Ever get hassled for your rock-length hair? I’m curious to know if anyone ever got hassled for a reverse rock hair length, such as the first generation of punks getting haircuts in the era when long hair became the norm. Did you have a rock-hair advocate?
My Mom was ahead of the curve in the Dry Look movement of the early 1970s, when regular guys first followed the flowing hair fashions established by rock ‘n rollers and assorted mods and hippies in the 1960s. She was right there alongside Carol Brady in supporting workingmen’s rights to grow their hair to a well-conditioned groovy length. She saw that my hair was kept at least as long as the Rubber Soul-era Beatles. Among all the snobbish attitudes my Mom inspired in me and that I still call on in times of trouble, perhaps none matched her attitudes toward hair.
His Father’s Mustache. Mr. James. These are the names of the first “hair salons” that my Mom took me to after countless arguments with traditional barbers through my preschool years. There were two barber friends in the family, in particular, who wanted to get a hold of my hair, Elmer and Pat the Barber (he was never referred to simply as “Pat”).
Elmer, one of my grandfather’s oldest friends, a kindly Italian uncle figure with a ready laugh, would call me over. “Let me see that hair, Jimmy,” he’d say in his gentle voice, as he ran his fingers through it. Then his tone shifted a bit. “Why don’t you tell your mother to let me give you a real boy’s haircut.”
“Pat the Barber,” just as friendly a presence in my grandparents’ neighborhood and the father of boy I’d crawl through dirty factory lots with in the summertime, used to give me the same pitch. I’m a boy, I’m a boy, and my Mom could admit it.
Those 2 hair salon names are so insanely spot on, I might have thought Christopher Guest came up with them for one of his satires.
I can still picture the signs. We should use the graphics from His Father’s Mustache for our next album cover. Man, then there’s another salon I used to go to as a teenager (I’ve written about it before in a Teddy Pendergrass obit, if memory serves). I can’t remember the name of the place, but they touted their “unisex” hairstyles, with a photo of two naked people of indeterminate gender locked in a seated front-to-front embrace. Hot!
My old man cut my hair for years — so I had some really weird dos. One time he cut it with fake v-shaped sideburns, so I kind of looked like a long-haired Mr. Spock.
My brother got the worst of it. During one haircutting session.– he slipped off the hood of the ’69 Olds Cutlass that was my dad’s barber chair of choice. The electric shears gave him a reverse mohawk — so everything had to come off. He was skinhead for a couple of months in early 70s, which was not cool.
As soon as I could save up enough paper route money, I was off to Zieg’s Barber Shop in Anoka, MN (AKA funoka, funland, and funville) to pay for my own cuts, which were not much better than dad’s self-taught creations.
I think the political equivalent of this would be Hunter S. Thompson shaving his head bald when he ran for sheriff so he could refer to the crew-cutted incumbent as “my long-haired opponent” in 1970.
aloha
LD
My mom was the one that would tell coaches of teams that they could stuff their haircut rule, no one was cutting my hair! She seemed to like it long, and one of those coaches that got told to stuff it was my dad, the high school swimming coach. Every other kid had their hair cut above the collar, and mine would cover my whole face when I got out of the pool if I didn’t push it back first.
We went to funny places. Luciana LeMire’s Studio, Newfangled Haircuts (that was a Unisex salon), Village Locksmith (get it? he’s still there), and in high school I think I went to a place where a college aged girl cut my hair. We wound up at a campground together, and I was one of the two youngest guys there, by a lot. All the other guys were hitting on her and since she actually knew me she chose me for her partner in Pass Out. That was cool, I felt like a big deal. She knew music and it was fun being the only one that had any of the albums she was talking about.
No more long hair here, though. I kind of miss it. I used to only get it cut once a year and I swear it’s every three weeks these days.
I had long hair from age 7 and on my little league team that year, which was called “Lad and Lassie” after the children’s clothing shop that sponsored it, there were three or four of us teased for being the “lassies” of the team.
11 years later I still had longish hair as a first semester college freshman. One of the few punks on campus came up to me and laughed and said, “look at the hippie with a Clash t-shirt”. I cut my hair short that Christmas and that certainly did lead to occasional abuse at the dawn of the 80s. Haven’t had long hair since.
My parents were pretty tolerant about our hair style choices. I grew up going to a unisex place called Hair and I had a crush on a guy who cut there (he looked like Warren Beaty in “Shampoo). Our stylist was Janet: she of the big, blond Farrah hair, big eyes, and given her extreme thinness, (I’m guessing now) coke habit. I had long, straight hair for many years – sort of the Lori Partridge look.
