Hair

A friend was telling me about her first attempt to get off hard drugs in the late 70’s - before Rehab as we now know it. This place was an addiction unit in a Victorian mental asylum where a few of the inmates – mostly women – had been sent for being renegades and disruptors in their families, and had never come out. She told me about two ladies in their 60’s who would wander in to her section of the building and ask polite questions, before announcing ‘Did you know that half of Prince Charles’ bottom is made of putty?’ She had other sadder stories, but the one thing that struck me unforgettably was when she went home for the weekend (they did that then) and went on a little bender for one night. She had been a bit of a star pupil, she said, and wasn’t expecting to be caught out. As soon as she walked back in, the psychiatrist beckoned her into her office and said she was going to drug test her. When the truth came out, she asked the psychiatrist why she had suspected something. ‘You had changed your hairstyle. When people are experiencing certain emotional upheavals they will do something different to their hair. It’s an instant alert.’ ‘What had you done to your hair’ I asked my friend. I remember almost her exact words. ‘I had slicked it back with hair gel, to go with my new ivory silk Nehru jacket and my jeans tucked into burgundy leather boots – Soul Girl style.’

For some reason this hairstyle story fascinated me. I thought about my own hair trajectory. All our family are dark haired. There was no blonde hair anywhere, even in early childhood. My father had black Jewish hair and my mother had dark Irish hair. My hair was waist length until I left home at 16 and decided to get a Punk crop. I went round to some friends who lived in a squat in Fulham where Eddie, who had been a hairdresser had agreed to do the deed. I was incredibly shy and didn’t say a word as I sat on a chair in his sitting room. With each huge snip, I felt my attachment to my unhappy home life fall to the floor with my hair. I emerged a new variation of myself: someone who looked at ease on the London streets and who was often mistaken for a boy.

Soon after the haircut I went to a gig at the Music Machine in Camden Town. Vivienne Westwood was there and I went up to her and asked if there were any Saturday jobs going at her shop Seditionaries. She eyed up my new look, and said yes. It was the beginning of the rest of my life.