Fashion Police: Rock Style

[purejuice]

I know that Bret Michaels is fighting for his life, but I think he would be consoled by the idea that I am looking at pictures of him and trying to analyze rock style.

I have fairly well pinned down the origin of a certain rock style in the Cockettes and Pointer Sisters trolling used velvet stores in San Francisco in the late '60s. They started vintage, as well as the whole androgynous, campy, rich hippie threads in rock attire.


Hibiscus, founder of the Cockettes. This was fashion as revolution.

The importance of rock attire is that it develops independent of the arbiters of haute couture. There are strong country music and LA (biker?) influences that rock stars absorb in places like Bakersfield where Madame Vionnet would fear to fucking tred.

That doesn't mean that it is fashion from the roots, that is, from the streets up. Nor does it mean that Karl Lagerfeld doesn't get all his ideas from chickenhawking the club kids.

As the recent fascinating colloquy on Go Fug Yourself attests, in a fug contest between people like Lady Gaga who dress as performance artists, and people like Amber Rose (also a performance artist! don't get me wrong!) or Rihanna, both of whom dress not only as performers but in what they each think of as pretty girl outfits, the aesthetic of fug is the same. Or maybe not -- that was the colloquy, in addition to whether the fugly girl outfits should be pitted against the performance outfits. In other words, everybody understands that what you wear to rock in is different from what you wear to sock in.

So stage attire is not just fug, and the DIY glitter aspect of the Cockettes ethos is one that just didn't survive their big break in New York. Glitter is an aspect of rock that didn't come from them; I suspect, actually, it came more from the whole Nudie Cohn/fat Elvis/Vegas/rhinestone cowboy nexus of rock. Combined with the gay kind of disco thread, it became glam rock. (I think; you tell me.) But the campy let's all dress up dealio is totally the Cockettes, as is the whole line of '40s saucy jitterbug girl group suits and fascinator hats (Dita von Teese, Bette Midler, the ghastly Princesses Eugenie and Beatrice), panne velvet and gypsy tat (Joplin, Stevie Nicks, Stevie Tyler). (John Galliano did the whole 2003 winter season for Dior based on a Cockettes fashion exhibit.)


Nudie and skinny Elvis.

But so I'm looking at Bret Michaels and saying, hmmm. The hat is San Diego beach bunny. The bandanna -- who wears it this way? Not any gangsta or biker I've ever seen? Desert rat frat boys on spring break at Galveston? Can you tell me the origin of this bandanna style? The only other person I've ever seen wearing it is the creepy heroin addict wannabee Alice in Chains rocker on Celebrity Rehab. (I think this is Day of the Locusts, Hollywood noir, rock riff raff style, cf. Kat von D eps paying special attention to Aubrey and the tatt chick at the rival tatt shop.)

The black leather is biker------->gay bar--------->porn, I'd say through the James Dean/Marlon Brando line. (What are you rebelling against? What have you got?) Everybody now wears black leather, from Kat von D and all her tatt chix (Goth low life Hollywood wannabee thread) to Varpunen, the 9-month-old baby of my favorite Finnish design blogger.

Brando and Lee Marvin, in jeans, 1953.

The hair is -- tell me exactly who made this hair. Is it Aerosmith? I mean, who had totally done, that is to say, not hippie, rocker hair?

The eyeliner?

Comments

[villagecharm.livejournal.com]

I am loving this write-up, and have very little to add, except a possible influence on the androgynous/glam style: the wrestler Gorgeous George:

http://bit.ly/b612Y9

That would be the second of three Gorgeous Georges in the wrestling biz; he was the guy from Georgia who adopted the flowing blond locks/perfume atomizer/woman's robe look during the early days of television, when he became the most famous wrestler in the country.

I'm reminded of this because the cover to the British version of the first Black Box Recorder LP, "England Made Me," has a fantastic photograph from the early 1970s showing the absurdly glammed-up wrestler Adrian Street posing in a coal mine (with his dad, a Welsh coal miner, nonetheless):

http://bit.ly/cKhteL

I've always thought of that as the perfect summation of glam rock style: absurd flamboyance with an undercurrent of thuggishness.

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

this is a significant contribution to what i'm thinking of as the gorgeous-george-methodist-hellfire-jerry-lee-lewis-seriously-baaaaaaad-white-boy thread. as an art historian buddy of mine points out, "The Rolling Stones pretend to be bad, but Jerry Lee Lewis was baaaaaaaaaaaaad."

and it's part of the okie charm of the bret michaels bandanna style, which i think is totally LA noir dive bar. the meanest white people i've ever seen i saw in southern california.

goodness gracious! great balls of fire!

[minniethemoocha.livejournal.com]

Aggressive Low Glamour Butch. Oh. There will be analysis.

It is totally about mean (poor) white people.

[the-macnab.livejournal.com]

Any proposed ontology of glam rock that does not have T.Rex in it just confuses me.

[minniethemoocha.livejournal.com]

See, I posit a division between the Lowbrow Aggro Glamour Butch aesthetic and the post-Invasion, British Carpetbagger (as Mary Poppins said, "Made Of") glam. What sort of Nasty is his Nasty is my inquiry.

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

see response below, to 'binghi, on chelita secunda, who alone made marc bolan dress as he did.

[niyabinghi.livejournal.com]

I had an intelligent comment to leave but got sidetracked by that second pic.
(And I never even liked his band/voice back in the day.)

