GETTING MORE TALE #494: I Think I’m Going Bald
(a sequel to #488: Almost Cut My Hair)

A short while back, we took a look at popular hair styles in different genres of music.  One hair style we ignored, because it really knows no boundaries, is the old fashioned bald head, or the “Jean-Luc” as the kids call it today.*

When I was a young fella discovering rawk at the dawn of the 1980’s, I hadn’t seen any bald rock stars that impressed me.  Now my first musical love truly was John Williams, and he was bald.  Hard rock at the beginning of the 80’s wasn’t like that.  There was…a uniform.  Unless you were Rob Halford, Paul Di’Anno or Udo Dirkschneider, part of that uniform was having long hair to thrash about.

The only bald rockers I had seen included one rare picture of Bob Kulick, brother of Bruce, and the bass player from Blotto. I didn’t like Blotto: they also had a short haired geek with thick rimmed glasses on guitar. So, by extension, I didn’t like bald heads in rock!

Then grunge came, and long hair was no longer a “thing”. Then, even worse, our mortal rock stars began aging! How was this possible? There was no time to consider the thought, as one by one, rock stars shaved their heads completely: Rob Halford, Kerry King, Scott Ian, Billy Corgan, Joe Satriani, hell even Billy fucking Joel has lost the curls and gone cue-ball!

There’s nothing wrong with the bald head, obviously I have learned this now. I myself have rocked the bald look on and off for about 15 years now. Most people don’t do it on and off, but I’ve been blessed with a full head of hair (thanks mom’s side of the family!), and I shave it for convenience and to look tougher than I already am. Seriously though, there’s nothing better than having a shower, jumping in your clothes and heading right to work without worrying about hair. There’s nothing better to beat the heat in the summer either.

Now, funny thing. My mom and my wife both think I am going actually bald. They tell me my hairline is receding. What they don’t know is that my hairline started receding at age 16. Then it stopped and never started receding again! I have the exact same hairline I had at 16, only nobody believes me, because at 16 I was trying to hide that by growing it out!  It has not moved one centimetre since highschool, and that’s a fact, Jack!

This being summer time, I have shaved it all off once again.  This is the closest you may ever see to a picture of “topless LeBrains” here.

Who are your favourite bald rockers? Do you favour Sinead O’Connor for her fearless 80’s buzz cut? Do you call it a tie between Phil Collins and Peter Gabriel? There are so many epically talented bald rockers (not looking at you, Chris Daughtry) today that it truly is hard to choose.

* Not really, but a better name than the “Bieber” which was the name of an actual fucking hair cut.