Les blousons noirs : les rebelles sans cause

Au cours des années 50 et 60, en France, un nouveau phénomène inquiète la population. Des hordes de jeunes, vêtus de vestes en cuir, amateurs de rock’n’roll et de grosses cylindrées, sèment le désordre et se révoltent contre l’ordre établi.
Les faits divers de la presse relatent les actions de ces « blousons noirs » qui semblent avoir perdu tous leurs repères moraux, se moquent de tout et ne croient en rien. Patrick, Jean-Pierre et Gérard ont fait partie de ces jeunes voyous. Ils reviennent sur leur jeunesse, passée à flirter avec la délinquance juvénile et racontent pourquoi ils ont adopté cette attitude de révolte.

Réalisé par : Weber Christophe
Avec : Alexia Sauvageon

Black jackets. The expression has kept all its evocative force, where leather, violence and rock’n’roll come together to tell the story of an era. All it takes is the roar of a few motorcycles on a country road, and rock anthems to go back 50 years.

A golden age, that of France of the 30 Glorious Years. Carefree and happy, only disturbed by excess of a turbulent youth, and its most violent avatars: black jackets. Their name was Patrick, Gerard, Jean Paul. All were between 15 and 16 years old when they joined a gang.

Between petty theft and misdemeanors, they flirted with juvenile delinquency. They scared society, shook up his certainties, refused his codes. A revolt that demanded nothing, a violence that did not seem feed only on itself. A rebellion that did not defend no cause. A disturbing figure, dressed in leather black, wearing boots.

The black jacket is a mythical figure urban legends, that of an idle youth, quick to fight, resistant to any form of authority. A figure associated with a string attributes, clichés still alive, which immediately come to mind when we pronounce these two words: black jacket. – The 50’s. Thugs… Finally… – Turbulent youth.

Yes, bunch of young people, let’s say. – Black jackets are written in the plural. So the scary image at the time, it was the band. – Suburb ! Because you won’t find it anywhere else. – Motorcycle, switchblade, perfecto. This universe of ordinary violence against the backdrop of the suburbs,

No one, no doubt, only portrayed it better than Renaud, the bantering bard of bad boys. “I was calm, I was relaxed, leaning on the pinball machine. The guy walked into the bar, ordered a buttered ham, then approached me, then looked at me like that. Do you have boots, buddy? They kick me.

I bet they’re cowboy boots. Come take a walk in the wasteland, I’m going to teach you a funny game with great blows of a bicycle chain. I’ll fight your boots. I told you: Leave concrete.” But when Renaud sings this lament of the young hero of the wastelands,

At the end of the 70s, the black jacket is already an image of Epinal, a figure that belongs to the past. However, today it remains still the archetype of the young delinquent, antisocial and violent. Who were they really, these black jackets? How did they become the black icons of the 60s,

Reputed to be so happy in the remember those who experienced them? – National renovation. This is a vast and difficult undertaking. France as it is. The time and the world where we live offers no choice, that between a great success or a reduction without recourse.

Inside, our country is in the process of accomplishing, a transformation that destines him, for the benefit of all his children, to prosperity and to a power worthy of him. Prosperity, newfound power, ambitions. When in January 1961, General de Gaulle evokes the national renovation of the country,

Now is the time to have confidence in the future. In barely 15 years, France has known rebuild what the war had destroyed, and go far beyond. She is one of the 5 powers victorious in 1945, and treats as equals with the USSR or the United States, at the United Nations Security Council.

With the advent of the Fifth Republic in 1958, these institutions have finally found balance, and the stability they lacked. A few more months and the Algerian conflict will be resolved. The country will finally be done with the colonial adventures, and can resolutely look to the future.

Its economy is flourishing, its demographics are exploding. Never, since the beginning of the century, the French population did not count such a proportion of young people. Young people, precisely, have not known the dark years of the occupation. They are born with victory and carry in them the carefreeness of the time.

They are restless, noisy, cheeky, and for the toughest among them, the black jackets, provocative. – The city of Pailloux… Yes, it has changed a lot. What’s missing is life, we were a group of young people in the early 60s. About fifteen guys. In the houses we see here, wearing jeans, jacket.

Which is a scandal for our old people. What we called the crumblings at the time, older people. I lived here, exactly. There it was at home. 11 city of Pailloux. It is open… I’m going home guys. At home, Jean-Paul is not there returned since the mid-1960s. – Amazing !

