EPILOGUE

ONE SUMMER’S DAY IN 1989 I was out shopping for Wallabees. I’d been told there was a shop down King’s Road that sold them. Evidently, half of London had also heard months before me. The queue stretched down the road and inside the shop was a shoe frenzy – a whole new generation of Modernists were getting theirs. You could see there was a new look emerging.

I left the shop and further down the road a kid on a day-glo (Acid House) style Vespa went by. Around that time I’d shop a lot in Duffer of St George’s. Just up from it was Black Market Records – proper packed on a Saturday morning with kids buying the latest American imports, the new beats spilling out of the speakers and onto D’Arblay Street. And I felt a kind of reassurance that the beat truly does go on. The clothes change, the drugs too, and the music moves on but the attitude remains unchanged. Which is why we leave this book open ended.

Paul Weller

The secret is still locked up.

Robert Hall