Dashing!
It’s finally starting to warm up, so I should have no business thinking about scarves for the next few months, but Robbie Robertson is showing up in the rock press to promote his new, certainly terrible album, and I’m finding myself thinking about the promise held by the silk scarf he wore in The Last Waltz.
I can’t stand wearing a scarf, even in freezing cold weather. They make my neck sweat and itch. I can’t get them to stay on my neck and shoulders. Within a few minutes of trying to wear a scarf I’m bugged that I can’t zip or button up my coat properly, and next thing I know one end of the scarf has slipped down and is practically dragging on the ground.
When it’s really cold out my wife tells me I should wear a scarf. When I was a kid my Mom used to tell me to wear a scarf, too. I don’t get that cold, especially around my neck. Most fashionable accessories we cover in our ongoing series on Rock’s Unfulfilled Fashion Ideas are not regularly recommended by both wives and mothers, but the Rock ‘n Roll Scarf had the dashing mastermind behind The Band as an advocate.
When I was 16 and running out to midnight showings of The Last Waltz as frequently as possible I thought Robbie Robertson was so dashing in his silk scarf and velvet jacket that I briefly considered heeding my Mom’s advice and wearing a scarf the next time I was headed for the bus stop in sub-freezing temperatures. I actually bought a black velvet jacket and a Fender Strat. I thought that I might be able to break myself in on wearing a scarf in the winter and then eventually make the leap to the totally unnecessary, as far as I could ever imagine, silk scarf for indoor/on-stage wear. Why not?
I’ll tell you why not. No matter how cool I thought Robbie Robertson was, I continued to hate scarves. Rock ‘n roll scarves were a slippery slope, too easily leading to the Bob Welch–style cravat. Or, worse yet, this Rod Stewart get-up. The pretentious indoor scarf is too much for me to fathom wearing. Michael Stipe‘s the sort of irritating dickhead for whom the indoor scarf was created, not me. Has any rocker “rocked the scarf,” as the kidz might say, or have they all ended up looking like the kind of person who might entitle an album Contact From the Underworld of Redboy?
As much as I desire the trappings of Edwardian-influenced rock fashion, the scarf is not for me. Last year, however, I finally did invest in a purple velvet jacket.
I have some magazine or something somewhere around here with an article about Brian Jones’ fashion sense, and how he was the first male rocker to wear scarves, often someplace other than his neck. There was a picture of him with one tied around one of his knees, and once it was pointed out, I thought it looked pretty cool.
Keith Richards really keeps that part of Brian alive. That guy always has scarves. There’s even a website where someone is trying to make money selling scarves like Keith would wear.
http://www.keithscarves.com
I have a really long black knitted scarf with Stones tongues on the ends. My mom and her knitting teacher (I guess probably mostly her knitting teacher) made it for me. I figured I’d look pretty cool with it, and it really is a neat scarf, but I don’t wear it. I figure I’ll lose it, or all the other things that happen that you mentioned will happen. My neck will get hot and itchy, it will drag on things, catch on chairs, get wadded up and put in my pocket, creating a giant, awkward bulge.
You had to bring up Bob Welch! I hate that cravat, and he tends to shave like once a week and wear women’s glasses, but I kiinda like him. I like his Fleetwood Mac days, and I really like both Paris albums, which are really completely different from each other. But the guy just looks completely uncool.
Elvis seemed to rock the scarves, for better or worse. Women fans would claw each other to pieces just to touch one that he would hand out in concert. You just can’t dismiss that sort of power.
I’d say the most mainstream American proponent of the Rock Scarf is Steven Tyler. As much as I hate the notion of the “indoor scarf,” I can’t think of anybody who delivers on the promise of the scarf as well as Tyler.
For the record, every time I’ve seen Mick Jagger trying to rock a scarf, he’s looked like a big tool.
He looks especially bad here:
http://www.ikoncollectables.com.au/images/mickjagger2.jpg
If that outfit were real it could be a condenda:
https://www.rocktownhall.com/blogs/index.php/mick-jagger-s-most-egregious-fashion-faux-pas/
correction: contender
It was always the stylin’ 70’s guys with the scarves. David Johansen worked it OK: http://www.thisisnotporn.net/2010/12/14/david-johansen-and-joey-ramone/ (what’s up with that url?)
If we are not excluding the ladies, you have to appreciate some Stevie Nicks: http://www.meladori.com/shesinfashion/2011/02/sewingstyle-inspiration-stevie-nicks/
Good points, HVB. I think the fact that Tyler worked his way up through bandanas helped him.
Jagger also tried the silk scarf during the Studio 54 days, didn’t he. You’re right, he couldn’t make it work. The use of the scarf as a sash, however, is another matter, possibly for a separate analysis.
I thought Nicks was a scarf wearer, but in your examples I’d say that’s a shawl. Quite different. Townswomen, we need a ruling.
I figured Lindsay Buckingham as an indoor scarf wearer, but I did not find supporting evidence. It wouldn’t surprise me if every member of Fleetwood Mac minus John McVie attempted to rock the scarf at some point.
