Why was teenage David Bowie so rebellious?

On November 12, 1964, the would-be pop star told the BBC that cruelty to men with thick hair “must stop”. It was a bold move, but it hinted at the unconventional spirit that Bowie carried into a career marked by courageous innovation.

We’re used to seeing strange photos of future stars in the high school yearbook, barely recognizable before fame changed them. This 1964 BBC TV clip is different. The 17-year-old sitting in the current affairs studio is unmistakably David Bowie, although at the time he was still plain old David Jones. As founder of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Long-Haired Men, he was there to make a plea for understanding. “I think we’re all fairly tolerant, but over the last couple of years we’ve had comments like: ‘Dear!’ and ‘Can I carry your handbag?'” were thrown at us, and I think it should stop now,” he told presenter Cliff Michelmore.

Tonight’s researchers had seen an interview on the Evening News a week earlier with David Jones of Plaistow Grove, Bromley, founder and president of the International Streamline Conservation Association, who “gave up a commercial art job to go into the pop industry.” Jones told the newspaper: “Anyone who has the courage to wear hair to their shoulders has to go through hell. It’s time to unite and stand up for our curls.” The mention of “pop acts” provides evidence that this may have been just a publicity stunt. After all, he had already appeared on a BBC music show four months earlier as lead singer for Davy Jones and the King Bees.

By the time the news story reached television, young Jones and his hairy friends had coined a catchy new name and were claiming the support of 1,000 teenagers across Britain. In fact, most of his fellow spokespeople were colleagues in his last pop group, Manish Boys. Jones insisted that he started letting his hair grow before the Rolling Stones arrived with their messy locks. “It takes a long time to get that tall, you know,” he said. The funny thing is that by modern standards, his hair isn’t that long. Maybe that’s why Jones and his friends didn’t need to go to hairdressers to shampoo their hair. “Our mothers do it,” he revealed. “They’re very good at it.”

While this TV item was clearly satirical, the 1960s were a battleground for a culture war over men with long hair. Two decades after World War II, many members of the “short-backed and short-sided” older generation cannot understand the reasons why young people choose to express themselves in this way. Some schoolchildren found themselves expelled for their shocking rebelliousness, while older teenagers discovered that the workplace can be a hostile environment. In 1969, 20-year-old welder Graham Wadsworth’s refusal to cut his shaggy hair so enraged his colleagues at a UK engineering company that they all went on strike. “I understand civil rights and all that, and young people have different ideas, but we have to paint a good picture,” grumbled the company’s personnel director. The dispute was settled when it was agreed that Wadsworth could return to work, as long as he did not eat in the staff canteen.