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'I loved being part of that scene': 80s style tribes, then and now | Music

Carrie Kirkpatrick and Gill Soper, skinheads (above)

Carrie I got into punk at the age of 12, and went quite wild with it. It was a means of escape from difficult situations at home. I found it empowering; going to gigs and drinking and taking drugs was exciting. I felt free; but I was getting into trouble with the police.

There was a skinhead revival going on, and Gill suggested we get into that instead. Skinheads were more structured, not so wild. We wore smart clothes, we had perfect hair and nails.

I grew up in south London, surrounded by rightwing views. The area had seen a lot of immigration and it was very much a “them and us” attitude. I spent a lot of time making sure I deprogrammed my conditioning around racism. When you’re in a subculture as a kid, you’re doing it for the social scene, for the music, and to find yourself. In your 30s, 40s and 50s, it’s different: you can have shared interests with others, but you don’t have to do everything with them. Your relationships are more sophisticated.

When I showed the original photograph to my son, who is 11, he said, “You don’t look very happy!” But I wasn’t unhappy; I loved being part of that scene. I suppose we were just trying to look hard, weren’t we?

Carrie Kirkpatrick (left) and Gill Soper outside the toilets in Crystal Palace, London, in November 1980 (top) and April 2017 (above). All photographs: Anita Corbin

Gill Between 1978 and 1979, there were so many subcultures to choose from: punk, disco, reggae, mod, 2 Tone. I was a punk originally, but I couldn’t go the whole hog, because I was also into disco. If you turned up at a disco with a blue mohican, you wouldn’t be so welcome.

When you’re young, you latch on to the newest thing, which for us was being a skinhead. Everyone I knew was a punk one day, and then shaving their head and wearing jeans and braces the next.

It was the clothes that drew me. Well, it was the boys to start with, closely followed by the clothes and the music and the attitude. We all had suits made. There were the shirts, the feather cuts, the shoes.

My daughter was born not long after the original picture was taken, and I was “normal” for a while before turning skin again in my 20s. I was clearing out my mum’s house recently and found pictures of my daughter with a feather cut in primary school. She hates me for that. She stayed with my mum a bit, because by that time I had got into scooters and Northern Soul. I’m still into it: it’s a friendly scene and very tight-knit.

I’m 54 now, and things have definitely turned a corner for women my age. Of course, if you want to blend in, you can, but many women have been given a new lease of life. Your experience of age is what you make it, really. I’m going to the hairdressers right now, in fact, I’m having a feather cut and getting it dyed bright red.

‘I still like to be different. I live in a mobile home. I don’t have a TV. I avoid supermarkets’

Shelley Spencer and Di Sage, punks

Shelley Spencer (left) and Di Sage in the toilets at the White Swan, Crystal Palace, in November 1980

Shelley I grew up just outside Croydon in south London. One night, when I was 14, I was at the bus stop on my way to a social club and saw my first punks. One of them had lots of black makeup on, and the other had spiky hair and ripped clothes held together with safety pins. I remember thinking, “Wow.” Over that summer, 1977, I went from riding bikes and horses to going out with my sister and the Croydon Punks. It was huge fun.

I crimped my hair before work every day. I was working at the dole office in King’s Cross and you’d sometimes get musicians coming in to sign on. Dave Vanian from The Damned came in once. I said, “My sister enjoyed your gig last night!” He got all nervous and said, “We don’t get paid, you know,” worried that I would shop him.

Di and I met at school and used to go out three or four nights a week, but we lost touch when I went travelling. After 14 years, we reconnected. Since 2002, I’ve lived in rural France. I look at photos of me as a punk and think, “Ooh, I was quite gorgeous”, and realise that modern society’s view of women in their 50s is very negative.

What the past 36 years has taught me is that you are yourself, whatever else you do. You are not your children’s mother. You are not simply a wife. It is so important to put time aside to remember who you are.

Shelley Spencer (left) and Di Sage in Angoulême, France, in May 2017

Di When I was 17, I had a lot of fire in me. I’d do leaflet drops for the British Union For The Abolition Of Animal Vivisection. As part of a Stop The City protest, us punks would go to phone boxes and all call a number in the City at nine on a Monday morning, so the switchboards were jammed.

Being a punk provided a sense of belonging and of being different. It was fresh, exciting, fiery – and loud. Live music was a huge part of it.

I remember standing at a bus stop with my mother, and people would call me names across the street and she would get upset. People saw punk as aggressive, but I was just expressing myself. I was shy, but I liked to shock.

You’d not be seen dead with your hair flat. You’d do your best, even if it was raining, with a tin of hairspray and an umbrella. I still like to be different. I live in a mobile home, I don’t have a telly, I avoid supermarkets. I am not materialistic. I teach yoga now, and my students can’t believe I used to smoke and take recreational drugs. Yoga is my community and family; like punk, it’s about expressing yourself from the inside.

