Style is an important part of rock music and each generation and genre has had its own sense of what’s cool. Some rock movements take a cheeky approach to style, having as much fun with it as they can while other genres of rock use style as a political statement. No matter how different rock styles are, they all have one thing in common, hair.
Hair in rock culture is so important that there is a whole sub genre dedicated to it, 80s hair metal. Rock hairstyles are the source of great debate. What once was cool becomes totally lame. What once was reviled becomes ironically hip.
Rock hairstyles can even lead to riots, like March of 2008 in Querétaro, a town in Mexico where emo kids became the target of violence in the city’s center square. Rock kids with pompadours and punks with Mohawks took to the streets with the purpose of beating up any emo kids with angular haircuts and an abundance of eye make-up.
Some rock hairstyles have roots that reach far back into history long before anyone had heard of rock music. Cutting one’s hair into a Mohawk began as a ritual for warriors before going into battle. The Pompadour is an 18th century style named for the woman who started it Madame de Pompadour, the official mistress of Louis XV.
Rock hairstyles change, falling in and out of fashion until it’s hard to remember where they started. The mullet for example went from being an androgynous cut worn by everyone in the glam rock scene starting with David Bowie to being a favorite look for those who loved to line dance, drink Budweiser, and beat up effeminate males.
The innocent Beatles mop top was the first time since the 18th century that men wore their hair long. The mop top continued to grow and become more unkempt from the shaggy hippie mane to the tangled mass of hair perfect for head banging.
Sometimes a haircut comes completely out of nowhere like the band The Monks, a group of American GIs who were based in Germany in the mid to late 1960s. They wore cassocks, nooses like neckties, and cut their hair into a monk’s tonsures. The idea was to have an anti Beatle’s cut.
Check back every Tuesday through March 2nd for the next installments of this series on some of the most prolific rock hairstyles and their history.