The city of Pailloux is these few heterogeneous pavilions, backed by a few HLM bars stuck between the fields and the city. Issoire, sub-prefecture of Puy-de-Dôme, 10,000 inhabitants in 1960, with a barracks, a metallurgical factory, and black jackets that fade local chronicles. – So, we got together on the small square.

With the bikes, we tumbled a hell of a blast in Issoire. This is the city of Pailloux. When we had problems with the police, the city was immediately in the local and even national press at the time. “Paris-presse, L’Intransigeant”,

Named as the place where he lived this band that we called the White Crosses. The white crosses, that’s the name we gave ourselves. We were 16, 17 years old. In 1960, Jean-Paul and his White Crosses sows havoc, in the too quiet Auvergne countryside. Chases, fights, nighttime noise, vandalism.

They say they have the devil in their bodies. But their highest feat of arms remains gratuitous aggression, from a group of college girls returning to their boarding school. An event in this lost corner of deep France. But the sudden irruption from this urban violence is far away,

At the time, to be an isolated event. Between 1959 and 1963, the regional press is full of these various facts, featuring bands young misguided boys, violent, thieves, even vi****s. A youth that seems to have lost all moral standards. Make fun of everything. Don’t believe in anything.

At the time, cinema was blamed, music and all this cultural surge, that since the Liberation, America pours endlessly on Europe. We talk about decline, decadence. We fear the future that we are preparing these lawless young people. However, over time, most of them will fall into line.

They will be fathers of families, workers, civil servants, traders. Only a tiny fringe will rock in crime, the real one. But in the meantime, France already feels sick of his youth. – There is truly… We can call it psychosis, or in sociology, we say a moral panic.

A panic about the decadence of morals, which once again, a classic generational phenomenon. Old people who say: “We no longer recognize each other in youth. They don’t have the same values ​​as us.” As always in these matters, there is a set of realities, practices, juvenile delinquency,

And then there is a media construction and politics of these phenomena. There is a series of media coverage who will fix this image, this iconography of black jackets or black jackets. So this group of young people who have jeans, boots, a jacket, a cap, a cigarette butt in the mouth, a moped,

A working-class neighborhood, a slum, a slum or a large complex in construction, as a backdrop in some way, behind them. And then a provocative look, a little threatening, who are in a group, with mainly boys, from time to time, a girl hanging around.

It’s this image, this iconography will be consecrated by a certain number, images, media headlines, including a famous cover of Paris-Match during the summer of 1959, and who will contribute a lot to fix this this image. The press is getting carried away, that’s a fact.

During the summer of 1959, we witnessed to a flood of anxiety-provoking titles, images that are intended to be shocking. Half a century later, this moral panic haunts always our collective unconscious. And yet, everything started from almost nothing, a rather banal news item, emerged in the heart of a too-quiet summer.

– The “black jackets” phenomenon is very limited in time, since it appears in the summer of 59 with the affair of Square Saint-Lambert, a fight in Square Saint-Lambert. Afterwards, we will stop talking black jackets almost… End of 62, beginning of 63. It is therefore a phenomenon relatively limited in time.

What is limited in time, It’s of course media noise. made around these groups of young people, and not at all the phenomenon of bands. That is to say that gangs of young people, there were some before the summer of 59, and it continued to exist after 1963.

Hard to believe it all started there, at Saint-Lambert square, in the 15th arrondissement of Paris. A Parisian square like so many others, with his pigeons, his guard in a kepi. A meeting place for young people of this quiet district of the capital. They meet there after class or work. Why actually?

To do nothing. Just spending time with each other, away from parents, crumbling people, as they prefer to call them. – They are not good to fear, they are little guys, who want to give a little zeal, but… – Doesn’t it go any further? – No…

We press their noses, it comes out more milk. They’re kids. They just want to do the little bosses. And when we take them a little abruptly, so at that point, they are off-putting. Forbidding, the word is strangely awkward. Especially since these kids without history or almost sowed terror,

Several hours for throughout the neighborhood. On July 27, 1959, 2 groups of young people meet at Square Saint-Lambert. One resides in the neighborhood which surrounds the square. The other comes from a city in the Gate from Vanves, a few kilometers away. In all, around a hundred teenagers came to fight,

Armed with bicycle chains, fists American and even sheep bones. The police intervened and proceeded around thirty arrests. Residents are in shock. – What is the police reaction? when there are stories like that? – When she catches guys… At that moment, she hits. – And your parents’ reaction? – They don’t know.

