HAIR THEY ARE

I just wanna be myself and I want you to know / I am my hair

— Lady Gaga, “Hair,” 2001

THE PRECEDING LINE could have been written by King Louis XIV, who started losing his mane at seventeen and responded by donning wigs so large and outlandish that Lady Gaga might be tempted to say, “Hey, tone it down, dude.”

Teens have been obsessed with their hair for centuries, none more than the fictional Marcia Brady, who brushed her luscious locks 100 times a day. A modeling agent in The Brady Bunch Movie (1995) ignited her fury by suggesting she could make it in the fashion industry with a little work, like

“… cutting that mousy hair, capping those teeth, and losing about 30 pounds, my little sausage. How do you feel about breast implants?”

Outraged, Marcia slapped him and declared, “Cut my hair?”

Here are more teens, real and fictional, who made a statement with their hair:

Leiber & Stoller: They wrote (a lot of) the songs

1954: The year elvis turned into ELVIS

I USED TO THINK the greatest years in rock and roll were 1956, when Elvis Presley recorded five number-one singles, and 1964, when the Beatles released six chart-topping tunes and made the movie A Hard Days Night.

While 1964 stands as the Beatles annus mirabilis (auspicious year), many Elvis aficionados date their hero’s takeoff to 1954, the year the nineteen-year-old pre-King made his first recordings for Sam Phillips’ Sun Studio in Memphis, Tennessee.

Some say “That’s All Right (Mama),” his first single, turned a truck driver from Tupelo, Mississippi, into ELVIS. Biographer Bobbie Ann Mason has called the day Presley cut that rollicking blues tune (July 5, 1954) “the seminal point in rock and roll history.” Music critic Dave Marsh agreed. “Every rock writer returns to ‘That’s All Right,’ as though to the Rosetta stone,’” he said.

Sun Records received 5,000 orders from people wanting a copy of “That’s All Right (Mama)” after it debuted on a Memphis radio station. “It happened so suddenly, it was as if the nebulous, unformed young kid was a genie let loose from a Coke bottle: there he was! Elvis!” wrote Mason in 2002’s Elvis Presley.

Two years later, the Elvis phenomenon went mainstream with the release of his first five number-one singles: “Heartbreak Hotel,” “I Want You, I Need You, I Love You,” “Don’t Be Cruel,” “Hound Dog,” and “Love Me Tender.” That year, 1956, Elvis appeared on “The Milton Berle Show,” “The Tonight Show,” and “The Ed Sullivan Show,” which was viewed by 60 million people.

Elvis recorded 12 more number-one singles from 1957 to 1962, including the classics “All Shook Up,” “Jailhouse Rock,” and “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” His last chart-topping hit was “Suspicious Minds” in 1969.

Conductor Leonard Bernstein once called the King “the greatest cultural force in the twentieth century” and asserted that Elvis “introduced the beat to everything and he changed everything — music, language, clothes.”

Countless musicians, from Bob Dylan to Britney Spears, have gushed over his music, stage presence, and style. Chuck Berry, a contemporary, once called Elvis “The greatest who ever was, or who ever will be.”

First Week of July