//Richard Wernham, Nick Garvey, Robert Gotobed, Rob Smith on the front cover of Teenage Head/Lights Out by The Snakes, Dynamo Records, 1976//

I went to a good school (it was approved, as my first editor would have it in the late 70s. You had to be there).

I was taken on as a scholarship boy, one who showed enough promise for the fees to be paid by the council.

But I was lazy, not as bright as I made out, unhappy, an under-achiever. Aside from winning the cross-country race when I was 14, my life there was almost entirely undistinguished, so preoccupied was I with music, clothes and girls. I had pretensions to vast knowledge in all three areas undercut by lack of experience in the latter regard.

//Booklet with Quadrophenia, an album about "a cat with four personalities" according to me, 1973//

//School report 1975: "If Paul is as familiar with DG Mackean's Introduction To Biology as he is with the NME, he will pass his O-Level. As it is, he isn't, so I fear he won't." And I didn't//

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Tags: Ace Skudder, Acme Attractions, Bazooka Joe, Bull & Gate Kentish Town, DG Mackean, Dr Feelgood, Ducks Deluxe, Eddie & The Hot Rods, Flamin' Groovies, Hawkwind, Introduction To Biology, Keith Richards, Kickers, New Musical Express, Nick Garvey, Pink Fairies, Quadrophenia, Robert Gotobed, Rolling Stones, Royal College Of Art, Sensational Alex Harvey Band, Sex Pistols, Shakin' Stevens & The Sunsets, Stewart Wernham, Teenage Head, the 101'ers, The Motors, The Snakes, Wire

Place: Golden Square, London W1.

Time: 1pm

Coffee: Nordic Bakery Soho

Lloyd Johnson, Ben Olins and I met on a sunny Saturday for a chat about Rowan Joffe’s recently-released film Brighton Rock. The transposition of the storyline to 1964 has resulted in marketing which leans heavily on the backdrop of the Mods vs Rockers “riots” in British coastal resorts that year.

Pretty Green and Merc are among promotional partners; there lingers the distinct impression of an attempt to reach out to cinemagoers by creating a British version of the Mad Men buzz.

In fact the mod content is a gloss overlaying this stodgy interpretation of the 1947 film classic rather than Grahame Greene’s 1939 novel (despite claims to the contrary; Joffe even chose the first film’s climactic cop-out, against the author’s wish for an unremittingly bleak ending).

An original modernist raised in neighbouring Hastings, Lloyd has considerable first-hand knowledge of the subject and worked on the film which is a primary visual influence: Quadrophenia.

Ben’s fascination for the period is manifested in such activities as the club-night The Fabulous Cellar and certain aspects of his media company Herb Lester Associates.

As a cradle Catholic my heart sank when I heard the word on this; one of the great literary investigations into good and evil recast as a mod rite of passage. Mod really is the mainstream option these days isn’t? So codified as to be meaningless and square beyond belief: all those “rules”, all that conformity. For that, and many other reasons, the film lived down to my low expectations.

What do you reckon?

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Tags: Andrea Riseborough, Andy Serkis, Ben Olins, Biba, Brighton Rock, Craig Parkinson, Cubitt, Densons, Hastings, Helen mirren, Herb lester Associates, John Hurt, Lloyd Johnson, Mad Men, Merc, Philip Davis, Pinkie, Pretty Green, Quadrophenia, Richard Attenborough, Rowan Joffe, Sam Riley, Sean Wilson, The Fabulous Cellar