– They never know? – No never. But the quiet population of the neighborhood Saint-Lambert recovers with difficulty, of what she experienced as a riot. And the press benefits of the battle of Saint-Lambert, which, however, was narrowly avoided. Especially since the same day, in Bandol, in the Var,

Another incident echoes to the Parisian incidents. Around forty bad boys from Toulon come to sow mayhem, near a funfair. – They arrived, they did their braggart, their jester, and they struck the young people. So, the young people continued, even with the face open. Someone died. So the young people now, they will continue.

It’s neither about stealing nor demonstrating any political revolt. Just to fight and break. What is happening to French youth? The question is on the front page national newspapers, and for the first time, France-Soir employs a term that will flourish: Black jackets. This violence, which seems gratuitous, Gérard practiced it.

In the early 1960s he was a member from the Carrefour des Laitières band, in Montreuil, in the Paris suburbs, one of the high places of the phenomenon Black jackets. – The problem with the black jackets was just inter-gang attacks and all that. There was Bagnolet which bothered us a little more,

And we had fights in the Bois de Vincennes, because everything was happening there, we didn’t do that in the streets, it happened either in Vincennes, either at the top of Montreuil. A little anecdote, one day for a girl’s story, always for that. A guy had been stung a girl to a guy.

We ended up at 200 in the streets anyway… It’s something that struck me. The mopeds passed in front of my house. I found my friends and I told them I asked what was happening, they explained to me. We met at the Buttes à Morel, where there was stock car and motocross.

There were no houses, it was fallow. We found ourselves face to face with the bands up there. And we realized that the guys across the way, they were friends. So it ended at the police because they arrived, but there was still crowbars. There were the famous bicycle chains, the belts and all that.

Clan logics, territorial logics. The black jacket does not exist that as members of his band, like a warrior defending his tribe. And the band offers its members the epic gesture of his feats of arms, as an alternative to loneliness and the pangs of adolescence.

Patrick joined his gang in the southern suburbs at just 14 years old. – I remember a fight very well Gate of Italy which was the first, in which I found myself mixed, from man to man, because we fought fairly, It wasn’t about being 30 to 1, but to fight…

A priori with his fists. And there were fights between gangs, so, at the funfair, at the exit of Golf Drouot, at the Weekend. In all these places in which there was almost an organized opportunity, to “get on your face” as they said… Fighting. This regular fight, surrounded by members of the band,

On a decorative background towers and bars. The filmmaker Marcel Carné directs it in 1960 in his film Terrains vagues, one of the only cinematographic works devoted to this turbulent youth. But what the film also shows, is that this violence is above all turned against those who practice it.

We fight among ourselves, between gangs, against oneself. – When there is a phenomenon like that, obviously when looking, you will find phenomena clashes, groups, etc. That you may have less in subsequent periods, etc. But it’s nothing dramatic. if you are not involved of these stories.

It’s like stories Apaches at the beginning of the century, in the press of 1902, you had the impression that you couldn’t go out, because you were going to get your throat cut by bands, with an ice pick in hand who await the bourgeois. Certainly, it is a phenomenon that exists,

But if you ask your parents how they lived the times, They don’t tell you: “We couldn’t going out, there were so many black jackets. It was super dangerous!” No! It’s: “If I don’t go on Friday evening in the Bois de Vincennes with a cyclo, and a skull shouting: “You’re all suckers.”

At first glance, nothing much happened to you. “You cheat at games and in the country They call you the cursed one everywhere. But be careful, one day You will end up in the dust.” A phenomenon that is ultimately very circumscribed, but which marked the era of the seal of unbridled, wild, uncontrolled violence.

Perhaps beyond the simple media craze, is there another more hidden reason? The black jackets are a political scarecrow, which will be seized by those who have responsible for maintaining public order. – There is truly this media taste for the sensational. And there is political mobilization that we must not forget on these issues.

Fear is also a political resource for those, who will pose as guardians of order, and as defenders in the face of insecurity. We see how our contemporary years are immersed in it permanently, but that was already the case at the time. I remember for example, among others speeches and political archives.

For example, I remember a speech of the Paris police prefect at the time, who was called Maurice Papon, for those who remember, and who engaged on these so-called new phenomena, these gangs of young criminals terrible and who said, that they were totally perverted by American industries.

To the point that in an interview one day, who said that we should perhaps think to ban concerts and rock and roll, this music that excites and drives young people crazy, etc. – As the weeks go by, the black jackets have broadened their scope of action.

