Opinion is raging on the UK Mod Scene Facebook group as to what Paul Weller’s hair is all about. He’s tamed it slightly since this photo, but basically the hardliners are saying that – though it’s been copied by mods the world over – it’s not in any way a 60s mod haircut. So far over 1,000 people have contributed to the debate, and it’s getting testy.
Personaly, I think that it’s a variation on Rod Stewart/Steve Marriot’s hair circa 1966, with the distinct influence of a skinhead girl’s ‘do and, perhaps at its spiky rear, a touch of former Hammersmith Gorilla Jesse Hector.
What are your thoughts?
http://www.vh1.com/celebrity/files/2008/12/paul-weller.jpg
http://www.vh1.com/celebrity/files/2008/12/paul-weller.jpg
It used to be called a feather cut back in the day didn’t it?
His current haircut as on the cover of Mojo?
Very mod and far more suited to a man of his age and standing.
The Rod/Gallagher “feather cut” was never a 60’s mod style at all. Not seen at all on the backs of Vespa’s or Piaggio’s in Rome, Milan or Turin. Ever. That’s the definition for me.
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I’ve not seen the cover of Mojo, but his current style does seem to have reined things in a litle.
Weird how the feather cut has bcome omnipresent among retro-leaning men of a certain age. Though when it coms to non-mod hair, Bruce Foxton’s proto-mullet. What was that about?
Can I raise a point of procedure? In the big book of rock axioms (all keyboard players are ‘classically trained’, etc.) Paul Weller’s hair is legally-bound to be referred to as a “barnet”. I have also wondered about Bruce Foxton’s hair and how the punk HR executive allowed it through.
It’s a crappy version of the Marriot cut, with a side helping of The Faces for sure. But properly Mod? For me as somebody who lived in that particular style for a huge chunk of the 80s, especially when it was underground, that look would would have been considered too messy, too long. But then again, the whole ‘Casual’ look Weller carried during The Style Council merged into the 80s Mod scene too, carried on into the Acid Jazz thing. Oh I dunno. All I know is that haircut is the worst Weller looked. Apart from his moustache in the 90s.
I don’t get mods.
They concern themselves over the slightest things and yet they all throw themselves down at the feet of Quadrophenia, a film with more mistakes in it than an English defence at a World Cup, and which has, to my ears, a prog soundtrack anyway!
You surely couldn’t call The Who in the 1970s remotely mod.
Leslie Ash’s hair would’ve been laughed out of Bar Italia all the way from Cambridge Circus.
It’s the spirit of Quadrophenia that’s so enjoyable, who cares if there are anachronistic football scarves, Heaven Can Wait (1978) showing at the cinema and Sting’s punk hair. Most of the mods I knew were quite sniffy about it, if I recall.
Sorry, did I say, mods? They called themselves ‘stylists’ even though they wore parkas and rode Vespas.
Heard a mod (that’s ‘mod revival’ – missed the 60s – they’re the worst) DJ on Robert Elms’ show a few weeks ago and he was all ‘three buttons, never do up the top one’ and informing us what the b-side was on a Pye International 45 etc. etc., and then he, predictably, went overboard about Quadrophenia.
Why shouldn’t the non-mod pour scorn on such a character who would champion something so concerned with mod, a subculture built on its precision and exclusion, that has so many obvious mistakes?
He doesn’t condone it in clothes, why does he condone it on film?
If this chap advocated not doing up his top button, then he indeed deserves your scorn,deram…
Always, sometimes,never !
I suppose it’s because there hasn’t been many films about the mod scene? He’s probably well aware of the continuity errors but turns a blind eye because he probably became a mod off the back of it. I wonder what he thought about the remake of Brighton Rock?
Funny to see Chalky (Phil Davies) riding pillion on a scooter.
Weller: has he got rid of the long side bits, as originally worn by lads before they could grow any facial, convincing no-one as to their veracity. O, and orthodox jews.
It’s not a million miles away from his Snap!! haircut….