Many stories and T.V. shows that depict the ’60’s show a Cheech and Chong version where everyone has hair half-way down their backs and walks around giving everyone else the peace sign - which replaced “the bird” for while as the fingered sign of choice. To be honest that is complete fabrication. It’s like in “That Seventies Show” when, in the opening, one of guys in the back seat points his hands down in a “hip-hop” guesture. (That killed the show for me) Or the Roman centurion in Kirk Douglas’s movie, “Spartacus,” who raised his arm in salute to show the band of a Rolex watch. I can guarantee you that, in 1969, the majority of people had hair styles that barely touched the bottom of their neck.
The first long-hair style I ever saw was worn by the son of a good friend of the family. He was a drummer with The Epics named Dennis Davies and he had even been kicked out of school for a while until he got a hair cut that showed his ears. As early as 1966 my father wouldn’t let my older brother’s friend in the house because his hair went partly over his ears. As for us, the style up to the mid-1960’s was brushcuts. Yes, brushcuts and crewcuts were the mainstay of the ’60’s for small-town kids with parents “who fought in the big war.” And by 1970 Brylcreem was giving up the ghost and “the dry look” was in. My mother would not let us wear hair over our brows because “it causes pimples.”
The Beatles led the way with hair. By the time “Rubber Soul” came out the “mop-top” was giving way to shoulder-length locks and the Stones were soon following suit (In those days a paranoid Jagger would study everything the Beatles did and copy it) The Sergeant Pepper blew the whole hair thing away and the bands began a war to see who could grow it the longest.
Still, if you watch the video of the Monterey Pop Festival from 1967 the crowds had a basically clean-cut “college look” with maybe louder shirts and macrome sashes thrown in. The “Summer of Love” started the long hair and the original long-haired-Hippies were soon surrounded by posers - so much so that, barely a year later, they declared that the Hippie movement was dead and left for communes. (some posers, like Jane Fonda, joined the “me generation” got rich on work-out videos)
However, it wasn’t until I went to university in 1971 that I dare grow mine long. My friends, Harvey Broster and Ken Blaine led the way.
But I did shed the brushcut in 1965.