Is there any photographic evidence of Ray Davies circa ’66-’69 wearing a scarf?
Good call!
http://www.nndb.com/people/603/000024531/raydavies02.jpg
Now there’s a guy who just may have pulled off the rock scarf.
Look at this guy, he even knows how to tie fancy scarf knots.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_emp9WQHV_eM/TEnkB_MRd6I/AAAAAAAAAk8/dtbJK8x4wxU/s1600/ray_davies_001_102508.jpg
No dragging scarves for this dedicated follower of fashion.
http://www.contactmusic.com/pics/mc/late_show_celebs_2_181109/ray_davies_5388701.jpg
Yep, he’s a pro alright!
Let’s not forget the Keith Richards scarf look, here reenacted by Nikki Sudden and Dave Kusworth of the Jacobites:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_CHENHclgS24/SXfiUGgAfUI/AAAAAAAAB3c/sxZoPCM_HPg/s400/jacobites10.jpg
Bowie rocked a mean scarf — and then there is this piece of high fashion.
http://www.anytimescarf.com/products/David-Bowie-Yarnz-Lightning-Square-Scarf.html
Every time I see that picture of Robbie Robertson, I hear the theme music from Dr. Who in my head.
Didn’t Carly Simon famously sing about Mick’s scarf in this little diddy?
You walked into the party like you were walking onto a yacht
Your hat strategically dipped below one eye
Your scarf it was apricot
You had one eye in the mirror as you watched yourself gavotte
And all the girls dreamed that they’d be your partner
Ray is rocking a scarf in this early klassic klip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3d8moA2Iksg
Remember Mick at the World Cup in the box with Bill Clinton?
http://www.marketingsoccer.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/ept_sports_sow_experts-788633817-1278098232.jpg
He looks cold and unhappy here:
http://www.kprifm.com/images/207055.jpg
I hadn’t considered those scarves but neckerchiefs, but that may be a matter of semantics. Good call!
I like, in that second photo, how his hands are positioned on his hips, like he’s about to do that little bunny-hop move he does on stage.
Wow, I had no idea what half of lyrics were in that song! Good call. Townspeople, you are doing much to keep alive the unfulfilled promise of the rock scarf.
I don’t know why people always think that song is about Mick. He’s singing backing vocals on it, and I think it would be hard to convince someone to do that if the song was about them. Anyway, didn’t Carly finally say it was about Warren Beatty?
Carly has never really said who the song is about. She did say over the years that the person’s name had “a”, “e” and “r” in it. Mick Jagger? Warren Beatty? James Taylor? She had also hinted that the subject was a composite of three people.
It’s hilarious that so much speculation goes on regarding this song, as if the song could not have meaning without a biographical link. Shoot, I still think it’s about me.
The scarf, by the way, was Nick Nolte’s, at least that’s what Carly Simon is quoted as having said on the Wikipedia page for this song:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You're_So_Vain
Check out the Nazareth lead singer in this Hair of the Dog video. Looks like a scarf to me . . . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEG0-3xlAkg&feature=player_embedded#at=116
Joe Walsh wore an impressive scarf along with flying goggles (and apparently not much else) on the cover of his “So What?” album.
http://www.covershut.com/covers/Joe-Walsh-So-What-1974-Front-Cover-44045.jpg
Didn’t Carly do some auction for charity where she divulged who the song was all about to the highest bidder? I seem to remember that. I think it’s great that people have discussed it like this for decades. It’s not a bad song for a big AM hit, and if hit singles were half that good these days, we’d all be better off. Good for her!
Nice, obscure call, but is that a scarf or some candy-ass cravat?
Now THAT’S a scarf.
That’s what I thought, 2K, but my 10 seconds of investigation earlier today only turned up the stuff about Nick Nolte’s scarf.
I like that song too. There was a piece on its producer, Richard Perry, in Musician magazine years ago, and he talked about how much work and pot smoking went into the long fadeout. He said they spent hours getting high and working on building the fade. He thought exciting fadeouts were key to a song’s success. One of those little stories I’ll never forget…
I would like to add that the Bay City Rollers were scarf wearers at that time. The plaid was perfect on them.
I bet at some point in history Steven Tyler and Peter Wolf had an epic scarf-off. I can’t find any photographic evidence of Peter Wolf with a scarf, but it makes sense and searching Google for “Peter Wolf scarf” does indeed return some pictures of Tyler.
I really like the new Robbie Robertson record. If you are fan of his s/t record from 1987 or Storyville from 1991 (I am a huge fan of both) then this fits right in with those.
It’s mellow and mid-tempo like an Eric Clapton record (but better than anything he has done since covering Robbie’s “It’s in the Way That You Use It” and has plenty of Memphis soul meets New Orleans (where he lives)
It also has more guitar playing that anything he has ever done (and I am a big fan of Robbie as a player)
Robbie lives in N.O.? I thought he was an L.A. guy. I listened all the way through last week, and I thought the new album sounded like a million bucks … had been spent producing it. Probably more. And despite the presence of Trent Reznor, it sounded like it could have come out in the 80s (perhaps a reaction to trying to sound contemporary on his last album).