In high school, I went with the times and got some perms (fine, English hair does not do Farrah ‘dos very well) and ended my senior year with a fine looking mullet. This grew out and I was sporting the long hair again. But then “Ferris Bueller” came out and everyone started doing the long hair thing like Mia Sara, and in my continuing quest to look different from others, I permed it. The laugh was on me because when I moved to Rhode Island for grad school, every single girl had big, permed hair. Sigh.
Since then, I’ve been red, I’ve been orange, I’ve had a pixie cut, I’ve had an asymmetrical cut. I’ve had a conservative blunt shoulder-length bob. I’ve been blond for a while, sometimes with fuschia streaks. Thank goodness, my hair dresser, a woman I’ve been seeing since the late 80’s, is a music lover sporting bright red hair and always in for some styling fun.
I’d say my continuing hair changes have more to do with a punk ethos (“I don’t want to look like all the rest of them”) than trying to ascribe to a rock musician’s hair style.
Hey, Mod, on your hair poll there, you are missing another quintessential male hair looks: The Robert Smith. I would love to know whether any of you gents out there were brave enough to try that look!
Back in his day, Mr. Royale went through a period where he had the shaved side/back and long floppy/pouffy hair on top. That look, plus eyeliner – mm, mm, good! Maybe we can get him to post a photo…
And another missing one for all us men of a certain age. Unfortunately, The Collins! And I mean Phil, not Joan.
“I’ve changed my hairstyle/So many times now/I don’t know what I look like.”
At The Missus’ insistance, here’s a rogues gallery of my stupid solutions from age 5 on up.
Missing in action: me with the Bono circa “Boy”, the Brian Setzer, the Morrissey, and the Robert Smith.
Hmmm…didn’t attach. Let’s try that again.
http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=1rp7qs&s=6
The bar has been set! Awesome, thanks.
Some guy said that to me, too. I told him I thought all the Punks looked the same and that I was happy that my hair didn’t look like theirs. But then again, I liked Punk, Heavy Metal, Blues Rock and pretty much the same kinds of Rock N Roll I like now. So I wasn’t going to fit in at most places anyway.
Love it!
I can only remember my mom giving me grief when I stopped getting the “Uni-Cuts” coif that I’d had (w/little or no thought to it) all my life, and decided to cut my hair short…which was probably in…gasp!…1982!!! What an edgy punk! After all the crap I could remember about my two older brothers’ LONG hair in the early 70s, it was incredible to me how my mom (my dad didn’t say anything, but probably secretly liked my new direction) went on about my now lost “beautiful, long, wavy hair”….Now, I just wish I had the thick spread of my beautiful short hair!
Basically, I’ve had the same cut since then; a short back & sides “Strummer” ‘do (w/brief forays into extremely close cropping)…though, it’s getting scarce enough topside that I’m now considering buzzing it down to nubs. What a drag it is (esp. hair-wise…for some of us) getting old.
I had kind of a mullet in the late 80s, and some attractive girl probably dared me to get a “threadlock” in it, I’m not sure how it happened, but my hair eventually defeated it and cast it out.
The last time I had long hair was when I was out of work and seemingly determined not to get any in the mid-90s. it was a lot like an sullen, dirty blonde version of Daryl Hall without enough mousse. I received lots of ma’am…sirs in that era. Honestly, I would have been one ugly broad though.
I am most proud of NOT adopting the dickhead part in the middle of the late 70s/early 80s that was featured so strongly in my high school yearbook. And perms! Man, that was a weird time for male hair.
I had the “McCartney*” through middle school and into high school and then let it get extremely longer in an 80’s non-redneck mullet sort of way. By the time I started UGA (Athens, GA) the front grew out as well and the mullet was no more and the era of the pony tail began. The ponytail era ended when the job-search era began, although I could have had long hair anyway since I ended up working for record labels.
In my late 20s when I had my CD shop I tried to grow my hair long again and I found it to be a huge pain in the ass and cut it just in time to join my swing-rockabilly band.
*My mom told Gerald the barber to cut it like Paul McCartney and he did a pretty good job!
Paul McCartney used to get his hair cut at a really cheap and cheerful spit and sawdust barbers about 100 yards from where I used to live, I never saw him though. It was about the cheapest place in town.
I’ve never had the faintest interest in hairstyles and had long hair (rather like the cut Dee Dee has on the cover of the first Ramones album) for most of the punk period, then my sister bleached it for a while. For a few years I had at it myself, then grew it almost waist length because a girl I was insanely but unrequitedly besotted with said it would look good. About five years ago it all came off and it goes between quite short and long enough to flop in my eyes and irritate me these days.
A couple of weeks after we started seeing one another, I took Mrs H to Wales for the weekend and we went into a pub close to the border. She had short hair and mine was hanging down to my trousers.
We were at the bar and I felt someone fondling my backside. I turned around to see a cocky looking Welsh guy just in time to see him realise his mistake. I gave him a big grin and a sly wink and he ran out of the pub to the great amusement of his mates.