in 1970 – I wasn’t even conceived in the sixties being born
in the October… I don’t think I have ever really forgiven my parents for that!
Three-day
weeks, flared trousers, doing toast against the electric three-bar fire, power-cuts,
my brother arriving ’73, Shoot magazine’s with the league ladders, staying up
to watch the Goodies, sticking to the PVC seats of my Dad’s Renault 4… and
again to those in the Escort, trips to Brighton, Museums, HMS Victory,
libraries… it was free in those days, Vesta boil-in-a-bag curries, My old Man
going ‘Gertcha’ to me and my brother, black and white telly, getting a Raleigh
Grifter with no second gear, getting flared trousers caught in gears of said
Raleigh Grifter, Camping in France and eating tins of Bacon Grill, Top of the
Pops on a Thursday night, Nanny B’s fried-egg door-step sized sandwiches
garnished with cigarette ash, walking to school in a snorkel parka, playing
football up the park and practising free-kicks over the wall up the side of the
house and alwaysleaping over the gate on the way home… maybe the 70s weren’t so
bad!
I was
re-born probably about 1980. I discovered The Beatles through my mum’s record
collection (much better than the old Blues and Jazz rubbish of my old man’s)
and set about the jumble-sales and car-boots (what we did with old things
nobody wanted before E-bay!) with my collection of 20 pences from saved up
pocket money and boughtRevolver as one of the first two albums I ever bought
(along with With The Beatles… not sure which was first but they were both about
the same time). I truly existed in this world when I heard that record. I used
to play it over and over again and it’s just as well they had super thick
heavy-weight vinyl back then as I’m sure it would have been worn through in no
time!
There
was a record shop in Haslemere then. Where the motorcycle shop was for a while
before like many places these days, it was knocked down and stands empty with
an 8ft fence surrounding the derelict ground. They used to do all the Old-Gold
singles and the Beatles singles with the green front covers all for about 99p.
I was a frequent visitor although I’m sure they tired of me buying an album,
bringing it home, recording it (through the air into a separate tape-recorder)
and taking it back for a refund, lying about how ‘My Mum’s bought it for my
birthday’… I was ten years old, cheeky and seemingly with more birthday’s than
the Queen. These were happy days!
I was
about 12 when I first heard The Jam – I remember watching them and the Specials
on TOTP on our new Colour TV. My Cousin Steve was a huge fan of both bands but
especially The Jam. My mum and Dad both worked so we often used to go out in
Dad’s lorry and get dropped off at my Aunty Eileen’s as he went and loaded up
from the Builders Yard (we weren’t supposed to be in the lorry with him). It
was there that I got to play The Jam’s singles on the old Dansette which piled
up the singles about six-high before they started to get a bit wobbly
sound-wise in his room with the posters and his prized boating blazer hung on
the back of the door.
Start!
by The Jam… It’s Tax-Man by the Beatles… This could be good… The Beatles always
had great B-sides Rain, I’m Down, Don’t Let Me Down etc and I always believed a
real music fan is denoted by his love of B-sides. I play Liza Radley and I’m in
love. This brilliant quintessentially English music has given my life purpose
and I become a huge fan of Paul Weller from that day to this! (His latest trio
of albums from 22 Dreams to Sonik Kicks is as good as anything he’s ever done!)
The
older lads at school are all Mods, or at very least the cooler ones. I was 12
years old and had sold my soul and all my worldly goods, possessions and
chattels to being a Mod and all things sixties. The Who, The Kinks, The Small
Faces, Otis, Wilson Pickett, Motown & Stax. I read everything and anything
I can about the original Mods, frequently going to the library and photocopying
the relevant pages and soon my room starts to resemble my cousins. I cycle (now
a five speed racer bought off one of my Dad’s work-mates) to Guildford and
visit Guildford Record Collectors shop and buy old Who and Kinks records to go
with some from my mum’s record collection from the loft that now reside in my
chest of drawers. Frequently I catch the edges of LP’s in the spokes so they
end up with funny rounded corners. The choices are hanging them of the
handle-bars in carrier bags or stuffing them up the front of my Fred Perry or
favourite orange and white cycling shirt, purchased on another camping trip to
France, which generally did little or no favours aero-dynamically… it didn’t
matter I had to feed my Mod fix.
I was
probably about 14 or 15 when I first saw Quadrophenia at my mate Rick’s house
from a copy taped off the telly – remember this is before VHS and BetaMax and
DVD’s was only something you could catch of women of ill repute. I loved it and
immediately wanted a scooter – A GS scooter with my hair cut neat. I remember
buying the soundtrack LP and the original but of all things it was the booklet
of the original that really captured my imagination. It was just a shame I’d
rounded some of the pages off getting it home.