They started by throwing inkwells on cafe terraces. They continued by slashing the tires cars and stealing scooters. Then, with their favorite weapon, bicycle chain, the black jackets attacked passers-by. This turbulent youth poses a problem to Monsieur Papon, the Paris police chief.

– The origins of this discomfort must be sought after in the post-war unrest, social unrest, family troubles, decadence of paternal authority. Since this phenomenon is not a phenomenon French but a universal phenomenon, all humanitarian precautions are taken for effective and efficient repression.

The black jackets would therefore be, in the eyes of prefect Papon, the French avatar of a universal phenomenon. As if, on a planetary scale, all the youth had gone crazy. In fact, before the phenomenon does not reach France, other countries have been confronted since the mid-1950s,

To spectacular outbursts of violence from gangs of young people. In West Germany, from 1955, those that the press nicknames half portions, face each other in gigantic battles street action pitting up to 4,000 of them against each other. From 1956, the tabloids British take advantage, the escapades of the London Teddy boys,

These young people from the working classes who only think about fighting. In Sweden they are called “Skuna Folk”, in Italy, “Vitelloni”, in Holland “Nosem”. And the phenomenon extends even beyond the iron curtain to Poland and the USSR, of which the official press castigates the deviant behavior of those,

Which she calls “hooligans” or “stiliaks”. And everywhere, there is talk of decadence, of barbarity, of blind violence. Everywhere like in France, the bidding war media feeds the feeling, of a young danger that threatens the foundations of social order.

– There was also a strong push at the time media that comes from the United States. In the United States, at the same time, the press focuses on bands, who started making headlines American sensationalists or the popular press. And then, suddenly, we go trying to decode their uniforms,

Their customs, like a tribe a little secret. We will see affiliation tattoos there. They actually have codes very particular clothing, etc. And the French press will try to copy this fear, in any case, this kind of dramaturgy on our French tapes.

It must be said that the phenomenon is not new across the Atlantic. It started in the early 1940s, in the Mexican community from Texas, with the Pachucos, adolescents grouped into neighborhood gangs who dressed identically, frock coat reaching down to the knees, wide pants worn very high, English shoes.

Everything about these young people is already a provocation to the established order, to the decorum of the Southern States, down to the music they listen to with an almost religious fervor: Swing. And outside of Swing, these Pachucos display only one passion: The street fight. In June 1943 in Los Angeles,

One of these fights escalates and in a few hours, the city is in a frenzy. For several days, riots will pit young Mexicans against white soldiers. In the days that followed, other riots erupt in Chicago, New York, Detroit. The affair takes a racial turn. The National Guard intervenes in force.

These excesses no longer have anything to do with with the Pachucos bands, but they fix in the collective imagination, the myth of a depraved youth, violent, out of control. The gang of young people: new figure of barbarism. Very quickly, urban legends appear throughout the United States.

Hordes of young people would have burst in in this or that town in the Middle West, devastating everything in their path, v**** girls, looting businesses, even burning churches. Crazy but accredited rumors by the appearance of another phenomenon: Biker gangs. – The first are the former pilots aircraft from the Second World War,

Who bombed Japan, Germany. These are the pilots who took without doubt a lot of d**** amphetamines, to stay awake during missions that sometimes last 20 hours. We had to go bomb Dresden, return to London, etc. These pilots, when they will be returned to civilian life, the Americans, they passed on the other side,

They are in another continent. And there are types who made squadrons, who were the pilots of the extreme, who kept a species of fascination with big mechanics. So they will do Harley motorcycle clubs, which will evolve very quickly for some in Hells Angels clubs,

Hells Angels being the name of a squadron of the Second World War. In July 1947, 4,000 of these bikers meet up, in the small town from Hollister, California, to attend a motorcycle race. The inhabitants, panicked by the irruption of this backfiring horde with a menacing appearance,

Barricade themselves in their homes, leaving the city in the hands of the bikers. Nothing bad will happen during the three days when bikers will occupy the city. They’ll get drunk, go on wild runs in the deserted main street, will indulge in a few fights and then they will go away.

But the tabloids will talk “Hollister Riots”, depicting apocalyptic scenes invented from scratch. And the affair will mark the spirits so much that she will be 6 years later, adapted for cinema by Hollywood under the title of “The Wild Ones”, in French L’Équipée Sauvage.

