Punk Hair Styles
Ok, simple fact – in 1977 Punk rock meant short hair and no facial hair. In 2024 it’s no doubt hard to believe what that as a statement of your allegiance meant. The types of hair and the extremeness of style differed but were always with a combination of make-up, accessories (badges & bricolage), jewelry (piercings & bricolage) and of course clothes to varying extremities again. In 1976/77/78 – there were NO mohicans. FACTOID!
Up until then, this was what the world looked like the below.
Even Mick Jones who loved his silky rock star locks reluctantly had his hacked off for the early days in the Clash (he’s said to have blubbed at the injustice) He grew it back in 1978 when the band were going through a crisis patch and reverted back to flowing scarves, waistcoats and a shirt and fuck knows what other sartorial crimes.
So hair shorn short and then spiked up or coloured was an obvious indicator the owner had opted out of your rules. No long hair or carefully coiffured barnet; this was the dragged through a hedge backward look.
While it’s possible that similar styles could have happened both in the US and the UK, the fact that they involved people in similar styles of punk music and had Malcolm McLaren, a known magpie of looks and styles in common, suggests it’s more than just a coincidence. The earliest exponent of the spiky hair was Richard Hell (below middle) and again it’s no coincidence that two of his heroes Arthur Rimbaud and Antonin Artaud (below left and right) also shared that hairstyle.
Key UK exponents of the look were (of course) Johnny Rotten, Sid Vicious and Paul Simonon and I’d say that though Paul was cool and Sid appropriated bits of Ramones and his mate Rotten’s looks to give him his own legendary iconic look, Johnny just managed it effortlessly from the Sex Pistols to PIL complete with the whole punk package.
Getting it to stay spikey was a mysterious art only known to freemasons and the Illuminati. The shorter the hairthe easier to spike, but longer would require Vaseline, gel and or hairspray/lacquer. Some would use sugar and water.
Similarly with colouring. The common method was food colouring, though you had to watch out for rain and sweaty gigs. Other methods saw some unfortunates attempt to spray their heads with car paint and have to wash it out with white spirit. This must have made for some interesting conversations round the breakfast table as everyone tried to avoid the awkward subject of the smell.
There were also more exotic variations though these were very few. One was Ollie Wisdom from The Unwanted, who had a question mark shaved in his head (below left). Perhaps the most iconic though, was Soo Catwoman’s cut (below right) which I’d argue is also the most striking cut of the era and captured beautifully by Ray Stevenson.
While we may have said long hair was a no-no, that didn’t stop The Ramones but they of course had their own individual fashion/look package.
There were no takers for the hairstyles, though everything was taken from the neck down!
Facial hair didn’t stop the The Stranglers or The Mutants, though to be fair to The Stranglers they didn’t really give a fuck.
For girls, it was again either short or spiky though the use of furious backcombing was the preferred method of The Slits (below top left). See footage of them actually stopping songs in rehearsal to do this which makes them even more lovable. Siouxsie (below top right) of course was there with a short-styled Bowie dyed black cut look (though around late 1979/1980 she would go on full spiky back that would become a defining goth look) and Debbie Wilson (bottom left) favoured the Rotten spiked look. Jordan (bottom right) was… well Jordan, with severe spikage matching that striking Mondrian-looking face makeup.
More brutal was Shanne Bradley’s near crop (but closer to Johnny Rotten’s cut (below left) that matched fellow Nipple Erector Shane MacGowan’s and meant they frequently wore each others clothes or the unknown punk girl below right shaved to the bone with eye makeup artfully drawn into a skull design.
Another factoid, a lot of girls did very little with their hair preferring to make a statement via their clothes and makeup – like these girls below left photographed at the Roxy Club in 1977 by Erica Echenberg or right credit unknown.
As punk developed into some harder and more street, some punks either became skinheads or mods while others favoured a more utilitarian dress code of leather, boots and jeans but heavily studded. Hairstyles though seemed to go higher and more extreme and developed into the mohawk which has become associated as a defining punk look.
TalkPunk
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