All the 50s rebels had a cause

Leather jacket-clad bodgies, or milkbar cowboys, congregate in the 1950s, complete with their motorbikes. PHOTO/FILE

THE END of the year is nigh, a time when reflection often takes charge of our thoughts.

No, don't panic I am not about to embark on a long diatribe about the year that was, I am going to go a stage further than that.

This column was inspired on a drive into work last week in the wake of my wife Kate giving me music to play in the car.

Now I must say from the outset that our musical tastes do not always line up.

She and I can sing along to many songs so we are not estranged to any alarming extent but it must be said she is in some ways too high-brow for me.

I mean she has a hankering for classical music, listens to Michael Buble and -- due to her heritage -- enjoys Charlotte Church whereas apart from having a devotion to Mozart I am just an old- fashioned rocker with a heavy overlay of the blues.

Good music to me is Jerry Lee Lewis in full swing, the Rolling Stones, Jimmy Barnes, Sam Cook and John Lee Hooker.

It may well be because we are a few years apart in age, so my heart remains in the late 1950s and the 1960s whereas Kate's hovers around the 1970s.

Ah, yes those 10 years from 1955-65 were a joy as most people old enough to remember them will attest, I actually feel sorry for those born too late to have participated in them.

They were the years when music changed forever.

On the fade were the old crooners, Bing Crosby was wandering around trying to find his White Christmas, Perry Como was catching falling stars and the somewhat more versatile Frankie Laine was flagging down his Mule Train.

In their place came sounds that shocked a generation of bloomer wearing, bun-haired grandmothers.

Elvis (the pelvis) Presley burst on the scene, Bill Haley and the Comets started rocking around the clock and Jerry Lee Lewis ignited the world with his Great Balls of Fire.

Lewis would probably have wrestled the title of The King from Presley, as he was a magnificent talent, had it not been revealed in 1958 he had married his first cousin Myra Brown, a 13-year-old girl.

In hindsight that sort of behaviour was not altogether unknown in the wilds of Louisiana where Lewis grew up but it was enough to stall his burgeoning career and dent his image forever.

It was not only music that stamped that era with an excitement hitherto unmatched.

With it came a breaking of the bonds, a loosely of the chains, a genuine revolution.

Bodgies and Teddy Boys started appearing on the streets, their hair plastered down with Brylcream wearing green jeans or stovepipe pants with winklepicker shoes on their feet and a Widgie -- their female equivalent -- on their arm.

How we as young boys envied those older "rebels."

The preferred mode of transport for these non-conformists was a Norton 500cc motorbike, or maybe a BSA or Triumph and for those few who could run to four-wheels a 1937 Chevy Coupe was very acceptable perhaps only surpassed by those who could afford a Mark 1 Zephyr, two-toned of course with venetian blinds on the back window.

Provocative bumper stickers read: " Don't laugh daddy-o, your daughter might be inside" or " if this crate's rockin' best start knockin."

Smoking, while frowned on, was not considered -- or indeed known -- to be the huge health threat it is today, so tobacconists throughout the land did a roaring trade selling Capstan cork-tipped, De Reszke, Rembrandt, Matinee and du Maurier to the young and apart from a vague mention of a "reefer" illegal drugs were a mystery.

As the 50s morphed into the 60s that changed, as did the music but the fun continued.

The decade gave rise to the Beatles -- whose mop-top hair styles replaced the swish-back, the crew cut and the flat top -- the Rolling Stones, The Kinks and The Monkees.

The Hippie era was born bringing with it the philosophy of making love, not war, flower-power, marijunana and LSD.

The Great Snowmen of the 50s who " went around breaking the girlies' hearts" got married, became fathers and lived on to shake their heads and mutter about the younger generation.