Rock’n’roll and fighting made a splash at baths

4:10pm Monday 6th October 2008

The old Leyton Baths in High Road, where Tesco now stands, played host in the Swinging Sixties to some of the largest rock ‘n’ roll acts on the planet, as well as being the scene of the odd dust-up between mods and rockers. CARL BROWN finds out more.

LEYTON baths were much- loved by swimmers and its closure in 1991 was controversial.

But many people forget that the handsome building was also regularly used as a music venue.

The centre’s swimming pool would be covered by boards, creating an artificial dance floor.

Acts including The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Small Faces, Cilla Black and Marianne Faithful all entertained crowds at the venue.

Alan Miles, of Cookes Close, Leytonstone, describes seeing the Stones there, along with 3,000 other fans, in 1963.

“The hall was packed like sardines in a tin. As the Rolling Stones played, girls fainted and were carried on to the stage for safety.

“I recall the curtains opening, almost as though a hurricane blew off the stage. If there were 3,000 fans in the hall, there were most certainly as many outside who could not get in.”

But in the early 1960s tensions grew between Mods and Rockers at the baths, and there were many bloody fights between the two rival youth cultures.

Mods, for our younger readers, tended to wear tailor-made suits and rode Italian motor scooters, and listened to R ‘n’ B, soul and beat music.

Rockers, by comparison, wore decorated leather jackets, boots and rode larger motorbikes.

A biography of a legendary British Hells Angel named Buttons – Buttons, the Making of a President, published in 1971 – describes scenes typical of the battles between mods and rockers at the baths.

The book, written by Jamie Mendelkau, quotes Buttons, who later became President of the Hells Angels’ London Chapter.

Buttons said: “A system of segregation developed at the Leyton Baths between our rockers and the mods.

“We covered the front near the stage and the mods hung in the dark of the rear of the hall.

“There used to be a lot of close fighting, sometimes with knives and people would stumble out of the baths, cut and bleeding. I think this was possibly the main reason why the baths were eventually closed [to gigs].”

Buttons also describes a fight between a fellow Rocker, named Ritchie, and a mod.

He said: “He attacked Ritchie, who waited for the guy to lunge, let the knife slip by him and hammered the mod on the neck with a pick-axe handle.

“The squishing sound coupled with the skin splliting was a nice effect.”

Although the baths were closed to gigs, activities, such as karate and yoga would continue to be held there.

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