Marc Bolan

THAT ROCK AND ROLL LOOK PART I

David Johansen and Sly Stone.  Icons.  News of their recent passing has lit a fire under me to get going on this piece. I’m merging several different ideas here; fashion and music, jeans and cigarettes, and some other randomness. If you find yourself reading my nonsense, please consider sharing, commenting, liking or un-liking, whatever! Thanks!

I’ve always loved fashion.  I used to sit on the floor in my grandma’s front room and pour over what at the time were probably twenty year old copies of Montgomery Ward catalogs that for some reason she had saved. I dug the 60’s styles. The models in mod skirts,  short Oleg Cassini knockoff jackets. Smart looking Jackie O style sheath dresses. Their hair coiffed bouffant style.  Wrist length gloves, pointy toed low-heeled pumps. And hats! Pill box style and those similar to the hat worn by Marlo Thomas in That Girl.  She was a total fashion icon.  As was Mary Tyler Moore, in both the Dick Van Dyke Show and her eponymous television programs. I also couldn’t wait for the back to school September issues of Seventeen, Vogue, Bazaar, and Mademoiselle magazines so I could plan what to buy on back to school shopping excursions. For me, fashion, clothing, shoes, accessories were always infinitely interesting and a way to become a different version of myself, or a way to become someone else. One of my favorite get ups was my outfit for my previously mentioned limited engagement airband The Virgins.  I wore a fantastic turquoise satin brocade sheath dress I scavenged from at the Salvation Army. It was accessorized with white elbow length gloves, white fishnet stockings and white patent leather 60s style pumps that I scored at an odd lots store.

What happened to rock and rollers’ outfits? Outrageous. Sexy. Leather. Feathers. Sequins.  Scrolling through Instagram and I’m reminded of how cool rock stars and performers used to dress.  I know it’s deeply uncool to judge people on what they wear, but rock stars should look different from the regular scrubs at your local Walmart for crying out loud.  Really you, in your baggy cargo pants, hoodies and baseball hats? Come on, glam it up please. I want a star to look like a star.  And someone who wants to be a star to look like they want to be a star.  I get it- grunge was a statement, a nod to the working class backgrounds of a lot of the artists, a protest about the state of the record industry, it was a backlash to fake. The music was great, but I really prefer a wild look!  

Take a look at this photo of Cher and Greg Allman.  Divine.  Look at his velvet suit.  The cut of the jacket. The line of the bell bottom pants. And Cher…all glitter and glam and glossy, looking like the goddess she is.  They didn’t look like regular folk.  Maybe they did in private, and that’s totally ok, but when out and about they looked fucking otherworldy cool. Here’s Cher, today, still a smokin’ at 78.

And how timely, and tragic that when I started writing this, news broke that David Johansen died, and this morning when I was working on it some more, Sly Stone died.  Talk about two performers who understood the intersectionality of fashion and music, punk and funk.  Wow. You know, you just take for granted that some people will always be around.  You get a fixed idea in your head about stars, musicians, performers.  And looking at all of the old photos of the New York Dolls, you remember how utterly rad and cool and out there they looked.  

Talk about an image…..those guys were the ultimate in the glam look.  Who looks like that today? They were the gateway to acts like KISS, The Tubes, and others. Lipstick, feathers, platform shoes, fabulous hair.  I saw David Johansen when he opened for The Who at Rich Stadium in Orchard Park, New York in September 1982.  At that point he was Buster Poindexter, who had his own sense of style.

 And Sly and the Family Stone were arbiters of that late 60s-early 70s funky funk that melded psychedelia, pop, rock and funk in the absolute best way. The sound plus the visuals; the headgear, the wigs, the sequins- the absolute supercool, super-fly, beauty of their performances coupled with the beats and the lyrics. Delicious sensory overload in the very best way.  I watched the fantastic PBS Independent Lens documentary We Want the Funk the other night.   HIGHLY recommend it.  Sly and the Family Stone,  George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic, PRINCE! MICHAEL JACKSON!  All understood how the power of the visual enhanced and elevated the music.

Sly

The Funkadelic man himself, George Clinton.

Other stars who knew how to create an image were Phil Lynott, the Thin White Duke, The Starman himself, David Bowie. Elton John’s 70s outfits were completely outrageously awesome.

Bowie

Elton John

Phil Lynott

New Wave bands had a distinct look that was evocative of their sound.  Think Elvis Costello,  Blondie, the Jam and then Style Council, The Specials in their fantastic spectator shoes and skinny ties. 

Of course I have to mention The Cars.  Benjamin Orr sure as hell knew how to fashion a look. Leather, leather and more leather.  His ever present sunglasses, fondness for hats like a beret and his famous Bolero hat, rumored to have been purchased while on tour in Oklahoma, to his absolutely divine wolf coat, this man knew how to look.  And he looked cool as hell with his ever present cigarette.  It’s just a damn shame that those fucking cancer sticks probably caused his early death. Bandmate David Robinson was also a mighty fine looking fellow during his tenure in the band. He is rumored to be the one who gave The Cars their style direction, and he certainly always looked the part- from skin tight animal print red tights with thigh-high black boots, to his zoot-suit 80s pleated pants and jackets.