– If you want, the stuff comes from the United States trained. You are a French kid in 1960, you go to the cinema, you see “The Wild Team” with Marlon Brando, motorcycles, guys who look to be a bunch of happy guys. Then for the people who knew Lee Marvin, because Marlon Brando,

In L’Équipée Sauvage, he defends a little society, he tries to calm things down, while there is one who is the real savage. The real Hell’s is Lee Marvin and he fights with Brando. At one point they both fight for supremacy over the gang, over the troop.

And I think that for a black jacket, it was Lee Marvin, the true hero of the Wild Team. After the Wild Team, the teenagers turbulent all over the planet, found their code clothing, their appearance. That of Marlon Brando. Jeans rolled up over boots, belt with large buckles, and especially the perfecto,

This leather shell created in 1928 by Harley Davidson, to protect drivers of its machines in the event of a fall. A black leather jacket which, in 1959, becomes in France the symbol of all the excesses of youth. – The perfecto, the black jacket, of course, the cowboy boots, well the whole range.

The problem was considering from the social environment, to be able to obtain this famous jacket. And in the event that there was no way to get it, it was taxed or stripped from others. – So it’s true that the one who wore the jacket had its reputation.

– Is this a trophy? – Exactly. – These were the clothes from the western. We were crazy about westerns. The only thing missing was the hat, that’s all, they were the same clothes as the westerns. We wanted to be in the high colors of the film!

In a legend, a story and not in the daily grayness, and in revolt against the whole system who was for us, parents, oppression: “You’re not going out, You come home at such a time…” The police of course and the school. These were the three adversaries against whom we were fighting.

I got kicked out of every school… The police station further down no longer exists. I spent many nights there. The myth of the western as an escape to the narrow world of parents, a brutal virility that asserts itself in physical confrontation, thrives on a code of honor inaccessible to the crumbling.

Everything is there. But the true tutelary figure black jackets in the cinema look more like them. She is their age or almost, and knows on the screen the same errors as them. James Byron Dean, James Dean.

James Dean, the young rebel broke in the middle glory at the age of 24 behind the wheel of his Porsche. Live fast. Die young. A profession of faith that a whole section of youth will make their own, in the years that follow.

– At home, I had set up an altar with a frame of James Dean and candles, and September 30, the date of his death, in 55 he died… On the anniversary date, I played on the teppaz film music. At the time of his death, I blew out the candles.

He is dead. There was Jimmy’s frame. We called him Jimmy. There was a razor knife on the altar tablet. That was my place. I don’t have any witnesses to watch. It was between me and him. I wasn’t doing this to that my friends are watching, you see.

There I cut myself and above my bed, I marked Jimmy, his nickname. There are several, with blood above my bed. For this youth, James Dean is both the face of the western hero, bearer of the American dream, of which he is an example in “Giant”, and that of the urban adolescent in crisis,

Delinquent out of boredom, which he embodies so strikingly, in “the fury of living”. For the first time with James Dean, it is the story of their own life, that adolescents see projected on the screen in cinemascope. – It wasn’t just Brando in “L’Équipée Sauvage”, leather and violence.

There was a sensitivity almost teenage girl who was getting closer to us. Brando is elusive. He was too far gone as a myth. James Dean is closer. These problems were ours. His emotions were ours. For me anyway, he was the supreme icon. – We have all been in love more or less,

Of the character of James Dean in The Fury of Living, because he was the young who rebelled against the father, against the mother who ultimately wanted to become a man. Somewhere there was the search for man, but without resembling the father.

It was part of the rebellion of a generation compared to their parents. They wanted to be anything but what their parents stood for. So they wanted to get out of the family cocoon. And so, in the American dream, there were among others this kind of films, which were bedside films.

French youth therefore dream of America to escape its grayness. A technicolor dream that has its soundtrack electric and wild, rock’n’roll. “Screw that. If it’s cute. Do you know where his house is? Do you know that? Do you know that? Tell me.” Dozens of groups are formed, hundreds of records are released,

Offering French versions more or less happy, hits from America in the luggage of the GI’s, stationed on American bases in Europe. For the first time, production musical reaches an industrial dimension, and becomes the rallying point of a new category of population, that of adolescents.

Rock’n’roll, the neighbors had that in the ears from morning to evening. Whether it’s Rocky’s, here, at home here, we only heard that. And I never had a complaint from the old people, who nevertheless had horror of this music. We were thugs simply by clothes.

