Shocks of Mighty

Weird how things you haven't thought about for years come into focus suddenly through random association; after reading Paulie's post about his time as a skinhead a while back, I had a conversation shortly afterwards with Bill Mize about skinhead girls' haircuts. (I know.)

Anyway, it reminded me of a book I first read in my art college (hey, I was a former punk!) library by Nick Knight (later a well known fashion photographer) called 'Skinhead'. First published in 1982, it features some iconic black and white shots of skins around London, and a guide to their music and fashion. I dug my copy out and snapped a couple of pages.

My experience of skinheads was a couple of beatings and regular escapes from gangs of them in north London in the early eighties. They were everywhere during the '70s-80s revival; I even ill-advisedly adopted the 'look' for a short while which resulted in an attack in our local high street from the real thing. Ha! The friend I was with was kicked on the ground simultaneously by about six skinheads, which lifted him into the air off the pavement and into the road in front of a bus: an achievement I've never witnessed since.

When I lived in Australia, one of my ex-pat mates was Scott Russell, a proper ex-skinhead from Catford who had '70s skin tattoos nestling amidst his sleeves and had great stories about fights and gigs and the scene back then that were almost unbelievable in their ferocity and violence-as-leisure offhandedness.

Anyway, if you haven't got 'Skinhead', it's a good read: you can get reprints on Ebay.