By Groovy Duke Lewis
Beards, mustaches, sideburns and mutton-chop side whiskers are what’s happening among the Today Cats. Male ears are IN, to wit, out in plain view. Thick bangs are OUT although a light forehead fringe is still IN. Shoulder-length hairdos are OUT like the gout. The name of the game is cut your mane.
Singers and musicians on both sides of the Atlantic are clipping, cropping and chopping their locks so the ears and some of the forehead and neck are naked to the visible eye. Hair may touch the collar but not the shoulders, it may be shaggy but must be well landscaped and laundered and should not resemble a dandruff garage or a dishmop run through a meat grinder. Sheepdog and poodle cuts are only for sheepdogs and poodles now.
Nearly all the leading music stars have lopped inches off their tresses. If they haven’t yet they soon will to keep in step with the current trend. This includes the Rolling Stones, Byrds, five out of six Beach Boys, Dave Clark Five, Raiders and many more. You already know what happened to John Lennon’s hair.
This is not to say the long-haired music people have gone to the other extreme with crew cuts, flat tops or the clean-cut freshly-barbered all-American boy looks. Even with the new hair length they’d probably be bounced from typical American schools.
Dennis Wilson, a leader of Now, cut his long “blonde” hair to medium length months ago and let it grow back to its natural nut-brown color.
In terms of historical eras you might say male coiffures have changed from Prince Valiant to King Edward. The Edwardian image is high in clothes too.
There are still a few hold-outs for the old coifs, like Peter Noone, Frank Zappa, Bob Dylan, Donovan and Brian Wilson. Brian’s wraparound headdress, which requires constant squirting by a hairspray bomb, is growing so thick and heavy that he may soon need a neck brace to hold his head up.
The new face foliage is something else. Danny Hutton was the first to wear a hunk of hair, like a misplaced eyebrow, on his upper lip. Girls squawked at first, then learned to like it.
Now Beatleboys Paul McCartney and George Harrison are wearing mustaches, the kind we used to call cookie-dusters. Stonemen Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman are tending their new-grown lip muffs.
Sonny Bono shortened his soup bowl haircut, bought a couple of Edwardian suits and started tinkering with a Van Dyke. Papas John Phillips and Denny Doherty are well bearded. Mark Lindsay sheared his ponytail and sprouted sideburns. P.J. Proby cut his ponytail and grew an Arab beard. Jim McGuinn now has sideboards on his cheeks.
Mick Jagger and Mike Clark uncovered their ears, foreheads and inches of neck. Mike the Byrd is nursing patches of blonde face fuzz, hoping it may mature into a plush bush. One or two Hollies wear luxriant [sic] crops of face alfalfa. Mike Love has more hair on his face than his head.
Talking with several song leaders we got the impression the scissor scene was a reaction to the icky-looking beat bums, who infest New York’s Greenwich Village, Hollywood’s Sunset Strip and London’s Soho-Chelsea arena, wearing overlong dirty, greasy, uncombed, unwashed, matted, sweat-stained hair with clothes to match.
Long straight (clean!) hair is still IN for girls. Ruffled bell-bottoms are OUT. Miniskirts and pants-suits are IN.
Phil Volk is catching up on Mark Lindsay in the popularity parade, according to the latest count of fan mail received at the Raiders headquarters here. Their rivalry for feminine favor is quite friendly—so far.
Jim “Harpo” Valley has been taken to the bosom of the Raider fans. In the beginning some Drake Levin-lovers resented Jim as a interloper. He’s accepted now.
Harpo and Drake are close friends without a whisper of jealousy between them. Harpo has been helping Drake get organized as a solo artist. Levin, for his debut disk, has developed a sound which he describes as “rock-’n’-roll with jazz overtons [sic].”
Meanwhile Paul Revere and his group are hideously overworked and fatigued although they cover up in performance. They are trying to do three jobs at the same time: (1) Write music, rehearse and record a string of new singles and albums, (2) travel the exhausting one-nighter concert trail and (3) continue to perform as regulars on Where The Action Is.
More is in store. The Raiders have been offered a weekly syndicated TV show of their own if they become army rejects or deferreds, and money for a movie if they stay civvies and can find a script to suit their zany brand of showmanship.
One sure way to hype the sales of a record in an area is to get one radio station to ban it as Dirty while a competitor plays it as a Clean. Eight Miles High, banned by many DJs as a drug song (which it wasn’t) was the Byrd’s No. 2 seller, after Mr. Tambourine Man—which some claimed also had a double-meaning.