Without having done anything, you were a thug because you had jeans, a jacket. The anathema was immediately established. – Me, when I think back to the 60s in France, I think of silence. It’s silence… We couldn’t hear anything. We were more in the Middle Ages.

You were in France with silence of incredible quality. The principle of youth, it is to disturb this order, is to say: We don’t want to let it happen like that. There was a need to move, to have rock, to have music of our own, to stop listening to the accordion…

There you go, that was all that, the black jackets. This silent France yet lives its glorious 30s. Industrialization, mechanization, accelerated technological progress. This is the golden age of full employment and work for all. Never for centuries, the country has never been so rich. Produce more, produce better,

This is the imperative today number 1 in the industry, who put on the agenda the term productivity, key word of modern economics. Salaries are rising, the standard of living rises. In 1952, a French home out of 5 had a car. 12 years later, half of households of France has its own vehicle.

Washing machines, refrigerators, television sets are becoming commonplace in urban housing, and booming advertising encourages everyone to consume. Consume more, consume more and more. Young people are naturally the first to rush in, in this consumer society nascent. They want everything, right away. Why should they wait? Are their parents happier to have been wiser?

I think that black jacket, that was a bit of the name, that we gave to a new youth. So, there was before, there was cheaters period, movies, etc. Where it was more the duffle coat with young Parisian students, We liked all that because there was this side of rebellion in relation to society.

And rock’n’roll accompanied musically this revolution, this social rebellion. Social rebellion, really? The word seems a bit strong. Rather a desire to experience youth carefree, to have a good time, before falling into line, to become as serious as their parents. Besides, what were they singing? The idols ultimately very wise of this restless youth.

Essentially, the joy of being young, free and especially teenage love. But for the most radical among them, those we now call black jackets, the truth is elsewhere. Their references are darker, more turbulent, rawer too. – I never looked for trouble, but I never ran away. I don’t receive any orders,

Of no kind of guy. I am only made of flesh, bones and blood. But if you want us to fight, don’t come alone… Because I’m bad, and my nickname is “Misery”… Their idols sing s***, violence, alcohol. They talk about their lives or the life they dream of. “Then don’t mess with me.”

– You had Johnny’s fans, And then you had those which exceeded that on the left, Vince Taylor fans, Vince Taylor, the dark angel, the apostle of black leather with his medal, On the Vince Taylor cover, Barclay Records, He’s like that, he has chains, he is chained and he shouts: “This is rock!”

This is the title of the album: Rock, that’s it! You see this at the record store, it was scary. – But Vince Taylor, when he arrived in France, has two very serious problems. First of all, he wonders if the French rock’n’rollers, which are numerous and who have a large audience,

Will allow him to make its place in the sun, And then the second problem which is very important to him, this is the one we want to impose on him barbed wire, around the stage where he sings among himself, his orchestra and the audience. Vince Taylor, why are you against barbed wire?

– Rock’n’roll is music that exalts, it’s music made for young people, so that they have fun, and if they had fun behind barbed wire, they could get hurt… I do not want it.” If you had the absolute god, Gene Vincent, known as Gégène,

Who was incapable of making a concert if he wasn’t dead drunk, but who delivered something called the evil double of Elvis in America. Gene Vincent is the guy black jackets. Dressed all in leather, the crazy paw, the evil look. We are 1000 leagues away yéyés, etc.

There was Mosquito who was banned from concert, because every time it happened, it ended in a general fight in the room. The black jackets had some very particular rock singers, who stood out from the others, who were more considered like singers for golden jackets, that is to say in opposition,

The son of a good family or beautiful neighborhoods that stood out a little… As a surprise party who was also that of rock’n’roll. – “Rain of eggs on Mosquito for his return to Annecy. The Annecy fair had its little scandal.

For a moment we thought that the ashes would be swept away by public anger. There were blows and veritable strings of insults. All because of Mosquito.” Mosquito, it’s him. This is not true… There were lies in this article. Perhaps the only rocker of the time which,

Before experiencing dazzling notoriety and fall back into oblivion, had been an authentic black jacket, in one of the biggest bands of the capital, that of the Bastille. Mosquito is 19 years old. He lives in the Bastille district. His friends look like black jackets. He lives there with his records, his mother,

His friends and on the walls, this universe of screaming heroes their discomfort and their violence. There’s the photo of James Dean too. – I really like James Dean. He has a head all the time… It seems like he’s angry all the time and that he is angry with someone.

