Old School Friday: Always In Prince's Hair

I want it long, straight, curly, fuzzy
Snaggy, shaggy, ratty, matty
Oily, greasy, fleecy
Shining, gleaming, streaming
Flaxen, waxen
Knotted, polka-dotted
Twisted, beaded, braided
Powdered, flowered, and confettied
Bangled, tangled, spangled, and spaghettied!

~”Hair” from Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical

Finally! I am back in the Old School Friday swing of things. I’ve been out of the groove for a while: semester-specific increased workload, chronic medical condition fatigue, annoyance at racial and political nonsense…. I missed last week’s theme, “Gone, but not forgotten“; I missed the week before that on musical crushes. But I am back now so all else is forgotten.

This week’s theme is “Blame it on the hairstyle.” I decided to go with a single artist who has gone through several hair style incarnations.

"Prince, People au Defile Channel." http://www.flickr.com/photos/nicogenin/3987371599/in/photostream/

That artist is Prince.

In chronological hair order, first up is a young Prince with full afro from his For You album:

“Soft and Wet”

Moving from big ‘fro to long permed locks is Prince in his self-titled album the following year. The funny thing about his look during this phase is that I had, at about the same time, a hair style almost exactly like it: The slightly off-center part, the Farrah Fawcett-inspired feathered bangs—Prince and I could’ve been twins!

“Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad?”

From the looks of him in the band picture on the inside of the liner notes, Prince next did a kind of jheri curl-looking hair style on Dirty Mind—so very 80s! (And he was singing about ess ee ex—so very naughty!) And in another bit of PPR_Scribe-Prince confluence, I too sported a curl for a minute—just before my last year of high school in ’81. I cut all my long hair off—much to the horror of the ladies in the beauty shop at the time. One threatened to call my mother, certain that there was no way she would approve of me chopping my hair down to two inches or so.

“Head”

Fast forward through several years and several albums.This next style, I am happy to say, is where my hair similarities with Prince ended. Newly released from all his record label drama, by Emancipation he had changed both his hair and his name: O(+> His hair was in a kind of close cropped, full banged style with a space shaved just above one ear in which he sported his unpronounceable symbol.

“One of Us”

These days Prince is once again Prince, and he wears a very mature and surprisingly conservative short wavy style. In my opinion he has been at his best recently with his live albums. On Indigo Nights he went Old (Rock) School with this Led Zeppelin cover:

“Whole Lotta Love”

I’m not sure I “blame” anything on Prince’s hair. But his styles over the years have been fun to watch—almost as much as his music has been fun to listen to.

Have a great Old School Friday and a great weekend!

As always, a big thank you to OSF hostesses, Marvalus at Conversations with Marva and MrsGrapevine. Please check out the rules for joining and list of other OSF participants here.