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Hi
Was long hair still a major fashion for guys in 1978,79 and 80?
Thanks
Chris
Hello,
I was in college back in 1978, and I remember the shortening of men's hairstyles from 1978 to 1980. Long hair was commonplace in 1975 and part of 1976 and it was no longer a subject of controversy as office workers could be seen with shoulder-length hair, beards and suits. In 1976, the disco fad brought a wave of high-school students to cut their hair from usually shoulder-length to slightly shorter than a beatles cut with earlobes showing. Not only did disco spread, so did Punk and the early New Wave movements bring about shorter hair as well. New Wave brought back hair cut around the ears, with not so conservative dress, and punk, the spikes and mohawks. Those who kept their hair long were, the back to nature set who did no longer want to be labeled hippies, and attended clothes-optional rainbow gatherings, rockers, and computer geeks who toyed with the first microcomputers of the time.
For the "average joe", hair had to cover at least to mid-ear, and those who had shorter styles were in the army. The mid-ear style was seen as a "compromise" between looking ultraconservative, and being too liberal. This was the suggested style for job interviews by 1980 wheras in 1975 people got away with shoulder-length hair.
I am including an extract from an ad for Plato Workstations dating from around 1978 showing a realistic view of an office setting from that time.
Have a good day,
Georges in Montreal.
I appologize for posting this again, but I am including a picture of a block party dating from June 1978, in Montreal. In these days block parties did not attract Disco fans, and the music tended to be rock or glam rock, mixed with folk.
You will notice a lady with a flagship "Farrah Fawcett" hairdo.
Have a good day,
Georges
Yeah, and she's hot. :-)
--
Splat
Georges is correct in saying that 1976 was the year it all went down the tubes. He is in Canada, but others who are in the US seem to agree with him in blaming disco. OTOH,although I now live in the states I am from England, and my observation is that it was not disco, but punk that brought in short hair that year. I was in college at that time, so that might affect my opinion, but disco certainly came in earlier than '76 in the UK, and if it affected hair length I didn't notice. I remember disco music being popular when I was still in high school, and I didn't go to college until '76.
The short version of that is that all we can agree on is the year, and the fact that not everyone cut their hair in '76. I never did ,by which I don't mean that I never had a trim, but I last had short hair in 1970, meaning above the ears and above the collar.
Georges and Elektros are right.
I was a teenager at that time, and today I collect rock/pop records from that era.
From the album covers, long hair was prevalent up until 1976. By 1980, the clean-cut look had taken over. The difference over just a few years is very apparent.
Oh well! We need to bring back long hair! It will seem right at home next to the energy crisis.
Ed
Listen, i don't mean any dispect, but i think EdG must have really been off his rocker. It never left in the eighties either and most of all is still going strong with a strong surge with the teens today. Better google and do more research with the internet.
I did some googling and here's what I found:
1970s:
1980s:
One can find both long and short haired musicians from both decades. I've chosen a probably somewhat biased sample of the groups that I remember hearing on the radio.
Coincidentally, I own all of the 1970s records above, but none of the 1980s ones!
Ed
This pictures speak for themselves and like ED I've got all the one 's on vinyl from the 70's.
Cheers,
John.B
This depended upon where you were. As previous posts have said, a move to shorter hair started on the coasts around 1976. We moved from the Midwest to the West Coast in 1979, and all the short hair we found upon our arrival was a shock, because long hair was still very common in the Midwest. Bell bottom jeans were also still the rage in Chicago in 1979, but they had wholly vanished by then in San Francisco.
Nowadays fashion changes are mostly in lockstep worldwide. That was not the case thirty years ago because there was no Internet back then, and there were few national TV outlets. Even rock playlists varied a lot from one market to another, and a song might have been a hit in one market a year or two before it became a hit in another. Although most cultural innovations began on the coasts and then moved inland, this was not always the case. Rock songs, for example, usually started in the area where the band lived, and their popularity spread out from there.
Bill
This is true even today.
As a Brit living in Tenerife (Spain) I find longhair is very common here compared to the UK, in fact I feel self-concious in the UK with my hair, which I don't here on the rock.
Sorted
So in 1978-79 the Midwest still had long hair on guys and flares yet San Francisco had short hair and straight pants?
To a large degree, yes.
Bill
Robin Williams. on "Mork and Mindy". Fred and Shaggy from"Scooby Doo" cartoons.
In 1980, The start of the Regan era, hair became noticably shorter. The new stlye that year was Preppie and the new haircut fad was the return of the crewcut.