And yeah you need to add Marc Bolan :)

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

this is the obituary, ganked by this person from the independent and written by philip hoare, of chelita secunda, who single handedly was responsible for marc bolan and his glitter and his androgynous girlie clothes.

if i were a wagering man, i'd bet she stole it from the cockettes.

http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=291580138&blogId=483222703

there's an interesting hibiscus->david hockney->ossie clark->chelita connection via the gay london underground art life i think is probably the source of her glitter.
http://www.warholstars.org/andywarhol/interview/mark/lancaster.html

headband treatise

[ericaceous.livejournal.com]

All I know is that all the metal/biker dudes in the blue collar new england sticks where I grew up wore that wide, high forehead headband style from my mid 70's birth (and possibly before) until the early 90's (when they were all getting kinda too bald for it and mostly went the shaved head route). At the time, I thought if it as Willie Nelson hair, which is another possible progenitor of the bandanna style-- but not the exuberant hair. The guys I am talking about, some had Big Hair and some had very contained, braided biker hair, but in 1980 I didn't subcategorize. Now I would say that truest Willie Nelson Style has very contained hair, and the Big Hair is more rocker inspired. Although you could say that Willie Nelson is a big ole hippie, I submit that bikers are in opposition to hippies, as mods were to rockers. So you might be right, Steve Tyler might be the rightful progenitor of the high volume masculine rocker hair plus that bandanna style...or maybe he was copying someone else in turn? Was ST wearing it before Keith Richards (which I also see as done hair not hippie hair)? I have no idea. I think Keith gets the eyeliner nod though.

But unless I am misunderstanding what we are talking about, by the mid to late 80's, lots of the metal/hard rock band guys were wearing a version of that, not just Bret (although his bleached locks are a 100% cali spin that I never saw in real life and I think his headgear is often more scarf than true bandanna). I swear it was the default rocker lead singer hairstyle for about 6 months circa 1987--I think Jon Bon Jovi had a curly version, axl rose had a flatter version that is more like Willie Nelson Hair (and later he moved on to a more standard also-biker-like skullcap style), Vince Neil (of Motley Crue) did fried blond with headband and of course Bret's enduring style. Dudes like Springstein and John Mellencamp wore an even more deglammed version of this same thing with short hair and a narrower width (Knopfler still does, even on his largely bald pate). I submit that theirs is also not a hippie version, more an expression of how it's Real Work to be on stage.

Is the Tyler a glammed up version of a preexisting blue collar style, as seen in the Nelson (cowboy-biker) and Springstein (factory/construction worker sweatband) or is the grungier Springstein a de-femmified version of the Tyler? Or are they all just reinterpretations of the hippie headband for the various constituencies?

Re: headband treatise

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

so the wide bandanna is a shit-kickin' white boy biker style, i think you have brilliantly established that.

willie nelson wears a bandanna like that? hmmm. 'cause country, and pro wrestling, as villagecharm points out above, have a pretty shit-kickin' boy thread i think of as the methodist hellfire goodness gracious great balls of fire very very bad white boy style. and where willie falls on this range of motion -- butcher or femmer -- is a serious question.

bikers are not country, i don't think, altho country can be bikers.

willie nelson in a biker bandanna. hmmmm. well it's anti-rhinestone cowboy, but of the same mean motherfucker ilk.

Re: headband treatise

[ericaceous.livejournal.com]

Yeah, bikers are not country, but there are lots of country bikers.

plasticsturgeon dislikes butch/femme dichotomies and prefers to think in glam/grunge. I think this works well here, since I really have no idea where WN falls on a butch/femme scale in relation to the baaaaaaaaaad methodist hellfire great balls thing you are talking about, but those guys are glam as hell. Willie Nelson and many bikers are on the grunge side of this. But if you applied the baaaaaaaaaaaaaaad white boy aesthetic to the grunge biker bandana style, I think that's where we might get this school of rocker hair?

Re: headband treatise

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

i think glam and grunge are excellent genders.
and, the willie nelson school of contained rocker hair? or the bret michaels school of contained rocker hair?

Re: headband treatise

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

and, i further believe that you have located the origin of the wide bandanna style in hair containment, which bikers -- and not hair rockers, and not sweaty rockers -- require. i suspect willie's braids are of the biker ilk? that is, hair containment? can you rule on this, kemo sabe?

Re: headband treatise

[ericaceous.livejournal.com]

Yeah, WIllie Nelson does, or at at least used to wear the wide forehead bandanna with loose hair, or one or two long braids. I think he started doing this style around the time that he and Waylon Jennings positioned themselves as the "outlaw" country guys (vs nashville). So that's the image part of this.

In terms of real life, I think but do not know for 100% sure that Wille Nelson rides. He definitely performs at biker events and has been in some biker movies, so I think he has been a part of that culture for a long time.

Re: headband treatise

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

it occurred to me to ask you, do you think the wide bandanna is an east coast/southern marker? such that a west coast biker would kill you if you wore your bandanna that way?

Re: headband treatise

[ericaceous.livejournal.com]

This is an interesting question. Sadly, I don't know enough about west coast white rural/working class/biker culture at all to even make a stab at answering that. However, Willie Nelson is Austin Texas, which I think is outside the east coast/south central geographic area. But that says nothing about the Cali response to a wide headband (for example).

Re: headband treatise

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

i think austin is a college town, in other words, not actually texas in many ways. and your memory of new england bikers....well, this requires more anthro digging, i b'lieve.