Hair, There & Everywhere
On Influence, Inspiration & Self-Invention
The book I just finished writing ended up being a lot about self invention and influence. It wasn’t exactly what I planned to write, but nothing much in my life has happened because of plans.
We got married to the strains of The Ronettes’ ‘Be My Baby’ pumping out across the beautiful Zebulon, Georgia fields, wearing a Loretta Lynn kind of dress I bought for $70 on eBay. The moment couldn’t have been more perfect. After a lifetime of swooning every time its unmistakeable heartbeat began, ‘Be My Baby’ was now officially our song. I loved the special spiderweb connection I could feel crisscrossing America between me and Ronnie Spector.
A couple of years later my husband confessed that it had actually kind of been his song with another girl long before me. Which makes sense. It’s that kind of song. It’s everywhere, it’s everything. And I hadn’t thought to ask him what song he’d like to be eternally wedded to. I just knew that everything would be perfect if I stepped into the void of ‘Be My Baby’ and never looked back.
I still remember reading, or more, absorbing, Ronnie Spector’s mindboggling autobiography in my teenage bedroom. I can see the afternoon light making stripes across my unmade bed, my records everywhere. I had my own dedicated attempt at a large bouffant, like a Ronette, like Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast At Tiffany’s. I teased the fuck out of it and piled it as high as I could with combs shoved in that I had to keep pushing forward as they slunk down my head all day. How did they do it? How did they get their crowning glories so big and so smooth? I wondered about it all the time. This was pre-internet, when wonder was still a thing. Mine looked like a rats nest.
Eventually I discovered they had a little help.
The creation of the 1960s beehive is credited to Margaret Vinci Heldt of Elmhurst, Illinois – the owner of the Margaret Vinci Coiffures in downtown Chicago. She had been asked by the editors of Modern Beauty Shop magazine to design a new hairstyle that would reflect the coming decade. Subsequently, she contributed to an article that appeared in the February 1960 edition – and the modern beehive was born, inspired by her beloved velvet fez. Her only words of warning were that ladies should cover their beehives in a scarf while they slept and that husbands should keep their hands out of their wives hair during romantic moments.
Back in the 1940’s, women collected the stray hairs from their hairbrushes and wadding them up into large balls inside a hair net, which they could then slide in under their own hair to add serious oomph to their elaborate hair rolls and it would blend right in without detection. These were known as hair rats, a most unattractive name for the structural genius item that became known as ‘the high heels of hair’. As the world got savvier, they began manufacturing these magical hair rats out of foam and mesh and renamed them ‘pompadour pads’ or  foam inserts.
Anyway back to Ronnie. I read her explaining how deep her love for Frankie Lymon was and how she’d sing along with him all day, until she got really, really good at singing. Then I read Etta James talking about doing exactly the same thing with Jimmy Reed. It was a real lightbulb moment for me. I started singing along with everything I loved.
Amy Winehouse was also obsessed with The Ronettes, as is evident from her look, a stylised, obvious homage dedicated to Ronnie Spector. On her heavenly birthday this year, Ronnie Spector posted this picture where she had put her and Amy together in a photograph, writing ‘Today is the birthday of the great Amy Winehouse. So much talent, I loved her soulful voice. Such a brilliant sound. Thank you Amy for making me believe that what I did mattered. I put Amy & me together so we could start our own Girl Group!’ If Amy wasn’t already gone, she would’ve died and gone to heaven right then and there. I found it an incredibly moving gesture. Ronnie knew all about loving someone so much you wanted to be like them.
Not all attempts at emulating looks and styles and sounds that we love, go well. But sometimes the effort wields results that create new highs or lows or ways of being or seeing or …things you can never unsee. For your weekend viewing pleasure, I’m going to leave these here. If you’d like to listen to the playlist I’ve made celebrating crowning glories while you peruse this amazing collection of images from the dark web of hairstyles, please click here:
Let’s begin with the children.
Here’s BJ Werner after a big night out in Minneapolis. Hair almost intact.
Let me count the ways I love this picture.
1.Is this a hospital bed?
2.Is that her knickers insouciantly sitting atop this lovely blanket?
I really want to know the whole story behind this photograph.
These lovely creations won a hairdressing competition in Sweden in 1960 for best beehive, and were said to be easy for housewives to recreate at home.
Happy Halloween.
And hell, have yourself a Merry little Christmas too.
Lo x
PS: I am very excited to announce you can now pre-order my book ‘Lovers Dreamers Fighters’, available Feb 2022, right here:
On a similar note, my dear friend Sarah Bedak (from world music band Lolo Lovina) and I talk about the influence and impact of teen nightclubbing and seeing bands play from a very young age in Episode 2: ‘Zoo Music Girl’ of Kirsten Krauth’s podcast ‘Almost A Mirror’, which she describes as ‘a personal journey through music and memory where each episode is sparked by a song’:
Listen here: