Suedehead - Richard Allen

SUEDEHEAD - RICHARD ALLEN

Joe Hawkins is out of jail and the world's now his lobster. He's got himself a job as a junior clerk and even his hair is growing: 'In another month or two it would be suede... in between being a skinhead and being what the Establishment liked to call normal styling. Suede - smooth, elite, expensive'.

No longer is Joe the king of the skinheads though it's a constant battle to temper his instincts and natural inclination toward violence and confrontation. Deep down he's still the same character except now he's more refined. More determined to get what he wants but by using other more varied means besides rampant bloodlust. Joe is now more in control, which means he's probably more dangerous than ever.

Written in 1971, Suedehead by Richard Allen is the sequel to his 1970 classic, Skinhead, where Allen had simultaneously struck gold and a nerve. Allen was a hack who wrote only for the money so after hitting paydirt with Skinhead it was a given that he'd immediately knock-out a follow-up. But hang on a minute. What exactly is a 'suedehead'? Well, Allen cuts to the chase and tells us:

'Suedeheads are difficult to define. They belong to no known bands nor do they amalgamate into gangs as their skinhead predecessors did. They are an enigma. An ant-social anti-everything conglomerate affecting status as their protective cover whilst engaging in nefarious pursuits more savage, more brutal than other cultists we have seen rise and fall in this past decade. Suedeheads have been known to use their umbrellas as weapons. Many adherents of this strange, loosely-joined cult have resorted to sharpening their umbrella tips...'

So does Joe Hawkins - psycho-skinhead extraordinaire - now walk around with an umbrella? You bet he does. And he's even started wearing a bowler hat rather like Alex and his droogs in A Clockwork Orange.

For all its violent elements, a noticeable thing about Suedehead is that there is actually a lot less brutality in it than in Skinhead. Joe still gets into scraps and still vents his rage upon those he hates - and Joe hates everything and everybody - but his violence is now more nuanced. Now he stabs rather than stomps. Moreover, there's a lot more sexual frustration on show in Suedehead than there was in Skinhead. It all still adds up to an enjoyable read but the prose does seems to be more diluted, meaning it has less of an impact upon the reader than its predecessor. If anything, it stands nowadays primarily as a signifier to a youth cult that never really hit the same heights as a lot of others.

Interestingly, at one point in the book one of Joe's friends designs an ad board listing a code of ethics for the suedehead gang they have just formed. Essentially it's a list of all the things they hate but the thing about it is that it's very similar to Vivienne Westwood's famous t-shirt 'You're Gonna Wake Up One Morning And Know What Side Of The Bed You've Been Lying On' that she would come to design years later.

At another point in the book, one of Joe's gang members says 'I hate skinhead punks and ex-skinheads trying to look like suedeheads'. The interesting thing about this being the use of the term 'skinhead punks' because Richard Allen wrote this in 1971, which was obviously some years before the word 'punk' even came into use in England come the rise of the Sex Pistols.

So rather than the sex, violence and misanthropy on display, it's more the cultural stuff going on within its pages that makes Suedehead noteworthy nowadays. And for all this, Suedehead hasn't really dated at all and still makes for a relevant read.

John Serpico