I think he’s mad at people. – And you too ? – I blame people too. – Do you blame people too? – Yes. – What ? – Their wickedness. This rage, this diffuse anger who finds an outlet in music, does not only express himself on stage, during rock concerts.

– The Palais des Sports Parisiens on time rock’n’roll, that’s sport! The young wave has not invented anything, what she calls today “Rock”, from grandpa’s time, it already had a name. We called it the St. Vitus dance. In November 1961, a concert which brought together the elite of French rock are held in Paris,

At the Sports Palace. The atmosphere is explosive. The public, as if seized by an attack of dementia collective, begins to ravage the room, tearing up the chairs, destroying the barriers that protect the stage. The police intervene unceremoniously and interrupts the concert. Vince Taylor, who was to close the featured evening,

Is deprived of stage and his fans in black jackets are furious. In the process, the police headquarters, bans concerts of rock’n’roll for several months. – Results of this little festival 2 million damage, some dents, black eyes and a cemetery broken chairs. In short, great art. However, rock’n’roll fever does not fall back.

– Why do you complain about it, Vince Taylor? Maybe you have something to do with it. – We didn’t know the d**** back then it was only the 60s, so we drank alcohol and like that alcohol was too expensive in bars,

We were going to buy liters of beer that we sent each other. Once we were really drunk, after drinking liters of beers, we could go into the bars, go to a rock concert. We were in good shape to “fuck shit” as they said. Because a rock singer at the time Rocky Volcano said…

That left an impression on us… It broke everything during his concert. A journalist told him: “It’s your fault, you started the fight by provoking…” He replied: “If there is no m****, It’s not rock.” Chaos seen as an end in itself, provocation established as a way of life.

These rebels without a cause claim nothing, hope for nothing, basically don’t want to change anything in the world around them. Just shake it a little for the thrill, which makes them all the more frightening for their elders. They are necessarily barbarians. – We are in a world that is changing.

And of course, all the transformations generate worry. So the idea that everything is going away, that youth no longer respect anything, that the values… Are thrown overboard, and so there is a speech… End of the world, pessimism that accompanies always these moments of transformation. We are entering in another era.

Especially since these rapid changes are not parts, of real social violence, nor accessible to all. In 1959, despite the extraordinary industrial development, France still remains a heavily agricultural country. But the peasants, are less and less numerous. The villages are emptying, and the downgraded provincials crowd together on the outskirts of cities,

Where industry requires workers. Throughout the 1950s, the housing crisis was a major problem, which is not yet resolved despite forced urbanization, using concrete and large complexes. Gaullian France invents a new urban concept: the suburbs. In these new towns which surround the large cities,

The incongruous bars and towers stand in the middle of wastelands, and old investment properties who do not yet have running water. A chaotic universe, a stuck in-between between city and countryside, where we are completely bored when we are 15 years old and have free time.

– The setting in which I find myself with my father-in-law and my mother, it’s an HLM. Violent behavior is a behavior which is also constitutive, of the environment in which we find ourselves. There is permanent tension. These are wastelands, dormitory towns… Nationals, car scrapyards. It’s not a very cheerful outlook.

– We didn’t do anything on the weekend, as they say, we were “hanging around”. And I was the only one to intervene: “Guys, get moving!” I saw guys riding around on mopeds for hours around the block. It was a hobby like any other. It’s a state of mind.

It’s the state of mind really black jackets. In fact, working-class neighborhoods on the outskirts of big cities, are the main breeding ground for these bands black jackets that hit the headlines. At the time, 60% of young people leave school at 14, to enter an apprenticeship or the factory.

They are boilermakers, turners, delivery men, masons or butchers’ boys. Because of their age, their bosses have the right to pay them only half a salary, and impose on them a 48-hour work week. The weekend, stupid work and without real money, we “zone out”.

We gather at the foot of the HLM and we carry around our boredom, trying to escape by any way, even and especially the most absurd, the most violent, the most transgressive. So that this group of young people of the same neighborhood that kills time,

Become a bunch of black jackets, there is only one step to take, the one that separates behavior at risk of petty crime. – Most of these young people work, and so their gang reunites from Friday evening to Sunday evening. Because on Monday morning, we are at the factory or on the construction site.

So these are bands which basically, they manage free time of these young people, and the acts they commit are also not transgressive acts, they commit more playful acts, more challenge than deeds of villainous appropriation, for financial purposes. We steal a car to do one ride with it and that’s it.

