"The Life is all there is... Everything else is a fraud, a fake—somebody else’s thing you’ve been conned into."
This bold declaration of self-definition and rejection of conformity came straight from the Noonday Underground chapter in Tom Wolfe’s The Pump House Gang and directly inspired the Squire song The Life, which opens Get Smart! in dramatic, assertive fashion. As we conclude our trilogy following It’s a Mod Mod World and Noonday Underground, we explore The Life—the mindset, the music, and the philosophy of belonging to something real.
The Noonday Underground chapter introduces The Life—not just a lifestyle, but a worldview. Wolfe’s sharp incisive prose captures young Londoners in the mid-1960s creating an alternative existence based on style, exclusivity, and carefully curated rebellion. This chapter resonated with me like a manifesto, describing the pride and outsider status that defined the Mod subculture—and all subcultures seeking meaning beyond mainstream society.
Wolfe describes the self-contained world of London’s 1960s youth, particularly those immersed in exclusive daylight clubs where time lost meaning. The Life exists apart from the constraints of work, school, and societal expectations. These young people reject the paths their parents expect them to follow, instead cultivating their own aesthetic, social, and cultural markers. They use fashion, music, and language to create insular communities where only those "in the know" can participate.
In many ways, this aligns with the Mod movement’s philosophy—The Life is about living deliberately, with style, distinction, and a sense of purpose beyond the mundane routines of the everyday. And yet, Wolfe also captured a fundamental paradox: the more they pursued authenticity, the more performative their rebellion became. Their rejection of mainstream society required such dedication to appearance and detail that it created its own form of conformity. This tension—between genuine alienation and stylised rebellion—became central to The Life. The strict adherence to Mod style, code, and ethos became something you might also want to break free from.
The song opens with:
The Life—mess your mind
The Life—try to find a new way
The Life—turns me on
The Life—I have found the Noonday Underground
These lines reflect the allure of The Life, the search for something beyond routine existence. Mess your mind suggests rejecting rigid thinking, embracing new experiences, and redefining oneself outside societal norms.
Meanwhile, I have found the Noonday Underground directly links to Wolfe’s exploration of London’s hidden youth culture, reinforcing the idea that true identity is forged in exclusive, self-contained worlds. It also connects to my own discovery of the book and the imagery it conjured—recalling the youthful vibrancy I had experienced as a Mod band playing within an emerging Mod revival scene. This revival seemed to mirror - and in my mind, capture - the essence of the original 1960s movement—running parallel to an explosion of youth culture, new music, new fashion, and modernism. Yet I have found the Noonday Underground also admits it is perhaps just trading one system for another.
Just as It’s a Mod Mod World explored consumerism, identity, and media influence, and Noonday Underground celebrated the clandestine clubs and secret haunts of Mods, The Life acknowledges the deeper philosophy behind it all—prioritising creativity, autonomy, and style over conformity.
I wrote The Life conscious of this same dynamic playing out in the Mod revival. The lyrics about finding "a new way" and hiding "from the light of day" echo Wolfe's observations about how subcultures create their own parallel worlds. Just as his subjects found their truth in basement clubs at noon, we were carving out our own spaces of authenticity in a world that felt increasingly artificial and cynical. Mod promised a new positivity and way forward—borrowing from the past while connecting to post-punk energy as a reinvention.
Throughout history, youth movements have constantly reinvented themselves while maintaining core principles of identity, rebellion, and exclusivity. The Mods of the 1960s, the Mod Revival of the late 1970s, and later adaptations in Britpop and indie scenes all reflect this ongoing cycle.
The lyric:
The Life—hide away
The Life—from the light of day—a new way
speaks to the need to disappear from the structured, visible world to create something new. Just as Mods retreated into hidden clubs and private gatherings, every subculture has its underground sanctuaries where The Life continues to evolve—where you can “live as one.”
The song’s themes of ambition and transformation not only echo Wolfe’s idea of subcultural identity as both escape and aspiration, but also as theatre. The irony wasn’t lost on us—we were writing about the very paradox we were living. When you declare “I am the life!” (as the lyrics do), are you celebrating authenticity or acknowledging performance?
The song takes an especially pointed turn with its reference to “your only song was the all mod con"—written just as Paul Weller disbanded The Jam, leaving his mod constituency feeling betrayed. Like John Lennon's "How Do You Sleep?" critique of McCartney, it questions the authenticity of those who move on from their subcultural roots, capturing the bitterness and disbelief of those who had been loyal followers. Yet this criticism contains its own contradiction: if The Life is about constant renewal ("try to find a new way"), how can we condemn those who evolve?
The answer is embedded in the song itself: The Life isn’t something you leave behind; it’s something you either embody or you don’t.
Just as Wolfe’s subjects grappled with the commodification of their rebellion, we saw the Mod revival wrestle with authenticity—eventually dissolving into a post-Quadrophenia haze of media misinterpretation.
Ultimately, The Life is about more than rejecting mainstream norms—it’s about cultivating knowledge, taste, and experiences that set individuals apart. Knowing the right music, wearing the right clothes, frequenting the right clubs—these are all markers of belonging that grant status within a subcultural hierarchy.
Those who truly live The Life develop an unspoken set of rules that define who is part of the scene and who is merely observing from the outside. This exclusivity doesn’t come from wealth or privilege but from immersion and authenticity—qualities at the heart of a Mod culture that inspired Squire’s lyrics.
In the end, true identity is found in the worlds we build for ourselves, not in the scripts handed down to us. In the Mod clubs of the 1960s, the Noonday Underground of Wolfe’s writing, and the Mod revival and beyond, The Life has always been about more than just music and fashion. It’s about autonomy, curating style, and rejecting the ordinary in favour of something sharper, more deliberate, and ultimately more real.
Looking back, Wolfe’s observations about The Life remain relevant. Whether in 1960s London, the Mod revival era, or today, youth cultures continue to create their own parallel worlds, their own measures of authenticity. The desire to find something real, something that isn't "somebody else's thing you've been conned into," remains powerful precisely because it's impossible to fully achieve.
So maybe that's the final contradiction—The Life feels most real when it recognises its own constructed nature—that even rebellion and individuality are shaped by deliberate choices in style, behaviour, and exclusivity.
So, as we conclude this trilogy, the final question remains: Are you living The Life?
Listen to me…
Come on join the life!
Come over to the life!