“The key to a life well lived is in a text I received from my grandson recently, a verse from The Man In The Glass by Peter Dale Wimbrow....'When you get want you want in your struggle for self, And the world makes you king for a day, Just go to the mirror and look at yourself, And see what that man has to say.” A grandson sends his grandfather knowledge.”

Irish Jack: The Heart & Soul of Mods

An icon of the UK mod scene in the 1960s

Irish Jack has often been credited with being one of the original members, if not the original member, of the mod scene in 1960s London. He knew the Who’s Pete Townshend from that scene, and Townshend has often said that Jack was the basis or part of the basis for Jimmy, the character Townshend created for the band’s 1973 concept album Quadrophenia, brought to life by actor Phil Daniels in the 1979 film of the same name. “Irish Jack" - christened so by Who manager Kit Lambert during a night-of madness - first met The Who in 1962 when the band was still known as The Detours. It was while living as a young man in London in the Sixties that something extraordinary happened to Corkman Jack Lyons. While they were still unknowns, he befriended legendary rock band The Who and went on to become their unofficial 'fifth' member.

(Photos: Irish Jack with his Vespa)

Jack left London in 1968 and returned to Cork where he has lived ever since but has remained in close contact with the surviving members of the band, Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey. It was through his job there as a postman that he came to know another band that would go on leave their mark in their own unique way, The Frank And Walters. As an early cheerleader and mentor for the band, they returned the favour by asking him to write a book about them, titled 'A Renewed Interest In Reading' (2007).

Interview by Michael Limnios

Photographs courtesy of Irish Jack's Archive / All Right Received

What are some of the most important lessons you have learned from your experience in your life’s paths? 

I'm 82!  And in that span of time since being a teenager through the 50s and 60s, I've learned that nothing stays the same. The universal picture keeps changing - for good and for bad. We comfort ourselves with 'memory' as we grow older. For some of us if we are able to remember our teenage years with clarity, then we are lucky souls indeed.

Why do you think that the Rock n’ Roll Counterculture in the UK continues to generate such a devoted following?

Ah! Rock and roll in the UK? A lot of it had to do with the predominance of the English language and, of course, the way that Britain in the 50s and 60s was held with a considerable amount of respect. There were some exceptions in Europe but the most famous films made were either American or English and likewise the most famous music recording artists spoke to their audiences through the idiom of the English language. The language of The Bard (William Shakespeare) had a lot to do with it.

What moment changed your life the most? What keeps Irish Jack passionate over the years?

Becoming a Mod called Irish Jack! Definitely. Becoming a Mod was for me achieving an identidy, and our manager Kit Lambert coming up with the nick-name "Irish Jack" defined me from being a clumsy individual with an Irish accent nobody could understand, I was still a disappointing five foot seven in height and I still had the most ridiculous and very un-Mod bush of thick curly hair. But being "Jack" freed me totally from the embarrassment of being "Jackie" - I had a girl's name.

What keeps me passionate? Okay, I'm 82 now. I met The Who in June 1962 when they were The Detours and I was 19. Nineteen from eighty-two is sixty-three, so I have not known the band for only 19 of those years, which is a staggering statistic. AND we're still playing! That's what keeps me passionate.

“People's minds and perceptions of opinion and beliefs have always been changed by the power of music. From the very earliest gospel and blues which originated by the beat of an African drum to the slave fields of the Deep South in America, hardship and misery was always articulated by the beat of a drum and a gospel voice.” (Photos: Irish Jack, c.1960s & Irish Jack with his wife, Maura)

How important was music in your life and what do you miss most nowadays from the music of past?