The Cars

Benjamin

Dale Bozzio from Missing Persons made a huge impression on us Gen X early 80s teenagers with her funky style. So did the Go Gos. The Stray Cats had that 50s rockabilly look that added so much fun to the sound of the Stray Cat Strut.  And of course the queen of reinvention herself Madonna.  Rubber bracelets, fishnet gloves, Boy Toy belt, bullet-bra corset, dark haired in a slip dress, back to blonde in her cowboy hat and bell bottoms. 

The Punk aesthetic was a style. Basic jeans and t-shirts were ripped and safety pinned. Jean jackets and leather jackets were fitted.  Attention was paid. Military jackets and accessories were worn with what I ‘m guessing was irony and sarcasm, as well as a political statements about the hypocrisy of the ruling class.

So that brings me to the other thing I’ve been ruminating on for a while regarding fashion. Remember when when wearing jeans was a social statement? A sign of who you were and what you were about? Before everybody wore jeans all the time? And back then if you smoked cigarettes at the same time you were flaunting your jeans, that was a real act of defiance. 

CIGARETTES AND JEANS: THAT ROCK AND ROLL LOOK PART II

At one time, not many things signaled cool, radical, rebellion more than smoking cigarettes and wearing denim. All the cool people smoked- well,  yes, basically everybody smoked, but the people you wanted to be like smoked and looked fabulous doing it, while also wearing jeans, so being the impressionable kid I was, I wanted to look that cool as well.  I also desperately wanted to wear jeans. Real jeans. Not jeans from Sears or JC Penney, but jeans that the cooler older kids at school wore.

It’s difficult today to fathom that at one time wearing denim was an act of defiance, an act of youth, a fashion statement.  I remember my very first pair of Levi’s.  I received them as a Christmas gift when I was in sixth grade.  They weren’t jeans per say, but cords.  Cords were equally cool in the late 70s.  Mine were dark green, white tag and straight leg.  The color of the tag on your Levi’s signalled their level of cool.  Orange tags were what today would be referred to as basic.  White or red tags were what you wanted.  

Before large denim centric-stores like Old Navy, and way before that The Gap, we had two stores in town that catered to the cool jean wearing crowd I longed to be part of: Pantastic and Hands of Man. They were both head shops that also happened to sell clothing.  Pantastic had all manner of pipes and bongs and other paraphernalia in the display cases at the front of the store. They also had shelves of jeans that reached all the way up the walls.  I think I recall buying a Kangol beret type wool hat there once. The store’s logo was a distinctive yellow and green 70s style graphic of two people wearing bell bottoms and platform shoes.  I have been trying to see if I could find a picture of it on-line but no luck.  If anyone out there in the world can find one, please send it to me!

Hands of Man was a hippy store that sold strong smelling patchouli incense and other paraphernalia.  Of course I had to have a few sticks as well as that long wooden incense burner.  Hands of Man sold Lee jeans, painter pants and Smith Pants, the precursor to cargo pants, except  better fitting and much more stylish.  I owned several pairs of Smith pants, bright green painter pants and what I thought were sexy- I was in middle school for crying out out- Lee jeans.  What a dolt I was. 

When I was a kid not many people wore jeans on a daily basis.  I didn’t know any adults who wore them.  In my world, adult men wore trousers.  And women wore trousers or skirts and dresses.  The adults in my life like teachers dressed in professional attire as did doctors, dentists, store managers, etc.. It wasn’t until middle school when a serious jeans craze took over the culture. And I was right there at Pantastic and Hands of Man in the middle of the frenzy.

In my middle school era, designer jeans started to gain traction; Calvin Klein of the famous Brooke Shields ad, and Sassoon, Bonjour and Sergio Valente, Ditto and Lee vs Levis. Later in the 80s  Diesel and Guess were the hot jeans to wear. For me however, Levi’s will always have a cool factor and they never go out of style.  

Remember over-dyed denim? I had a purple overdyed denim mini skirt- similar to the one pictured above- that I freaking loved and that I paired with black or purple fishnet stockings.  In addition to my overdyed purple mini I had  overdyed turquoise super straight leg jeans with zippers at the ankle.  I wore the hell out of those along with my fake Converse Chuck Taylor red high tops. 

Jeans wearing icons were The Fonz, Arthur Fonzarelli from Happy Days, James Dean of course, Steve McQueen, and hippies in bell bottoms.  Chrissy Hynde was a bad- ass in her jeans and leather jacket. All of those characters were about as far away from this little village as possible- so if you could at least wear a pair of jeans you might be able to grab a tiny piece of stardust or cool-dust. And if you smoked Camels or Marlboro Reds while wearing those jeans, well then you were that much closer to star status! 

Even as his character is carted off the chain gang in Cool Hand Luke, Paul Newman manages to look delicious in denim with a cigarette in his mouth.

Here’s Led Zeppelin with Robert Plant flaunting his spectacular-ness in a pair of lowwwww cut jeans – no cigarette though.

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All of these stars were about as far away from this little village as possible- so if you could at least wear a pair of jeans you might be able to grab a tiny piece of stardust or cool-dust. And if you smoked Camels or Marlboros while wearing those jeans, and partying in the woods, or at the creek, or posing in front of the mirror in your bedroom with the window wide open so your parents wouldn’t smell the smoke-well then you could be that much closer to star status.

(Look at Robert Plant again, in all his glory!)