‘I remember thinking I was going to marry a mod, have a mod house and mod babies’

Tessa Morton and Charlotte Wager, mods

Charlotte Wager (left) and Tessa Morton at Tessa’s parents’ home in Highgate, London, in March 1981

Tessa We got into a 60s crowd when we were 16 and 17. Then we got into the scooter crowd. We loved that it was edgy; we didn’t want people to see that we were middle class. We wanted to be seen as a bit Quadrophenia, then we’d go home to nice Sunday lunches and warm beds and parents who didn’t quite know what we’d been up to.

We were really into 60s Motown, and boys with scooters were part of that scene. We had to be on the back of their scooters, because the good clubs were dotted all over London. Then Charlotte and I got our own scooters, and it became part of ouridentity. I remember thinking I was going to marry a mod, have a mod house and mod babies.

I’d tell my parents I was staying at Charlotte’s when in fact we were down in Brighton for the weekend. I still remember walking into a club and seeing a roomful of people saying, “Oh, Tessa and Charlotte are here!” We were very visible. I still don’t follow the rules. I don’t have cushions that match my curtains, I don’t follow recipes, and I don’t force my children to go to ballet. I want to be myself, to be authentic.

Charlotte Wager (left) and Tessa Morton at Tessa’s parents’ home in Highgate, London, in January 2014

Charlotte I live in Chicago now, and Tessa is in Warwickshire, but we have stayed close. I remember what it felt like to be a mod: exciting, part of a team; it was something you looked forward to, planned for, dressed up for.

In the 1980s, I became a CND youth leader. I was very into political activism, campaigning and organising marches. There was a bit of tension between that and the mod scene.

I spent the 1990s studying and working, first in London, and then at law school in the US. I was a young professional in Chicago, learning how to be a lawyer, becoming financially successful. I was still young and carefree, but in a different way: I had lots of work responsibility, but no kids.

Somewhere in there came the realisation that I wasn’t going to change the world in quite the way I thought. By 2003, I had four children under six and a busy practice. I was trying to be a successful lawyer and the perfect mother.

Until Trump’s election, I had become politically passive, and shame on me, because that’s what led us to where we are now. Now I am reinvigorated. My husband and I took our two youngest kids to the Women’s March in January.

I suppose my tribe now is Volleyball Mom. It’s my youngest daughter’s sport and I attend two dozen tournaments a year. It’s similar to the mod scene: we used to go on scooter rallies to the Isle of Wight; now I drive to Michigan and Wisconsin for tournaments. It’s a subculture of sorts.

‘We weren’t scared of much. Either the world was less scary, or it was the courage of youth’

Linda Robinson and her sister Susan Stecker

Linda Robinson (left) and Susan Stecker outside Southgate tube station, London, in March 1981

Linda I remember this being taken; we were 15 and 17. I saw it for the first time 35 years later, when it was posted on Facebook. I had to call Susan. We were like, “Oh, God, how awful we look!”

In my teens, I loved having my photograph taken; Southgate station had a photo booth, so we would all crowd in there. I had an Instamatic and was always at Boots, getting pictures developed. If I took a photo I didn’t like, I ripped it up and no one would ever see it. It’s different for my four daughters. I see the stress they go through, looking at images of themselves on social media.

We are Jewish, so that was our scene. In our early teens, we’d hang out at McDonald’s or the Baskin-Robbins in Golders Green, and we would go to pubs – not to drink, but to hang around outside. We’d go to Hampstead and meet at The Milk Churn for a salad or ice-cream and hang out there all night to meet new people. Boys, mainly.

In our 20s, we went to the Camden Palace, where all the New Romantics were. I remember feeling inferior, because they had made such a statement with their clothes and makeup. I remember the skins, the punks, the fights.

I didn’t have any particular statement to make. My dream wasn’t to rebel, but to be financially sound and not reliant on a man. I got a job as a John Lewis fashion buyer at 16 and bought my first flat at 22. I regret not travelling, though.

Linda Robinson (left) and Susan Stecker outside Southgate tube station, London, in April 2017

Susan I was too young to be aware of what a subculture was. We weren’t really part of one, but we wouldn’t have been scared of punks or crossed the street if we saw some. I don’t think we were scared of much, really. Either the world was a less scary place, or it was the courage of youth.

We wore whatever was in fashion. I think the sweatshirt I’m wearing was from Miss Selfridge. On a night out, we would have friends round or go to a friend’s house. There were clubs and events put on especially for the London Jewish teenage scene, and we used to go to those. We weren’t drinking, really, but if we did it would be something like Malibu or Cinzano. We’d arrange to meet at a certain place. It’s bizarre thinking about it now: having no mobiles, you just had to wait for people to arrive.

A lot of the clubs would play disco, but I also liked Spandau Ballet, Adam and the Ants, Heaven 17, David Bowie. I had my own stereo with a cassette and record player, and lots of 12-inch singles. I think music has much less of an influence on fashion now. It’s the age of celebrity.

‘It was about wanting to be different from my parents. By 16, I had a pink mohican’

Helen de Jode and Emma Hall

Helen de Jode (left) and Emma Hall in Wimbledon, London, in August 1980

Emma I was 14 in that picture, the same age as my daughter is now. It is currently half-term, and both she and my 13-year-old son are roaming free in north London, so I suppose their lives are quite similar to mine.