When I was a kid of 10, I would lie in bed listening to my mother's Brother knitting machine, the head going backwards and forwards until one o 'clock in the morning, as she struggled to keep up with orders of pullovers for the families who lived on our council estate. In the bedroom next door a Concerto in C Minor by my father practicing on his violin, he was a classical violinist and whether he had drink taken or not he could play brilliantly. His music stand would be placed near his bed to allow him to sit at the edge and sometimes with a fountain pen gripped between his yellowing teeth he would adjust notation on the music sheets as fast as you or I might write a letter. While my mother continued to toil at the knitting machine my father bought a new Bush tape recorder. This was a monstrous introduction to the family and a rare contraption bought on Hire Purchase which allowed the boy actor in me to practice my own take on an Oxford accent. My father already had a part-Oxford accent as he considered himself above everybody else but to the family's knowledge he had never set foot in the city of dreaming spires. So this was my musical beginnings and it was my job (cursed at eleven years old, the eldest son of an eldest son) to catalogue his recorded pieces with sticky labels bearing dates and all categorised in blue Swan fountain pen ink on the face of each shoe box containing the tapes. The tape recorder seemed to be the start of something in me. I was eleven and I could act. I heard voices and music in my head, I couldn't sing nor actually play music but I dreamed music until it came out of my ears. Lonnie Donegan, Connie Francis, Elvis. The maestro, my father, had a knack of persuading me not to spend the next two hours kicking a tennis ball against the side of our house. Instead I would fulfil the role of some kind of future 'sound engineer' standing next to the Bush tape recorder, its wide tape spools the size of saucers, the control buttons the size of piano keys, the microphone lead delicately poised on an empty pint glass and looping into the sugar bowl on the kitchen table as my father would crush the bones in his hands to warm up his fingers. Then he'd look at me and say, 'Did you know that a dot after a note increases its value by half?' Then he'd play like a genius. 

What I really miss nowadays of the music of the past is just how melodic and imaginative a lot of the old songs were. I was at a wedding not so long ago and I noticed that it was the 60s classics like The Four Tops, Martha & The Vandellas and The Beach Boys that got everyone on the floor----especially the young people who weren't even born when those fabulous songs were recorded. 

“I'm 82! And in that span of time since being a teenager through the 50s and 60s, I've learned that nothing stays the same. The universal picture keeps changing - for good and for bad. We comfort ourselves with 'memory' as we grow older. For some of us if we are able to remember our teenage years with clarity, then we are lucky souls indeed.” (Irish Jack / Photo by Seamus Murphy)

How did your interesting for the Mods come about? How did the fashion and scooters shape the Mods? 

That's an easy one. We have to go back to September 1962; my cousin Janice showed me an article in Town magazine which was a kind of avant garde London monthly publication. In the September issue were some pictures of three stylishly dressed boys who lived in Finsbury Park north London. I still remember their names: Mikey Simmons, Peter Sugar and Mark Feld. The word 'Mod' was of course unheard of at the time. According to Town one of the boys Mark Feld had asked his neighbour Mrs. Perrone who was a tailor, to cut him a hugely expensive pure leather waistcoat. It would take anyone six weeks wages to buy a similar waistcoat in the West End. These boys told Town magazine that they consiodered themselves 'Modernists' because they listened to modern jazz and made a point of never disclosing where they bought their latest clothes. As the months went by the popularity of modern jazz and stylised clothes spread across to west London which is where I was in Shepherd's Bush. At some point along the way it is safe to assume that some 'Modernist' found themselves in a coffee bar at two o' clock in the morning and got fed-up of telling people he/she was a 'Modernist'  and shortened it down to 'Mod'. That's how it all happened. Suddenly there were Mods all over Britain; London, Birmingham, Manchester, Cardiff, Glasgow. Practically every town in Britain had Mods. Don't forget that 1964 was the era of 'Live Now - Pay Later' and if you had a job you'd get your dad to go guarantor, sign the forms, and you could push a brand new gleaming GS Vespa or Lambretta out of the bike shop. Whoever added the Italian scooter to the Mod apparel, I don't know his name----but it was fucking genius !  The boy from Finsbury Park called Mark Feld became the rock legend Marc Bolan of T-Rex.  