Analysis of questionnaires sent 800 Byrd fan-clubbers (average age 15 ½) show 8 Miles Hi their favorite. Other replies: Favorite Byrd Jim McGiunn 322, Mike Clark 251, David Crosby 194, Chris Hillman 192. Most impressive Byrd quality—Music 407, appearance 369, personality 256, friendliness 238.
Some record stars would be better waiters—and some waiters would make better musicians. Ask Mary Hughes, the blonde bombshell whose bikini’d bod illuminates scores of AIP youth pix. In Greensboro, N.C., on a personal appearance tour to plug Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine, Mary’s press conference was churned into chaos by two nitwit stumblebum waiters who talked loud, interrupted her talk with insane remarks, dropped trays of canapes, tripped over their own feet and spilled drinks on interviewers and interviewee alike. Wanting them thrown out, the press agent called the hotel manager who went into shock.
“But they aren’t my waiters!” he protested. “They are hotel guests, two Beach Boys!”
The two clowns: Bruce Johnston and Dennis Wilson.
Junior co-stars of The Road West, Andy Prine and Brenda Scott, are deliriously happy though divorced. They held hands during the divorce trial and had a good cry together when it was over. Now they go steady. She returned his wedding ring and he swapped it for a friendship ring which she always wears.
“We’re much happier this way, aren’t we, Andy darling?” she bubbled.
“Yeah, I think so,” he sighed.
Kathy Hays, another Road West co-star, enjoys a blissful marriage union with Glenn Ford who is 19 years older than she is. That is a good age differential, she says.
“Young boys are so wrapped up in their own ego problems they forget the hundred little courtesies that make a wife happy. The older man is finished with his growing pains. He has learned through experience how to indulge a woman’s caprices and cope with her good and bad moods, and enjoy it. Please note, most teen-age marriages bomb.”
Not all the action on Them Monroes happens according to script. Living on location near Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Vikki and Michael Anderson have been chased by wolves, caught in a snowstorm on a fishing trip, lost on the trail and bucked from maverick hosses, to name a few off-screen adventures. Despite the heavy work schedule and some personal hardships they are happy. Them Monroes has been renewed and will finish the season.
Most stars of new TV shows have the jumpin’ jitters, knowing that 20 or 30 series will be axed before the season ends. Milton Berle, emceeing the glamorous Thalians Ball for emotionally disturbed children, told his audience of 800 entertainment elite, “Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow you may be cancelled.”
His own show hit the Bottom 15 on the first national Nielson ratings.
New shows in the Top 40 were Rat Patrol, Iron Horse, Star Trek, Girl From UNCLE, About Time, Pistols and Petticoats, Pruitts of Southhampton, Love On a Rooftop, Felony Squad, Family Affair and Occasional Wife.
Between the Uppers and the Lowers were Them Monroes, That Girl, The Road West, CAT, Tarzan, Run, Buddy, Run, The Rounders, Jeopardy, Jericho and The Monkees, 65th in popularity on the rating charts, the only show of the 1966–67 season tailored for teens. Being 65th does not mean it will be dumped—but it ain’t good either.
Marriages between music and movies are rarely successful. Only Elvis Presley and the Beatles have made big bread so far.
Herman, Peter the Noone, is so jazzed on acting he’d love to give up the music business and go whole hog for a screen career.
Most movies billed as “social documents of our times” are cheapies with no truth and no class. The Wild Angels was trite and corny.
American International Pictures (AIP), has skedded two new flicks on the so-called teen scene. One is The Trip, exposing the LSD drug craze. The other, Sunset Strip, allegedly reveals the “inside story” of the “long-haired teen-age kooks who apparently exist in another dimension,” to quote the press release.
No doubt this pair of pictures will emerge as lurid shockers.
We couldn’t care less how hard they hit the LSD bag but we’d hate to see AIP make OBL, One Big Lie, out of the Sunset Strip scene. We have a sinking feeling they will lay the camera’s eye only on the rotten people and their shady doin’s.
Most of the kids who cruise the strip after dark—and we know a few thousand of them—may look, dance and talk wild (at least to adult eyes and ears) but in fact they are real fine junior citizens.
Bob Dylan has the urge to splurge his bankroll on a screen smasher unrelated to reality as we know it. The hippie dialogue in his script, so we hear, is so farout that none but the hippies will grab the meaning. There will be psychedelic sequences that make sense only to acid heads. As director, Dylan will fill all the roles with non-actors off the back streets of Greenwich Village.