Those tartan trousers were the ones I wore on a CND rally, which culminated in a Killing Joke concert at Trafalgar Square. I wasn’t political at that age; it was more about being part of something. I didn’t have dreams of the future and neither was I trying to escape anything. I think that’s partly because I came from a secure home. I just thought everything would turn out OK. More than anything, it was about wanting to be different from my parents. They were nothing more terrible than middle class and conventional, but the only way to rebel was to look abnormal, so by 16 I had a pink mohican.

As you’re growing up, you are trying on your identity, working it out, trying to find like-minded people. I have a strong sense of myself now, though I think identity is something you search for but never really find.

Helen de Jode (left) and Emma Hall in Finsbury Park, London, in May 2017

Helen It was 1980, and we used to listen to the Stranglers and the Clash. We were very London-based; we didn’t think a great deal about the rest of the world, or listen to music from anywhere else. I think about my children now and can’t imagine them having nearly as much freedom as we had. When we were out, we were completely uncontactable.

There was a group of us who shared similar clothes and went out together, but Emma and I were the only ones at the same school. I remember saying to her once: “I think I have seen you every single day this year.”

At 51, I don’t think of myself as part of a group. The friends I have are friends for their individual personalities, rather than because of something we all have in common.

Everything is so much more global nowadays. My children watch American TV and listen to international music, and there is nothing local that might offer them a sense of identity, except maybe a football club.

My friendship with Emma has evolved throughout our lives. After graduating from uni, I lived and worked in Africa for 10 years; Emma worked in Paris and New York, before settling in London. As young mothers, we lived in neighbouring streets in Highbury; now, I’m living in Sydney. We’re still good friends and see each other a couple of times a year. In many situations, you can present the picture you want others to see, but with someone who has known you since you were 11, you can only be who you truly are.

‘We would sneak off to the airbase to practise our moves on their wooden dancefloor’

Nicole Le Strange, aka Quasi, and Sue Lenham, aka Squasher, rockabillies

Nicole Le Strange (left) and Sue Lenham at the Royalty in Southgate, London, in March 1981

Nicole People called me Quasi because I did a great impersonation of Quasimodo. I was 18. I loved rockabilly music, the clothes, the hairstyles, the dancing, but it was also my refuge. I grew up being told by my mother that I wasn’t good enough because I wasn’t a boy, because I was ugly, because I was too tall and too skinny. Then I met this group, and Sue in particular, and they didn’t want me to change. I felt like a superhero.

I never really liked this picture, but I recently realised it’s not about how I look, it’s about what the photograph means. There I am at such a hard time in my life, but I’m with Sue, who loved me unconditionally – with whom I could be, and still can be, exactly who I want to be.

Even into my early 30s, I remember watching the movie Thelma And Louise and there’s this one line, “You get what you settle for”, and I realised that had been my life. I hadn’t got what I wanted; I had basically done what other people told me I should be doing – including having children, if I’m completely honest. I have three children, and one grandchild. I suddenly realised there was a whole world out there.

In the past 14 years, I have rebuilt my life. For the last five years, my partner and I have lived all over Europe. I’m 54 and feel completely free. At 18, I wasn’t certain what freedom meant.

Nicole Le Strange (left) and Sue Lenham in Kranjska Gora, Slovenia, in April 2017

Sue Nobody else was into rock’n’roll when I was at school: it was too retro. My dad brought us up, which was unusual in the 1960s, and my family situation was challenging. I had to be independent and the scene let me express myself. I found out later that my dad had been an Edwardian, a particular type of teddy boy. It turned out we had frequented the same haunts: unknowingly, I was following in his footsteps. People called me Squasher because my surname sounded like lemon, which became squasher lemon.

Nikki and I would sneak off to Mildenhall airbase to practise our dance moves on their great wooden dancefloor. The men assumed we were gay, because we danced together, which was good, really, because we didn’t want any of them bothering us.

Of course there was gang stuff going on, but I’d do anything not to be in a fight. I remember we snuck in to see Quadrophenia when it opened and we were the only rockers there. We wore jeans and checked shirts, no leathers, but we were terrified we might get done on the way out.

I didn’t get on with my sister and Nikki had family problems, too, so we were both sort-of orphans and became each other’s family. I looked out for her. I knew quite early on that I didn’t want children or a family. Because of my childhood, I had decided to choose my family from my friends. I looked after them and they looked after me, and we still do.

These days, I would say I was a bippy, or a biker-hippy. I go to motorbike rallies twice a year to keep me feeling mad, bad and dangerous to know: we have the hippy mentality, but we’re all bald or short-haired; the average age is between 40 and 60. We bond over our non-conformism. I’ve always been a bit “rage against the machine” in that way.

• These photographs are from Visible Girls: Revisited, an exhibition that opens in Hull on 7 July before a UK-wide tour; go to visiblegirls.com for details.

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