Teens just wanna have fun

Teenage: the Creation of Youth 1875-1945.
By Jon Savage. Chatto & Windus £20 order this book

IF stories of hoodies and rampant gangs of youngsters have begun to get too much, author Jon Savage’s latest work, Teenage, will help put the debate about youth in perspective.
He starts his book as early as 1875 and tracks the development of youth culture up to 1945, when most accounts begin.
Speaking at the launch last week at the London Review Bookshop in Holborn, the acclaimed author and music journalist said: “It just shows you that nothing’s new and that adults always think the worst of teenagers and teenagers make it their business to annoy adults.
“If you regard teenagers as toxic then it has to do with the toxicity of our society because teenagers get their messages about the toxicity of society and then play them back to adults.”
Savage read an extract about the underground Jazz culture of the Zazou, a group of 13 to 21-year-old French fashionistas who found their own way to rebel against the Nazi occupation during the Second World War.
He describes how rebellious French young people remained defiant despite being beaten up and having their heads shaved by French collabors.
Savage said: “It is extraordinary how people just wanting to have fun became such an issue.”
When the Nazis introduced the Star of David to brand Jewish people, the Zazou showed solidarity by creating their own star with “swing”, their music of preference, written in the middle.
He first sent the idea for Teenage to his publishers in 1994 and originally planned to take the book through the latter half of the 20th century, but was soon swamped by the research.
He limited the scope of the book but not his enjoyment of the research.
He said: “The great pleasure of doing this book was that it was un-chartered territory. I started a series for Granada television in 1981 and it never got made and my interest in this held.”