I got my
first scooter largely thanks to my Gran who used to go in the side-car of my
Granddad’s motorbike in the late forties and early fifties when he was home
from the Merchant Navy. It was a black Vespa PK50 and was slow, very slow and
even slower still once I put the lights and mirrors all over the crash bars. It
was augmented by two thin stripes one in white and one in gold put on
painstakingly by hand giving it the much sort after (of the day) look of the
JPS Special. My best mate Rick had a blue Vespa 50 Special small frame with a
chrome engine-door flap and chrome mudguard and we went everywhere on our
mighty steeds. Having spent many a year sat at the Hindhead traffic lights
every August Bank Holiday just to see the Mods and scooters going to the Isle
of Wight I now went under my own steam.
The
purity of those days haunt my dreams still as they really were the days of my
life. Not that everything we did was innocent – far from it on occasion, but
everyday seemed to last forever and all-nighters seemed to speed deliriously
by. On a selfish level, those days lost in the sun-shine and the moon-light
before seriousness and obligation and growing up got in the way, between 16 and
about 19, living from wage packet to wage packet, were probably the happiest of
my life.
My
twenties were tougher. I still loved the Mod scene and often rode long
distances to attend all-nighters before coming back in the early hours with
frost forming on my parka. Events in West London and Hayling Island were fairly
regular from my rented accommodation in Woking. I also learn that my Dad’s
record collection of old blues and jazz was way more Mod than my mums of the
Beatles and the Kinks. In the meantime between Style Council concerts, Vespa’s
and Lambretta’s and back again I get a marriage and a mortgage – It was no bed
of roses! That nice mister Lamont, Chancellor of the Exchequer of the day,
raises interest rates to 15% and living from wage packet to wage packet took on
a whole new meaning – going weekly shopping with £10 and a calculator knowing
that the first two quid was for cat food. Sitting under duvets, with the cat,
watching tv as we couldn’t afford the heating. We never stood a chance both
working double-shifts and all the over-time available, constantly tired and we
separated getting divorced some years later.
Good
friends rallied round and as the economy improved and despite having taken on
the mortgage (and the cat) myself; a pay-rise meant I could start to live a
little again. I had a mad, mad couple of years in the mid-nineties clubbing
every Friday and Saturday and just having a truly hedonistic time of it all –
sex and drugs and rock-n-roll – the full monty! I met another girl and really
fell in love. I thought I’d loved my wife but didn’t realise what love was
until I met this girl. Her raison d’etre was that when she was seventy to have
grandchildren on her knees and be showing them 7 books each with a chapter of
her life in from a different place (apparently there are seven continents). I
loved her to bits but she left to pursue her dream and went off to teach
English in foreign climes and although we kept in touch for a while it
gradually tailed off. Her having left like that always reminds me of Dylan’s
Boots of Spanish Leather and I have always loved the song as it hit my feelings
of the time fairly and squarely on the head.
After
the post girl blues my life changed dramatically with meeting another fantastic
woman and moving to Chichester. It was there that things were really starting
to look up. I started a new job at a Media Company after 13 years at the
previous one (a printers where I successfully managed to get my hands cleaner
as I went along moving into management) and things were going well.
I met a
guy in Chichester. He was undoubtedly a Mod and was in the same antiques shop I
was – I struck up a conversation showing him an old Bognor Lambretta Badge-Bar
I’d just bought in there (years later he told me that he was in the shop to buy
it too but I’d beaten him to it) and generally asked him what was happening Mod
Scene wise in the area. He asked if I had a scooter which I did and at the time
was a blue/white Li150 series II. Conversation continued to the point of
arranging to meet at the Chequers pub (Somewhere else now btw that is a
derelict patch of ground surrounded by an eight-foot high fence) on our
scooters, he having TV175 series II. We get on like a house on fire, this guy
was no mug he knew Mod inside and out, just like me. It was his passion too. It
was his life too.
His name
was (and still is funnily enough) Paul and through him I meet what becomes the
original Suave Collective. Paul, me, John, Nic and Keith and for about three
years we meet up every Wednesday down the Beach Hut in Bognor where a small Mod
do takes place and I lose many of many records to the young DJ’s who we were
trying almost to teach sage-like our beautiful world of Mod.
Life had
its up’s and downs after that. I had a beautiful son but after another break up
and a move nearer to work in Aldershot I only got to see him every other week
or so. That said every time I do see him I can’t help but smile and feel with
him as close as I could to those great days between 16 and 19 years of age.
I’m in
my mid-forties now and I still feel as Mod as I ever did. The more I learn, the
more Mod I feel. The Suave Collective now including Shane, Nigel and Mark still
meet up, not as often as we did, but we all make an effort when we can. We all
still do the IOW or Brighton on our scooters when we can (I have that Vespa GS
now!)
I’m
married again now to a gorgeous woman, who I love very much, along with her
three kids and a beautiful and an achingly funny baby daughter between us and a
mad dog. A recent move back to the South Coast from London has given us all a
fresh start, nearer my both my son and the Suave Collective and only a five
minute walk from the beach and you know what… for the most part I am pretty
happy these days!
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