“What I really miss nowadays of the music of the past is just how melodic and imaginative a lot of the old songs were. I was at a wedding not so long ago and I noticed that it was the 60s classics like The Four Tops, Martha & The Vandellas and The Beach Boys that got everyone on the floor----especially the young people who weren't even born when those fabulous songs were recorded.” (Photos: Irish Jack with Roger Daltrey and friends, 1977 - Irish Jack and Peter Townshend)

If you could changed one thing in the Mod ‘movement’, what would that be? What has made you laugh and what touched you from the Mod’s era?

I wouldn't change anything----it was perfect!

In December 1965 when The Who's first album 'My Generation' was released I first heard it round at my friend's house. I was totally knocked out by the track Out In The Street which contained feedback. The next day was Friday and I didn't finish my office job in Hammersmith until five thirty, by that time the Who's office would've been closed and it was too late for me to go and get my free copy from our managers' Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp. I could've waited until Monday to get my complimentary copy but I just had to have it for the weekend. So I nipped into a record store in the King Street in Hammersmith and bought the record album. When I got it back to the flat I went into my bedroom and locked the door. I put Out In The Street on at full volume and stood in my Mod clothes before my full-length mirror pretending to be Pete Townshend. At the vital point of the feedback I did a windmill (I was quite good at windmilling) well, I did a windmill and hit the light bulb over my head which dropped and shattered on the floor. I looked at the blood on my fingers and it occurred to me that somehow I had become an artist!

What are your hopes and fears for the future of? What do you think is key to a life well lived?

I think maybe my fears at the moment outweigh my hopes. I fear for the future of our planet which we are successfully destroying. I fear for the people of Ukraine, I fear for the people of Gaza. I fear for the future of my grand-children and the kind of lives they will have to live. My hope is that America will wake up and get rid of Donald Trump. That far far safety gun laws will be introduced and far far better human rights for non-white people. Did you know that Ray Charles and Bessie Smith had to play to segregated audiences? No, not in medevil Russia but the USA.

The key to a life well lived is in a text I received from my grandson recently, a verse from The Man In The Glass by Peter Dale Wimbrow....'When you get want you want in your struggle for self, And the world makes you king for a day, Just go to the mirror and look at yourself, And see what that man has to say.” A grandson sends his grandfather knowledge.

“We have to go back to September 1962; my cousin Janice showed me an article in Town magazine which was a kind of avant garde London monthly publication. In the September issue were some pictures of three stylishly dressed boys who lived in Finsbury Park north London. I still remember their names: Mikey Simmons, Peter Sugar and Mark Feld. The word 'Mod' was of course unheard of at the time.” (Photo: Poster of Quadrophenia, 1973 / Irish Jack with his Vespa, Cork Ireland / Photo by Martin Duggan)

What were the reasons that made the UK in the 1960s to be the center of the Artistic/Music researches and experiments?

I think if you look at it broadly it's easy to see how places like London and San Francisco became melting pots for the counter culture that was happening during the 60s. You have to consider the enormous influence the Beatles had on the English speaking world. In many ways, at least as far as Britain was concerned, British colonialism carried a lot of weight making London dead centre of things. The beat generation affecting places like Los Angeles and San Francisco, writers like Charles Bukowski, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg and the music of The Doors helped consolidate the counter culture in America. So you had two things going on at the same time yet they were very much different. Also you had the Pop Art of people like Andy Warhol and in England you had the revolutionary art of Peter Blake. The strange thing is that music never killed anyone----not like politics and religion.

What is the impact of your generation on the socio-cultural implications? What is/was the role of your generation music/culture in today’s society?

People's minds and perceptions of opinion and beliefs have always been changed by the power of music. From the very earliest gospel and blues which originated by the beat of an African drum to the slave fields of the Deep South in America, hardship and misery was always articulated by the beat of a drum and a gospel voice. From America this idiom reached western Europe and especially the British Isles where people like the early jazz pioneers and folk blues of people like Cyril Davies and Alexis Korner struck a chord with liberal London. People really have no idea of the powerful message that artists like Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan were capable of transporting to the listening ear.