Not to make her up then resell it in a network. There is a very clear cut between the band of black jackets, and what we could call the middle, that is, organized crime. It’s two worlds that come together, who do not have the same culture.

The only meeting point of these two worlds, it is the prison. – Some of you get out of prison? – That is true. – Who, for example? – Me. – What did you do ? – I did something stupid. I stole cars. – And you ? – The same…

– It’s difficult to take cars. How do you go about it? – You must have a screwdriver… -And what do you do with it? of these cars? – We are going for a walk. – It’s petty crime… It’s violent, we can’t deny it, but it’s petty crime.

These were not organized thefts to make money, to live. Rather, it was a way of life in which, there was a sort of… It’s almost institutionalized. Until a certain point, afterwards, when we flirt with delinquency, beyond petty crime, there is the average.

But I think that when we stay in the context in which I find myself, we did not go beyond a certain threshold, that doesn’t prevent theft… – There was a provocation, rather to hide, we went head-on. The goal was this… Meet at the police station it was almost a medal,

Even if we got slapped, but you leave the police station… I saw James Dean again in the fury of living, leaving the police station with his friends, for us, it was superimposed. We were experiencing the same thing… The delinquency of the black jackets, it was therefore above all a delinquency fun, an initiation,

A rite of passage into this adulthood which they rejected en bloc. They were rowdy boys in a new world, which no one understood still really the codes. They boldly asserted, against the background of rock’n’roll, that this world was theirs, that their time would soon come and until then,

Nothing and no one can stop them to do as they please, even if it means burning your wings. – We are really in values ​​of virility. It’s about showing that we are strong, that we are not afraid… Values… Quite classic virility which are quite shared,

With the world of the factory and the workshop. A certain number of black jackets will then excellent trade unionists, members of the CGT security service, which will allow them to continue to satisfy their taste for virile confrontation, either with the CRS, or with the leftists. They scared French society,

That switching too quickly in modernity was frightening. But in the end, They weren’t that bad. In the report that management supervised education, address to Mr. the Keeper of the Seals in 1959, We can even read that the level of juvenile delinquency is far, far away,

To reach that of years of the immediate post-war period. Which gives the trompe l’oeil effect, it’s that young people are more numerous than ever, since the beginning of the 20th century. Baby boomers are simply all become teenagers. – How old are you ? – 15 years and a half.

– And you ? – 16 years old in March. – And you ? – 16 years old in January. – It’s a bit like some boys neighborhoods today. There is a high level of juvenile delinquency in cities today. There is a high proportion of boys who will experience the incarceration of minors.

And 3/4, at 20 years old, they fall into line, they start to work or they end up unemployed, but in any case, they try to reintegrate the ranks of society, to reintegrate. The black jacket is the same. So even if some of them, through turbulence and violence,

Will slip into real delinquency professionally and make a career out of it. But the vast majority of them, once the vapors of adolescence have passed, and testosterone surges which are linked to it, They will return to the right path. From 18-20 years old, They are going to do some police custody.

The most virulent of them will go in Fleury-Mineurs, which was inaugurated in 1969. There are a few who will end, at the center for young prisoners for a few months, after a fight. And they will quickly return home, return to work, get married, have children,

And become the model of this that they decried a few years ago. – There is one last article in Paris Match early 1963 on black jackets, which ends with: We are all black jackets. So the article is interesting since the teaser photo, These are black jackets seen from the back.

And the article ends: We are all black jackets. And he cites all kinds of things, including the father of the family, who gets behind the wheel having drunk too much, etc., as an example of black jackets. And from the moment everyone is black jacket, no one is anymore.

5 years later, when in May 1968, youth will give content to their revolt political, it will not be the same young people. This one will be more educated, more bourgeois, more radical too. And while in the Latin Quarter the cobblestones will fly, in the peripheral suburbs, young teenagers will continue to be bored,

And flirting with violent marginality. Over the years, their dress code and their music will change. They will call each other in turn “hooligans”, “Zulus” or “scum”, but they will continue to feed the news pages of the newspapers. They will always be in gang, always violent, always rebellious.

And their past elders on the other side of the mirror, will look at them without always understanding them. – We had to beat you up because you were simply dressed like that… Jean-Paul will lead a life of wandering before to become a radio host and writer. – “Inevitably, we were being squeezed…”

Patrick will resume his studies and will also devote himself to writing. As for Gérard, he will wait until retirement age, to pick up where he had left it 40 years earlier, his teenage dream: become a rock singer.