Sawdust Caesar: The Pioneers of Youth Rebellion

by howard-baker

The early to mid-1960s was when youth ran wild for the first time. Unlike their Teddy Boy predecessors, those in their teens openly defied society's rules. School-boys, school-leavers, mere kids, took to wearing brightly-coloured clothes. In direct contrast to the white music beloved of the Rockers, these Mods - as they were soon labelled by the media - listened to little but the music of their black friends in the clubs of Soho and the basement parties of Brixton. Black and white youngsters mixed freely. This was a period of spontaneous and exuberant rebellion untouched and unadulterated by market forces, which paved the way for a host of less pure and more celebrated hippies, yippies and punks for example. This is an exploration of this little-known period of popular culture, charting the fashions, the music and the ideologies of the time.

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

Reviews

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

While there has been a fair amount of pulp fiction about the skinhead subculture (most notably Richard Allen's Joe Hawkins series in the early to mid-'70s), the mod subculture has mostly been absent in fiction. Baker looks to fill that gap with this novel of one early mod's exploits in and observations of "the scene." Apparently drawing largely on his own background as an early mod, Baker seeks to set the record straight through the character of Tommy. He firmly paints the movement as arising from working class kids who didn't want to buy into the existing social system. So, while there's plenty of detail on clothes, haircuts and the like, there's also quite a bit of social commentary-and as with any good pulp fiction, plenty of violence, drugs, and sex and sometimes all three at once. Baker's mods are violent, nasty, and always on the prowl. Tommy's definitely a scene snob of the "old-school" variety, as he sneers at the middle-class mods who appear in greater and greater numbers. Indeed in fall 1963, "The Who began to promote themselves as mod icons and we knew it was time to move on" and the Hastings "riots" in August 1964 are described as "the death" of mod.
While much of the book's initial action has to do with early mod vs. rocker bank holiday battles, as Tommy starts to distance himself more from the scene, he gets involved in organized crime. The book then becomes something slightly different-portrait of the mod as a young criminal (actually as this point he's turned into a "smoothie"). Things get heavier and heavier until Tommy is forced to make a choice. His adventures continue in Enlightenment and the Death of Michael Mouse, which I have not read.
Baker hits all the important topics, including a little bit of interracial romance, with its attendant tensions, as well as the class issues, rise of the teenager, and everything else. When he does start to critique the journalists and police of the time for getting it all wrong, the book starts to lose its fictional grounding and veers into diatribe, but on the whole it doesn't suffer for it. Well worth reading if you're interested in the mod subculture and your only exposure is the film Quadrophenia.

[Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

Howard Baker, a legend and a good friend, sadly passed away early in 2024. His books are an honest and factional account of his youth in London in the 1960s and then later on his travels in the 1970s. Sawdust Caesar is a gripping read, made more so since the account is absolutely true: Tommy, the main character in the book is in fact, Howard. I’ve heard the accounts first hand, he lived very dangerously which makes the stories all the more compelling. I’m aware he wrote a screenplay for Sawdust Caesar, I would so love to see this made into a feature film. It’s begging to be bought to life in this way. Remarkable man, incredible real story of a London mod’s life in the city in the 1960s. RIP Howard x