Monday memory: the mullet

I was once all for business in front, party in back.

I have this series of photos somewhere in an album, probably in a box tucked away in our garage or out in the shed - for all I know, they’ve been moth food. It’s nowhere digital, so picture this if you will in your mind’s eye.

A young, long-haired man defiantly stands, hands on hips, in his sleeveless Iron Maiden tour T-shirt and shorts, with a determined look on his face. In the next photo, he’s bent over with a lighter in his hand, trying to set something on fire, and in the third photo he’s lying on his stomach in the grass, watching the flame slowly consume the notebook in front of him. That man was me, and the time was 1984 at the tail end of my sophomore year of college. (The folder was my notes from a class I was happy to be done with.)

To say I am folically challenged these days is to utter a fair statement. But the same fate befell my late brother, yet he also rebelled by wearing his hair to shoulder-length, with a beard to match. Even in his final days, white-haired at the age of 47 from a body ravaged by cancer, he had that hairstyle.

Back in my more-or-less hirsute days, though, I also liked to wear my hair in a mullet style. I wanted it short in the front because I don’t like hair in my eyes, but long in the back because I desired that look. So a mullet made perfect sense to me, and I thought big hair on the ladies was great too. There weren’t all that many with that sort of fashion sense at the university I attended so I definitely noticed the ones who did.

But styles and tastes change, and there came a time when I had to get my hair cut because it was driving me (and my parents) crazy. While I liked the beyond shoulder-length hair that came from going from August to the following May without a haircut, it did need a little trimming when I came back home that summer.

As I said before, this was back in 1984, which was around the time hair metal was born. Those are the guys who ruined the mullet for everyone - as I said, I liked big hair on ladies but when guys did it that sort of brought that look to a screeching halt as far as I was concerned. Luckily, I just taped most of the albums so I didn’t have to look at photos of guys who probably spent hours with a hairdresser to get their styling just right. So as the decade went on I found I was happy with hair of a more or less normal length.

It was a lot like that music scene in general back then: the longer the hair on the guys, the more likely they were going to start doing power ballads and the less likely I would be wanting their next album. I was almost relieved when grunge wiped away that stain on the musical world, for many reasons.

Nowadays when I get my hair cut it’s short on the sides and back, with a little left on top. But sometimes I think about that kid in the photo and wistfully remember the time I actually could pull off a mullet and not need a combover.