Miscellaneous questions about the Beatles | Page 14 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

There is also Glyn Johns who was heavily involved in with the Beatles. 

Astrid cut Stu’s hair into the style first, John and Paul went to France, met Jurgen and came back with it, and then George got it. Pete refused to do so and it was what Ringo had to get done when he joined.

It’s in the ‘Anthology’ book.

          PAUL: We went up to Montmartre because of all the artists, and the Folies Bergères, and we saw guys walking around in short leather jackets and very wide pantaloons. Talk about fashion! This was going to kill them when we got back. This was totally happening. They were tight to the knee and then they flared out; they must have been about fifty inches around the bottom and our drainpipe trousers were something like fifteen or sixteen inches. (Fifteen were the best, but you couldn’t really get your foot through at fifteen, so sixteen was acceptable.) We saw these trousers and said, ‘Excusez-moi, Monsieur, où did you get them?’ It was a cheap little rack down the street so we bought a pair each, went back to the hotel, put them on, went out on the street – and we couldn’t handle it: ‘Do your feet feel like they are flapping? Feel more comfortable in me drainies, don’t you?’ So it was back to the hotel at a run, needle and cotton out and we took them in to a nice sixteen with which we were quite happy. And then we met Jürgen Vollmer on the street. He was still taking pictures.

            JOHN: Jürgen also had bell-bottom trousers, but we thought that would be considered too queer back in Liverpool. We didn’t want to appear feminine or anything like that, because our audience in Liverpool still had a lot of fellas. (We were playing rock, dressed in leather, though Paul’s ballads were bringing in more and more girls.)⁶⁷ Anyway, Jürgen had a flattened-down hairstyle with a fringe in the front, which we rather took to. We went over to his place and there and then he cut – hacked would be a better word – our hair into the same style.⁶³

            PAUL: He had his hair Mod-style. We said, ‘Would you do our hair like yours?’ We’re on holiday – what the hell! We’re buying capes and pantaloons, throwing caution to the wind. He said, ‘No, boys, no. I like you as Rocker; you look great.’ But we begged him enough so he said ‘all right’. He didn’t do it quite the same as his.

            His was actually more coming over to one side. A kind of long-haired Hitler thing, and we’d wanted that, so it was really a bit of an accident. We sat down in his hotel and he just got it – the ‘Beatle’ cut!

            For the rest of that week we were like Paris Existentialists. Jean Paul Sartre had nothing on us. This was it. ‘Sod them all – I could write a novel from what I learnt this week.’ It was all inside me. I could do anything now.

            RINGO: What a sight they looked when they arrived back!

            PAUL: When we got back to Liverpool it was all, ‘Eh, your hair’s gone funny.’ – ‘No, this is the new style.’

            We nearly tried to change it back but it wouldn’t go, it kept flapping forward. And that just caught on. We weren’t really into the coiffure. It was like Mo’s out of the Three Stooges. It fell forward in a fringe. But it was great for us because we never had to style it or anything – wash it, towel it, turn upside down and give it a shake, and that was it. Everyone thought we had started it, so it became ‘the Beatle hairdo’.

            JOHN: We go along with the trends, we always have done. To a degree we can make a trend popular – we don’t usually invent clothes, we wear something we like and then maybe people follow us. Our original style was continental, because English people wore English kinds of clothes. Then continental styles caught on in England, too.⁶⁵

            I was ashamed to go on the Continent and say I was British before we made it. The Beatles have tried to change Britain’s image. We changed the hairstyles and clothes of the world, including America – they were a very square and sorry lot when we went over.⁶⁹

C.R.A. said

And since this all happened a month or so (I think) before they had ‘formally’ met Mr. Epstein, there as no need for him to bring up haircuts.

I was just wondering because Brian got them to change their clothing style (while performing at least). Is there anything to suggest he ever talked to them about changing their haircuts to something more traditional.

Do we know how The Beatles parents felt about the haircuts?