In the months since its resuscitation, several hundred readers have written this column to ask what they should do with their hair. Would that Eleganza knew! Wear it long and you’re apt to be perceived by the hip and trendy either as some pathetic old flower child, a heavy metal dunderhead, or, worse yet, a shag Tory in little white Capezio shoes.

Wear it short and you’re apt, unless you put fuchsia highlights in it (and who has the time these days?), to be mistaken for somebody who not only believes that there’s such a thing as soft rock, but also has one of the pushbuttons on the radio in his Toyota set to a station that claims to play it.

Wear it sort of in between, with the sides cut off and everything else long, as do many of your little-white-Capezio-shoes boys in groups that hope to become The Next Loverboy, and you’re certain to be ridiculed by Eleganza.

Wear it in the only way that’s guaranteed to get soft rock fans good and steamed up—that is, in a porcupine Mohawk—and you’ll find yourself spending hours per day in front of the mirror—hours that might otherwise be devoted to loitering in front of Safeway, frightening old ladies half to death.

Eleganza doesn’t envy you younger readers. Back in Eleganza’s squandered youth, getting non-believers steamed up was no more difficult than letting one’s hair grow long.

Some of Eleganza’s most satisfying—if not happiest—memories from college days are of the UCLA football team shrieking, “Which one’s the girl?” as he strolled past with his girlfriend in eyelid-length Brian Jones bangs, a paisley shirt and wide-wale corduroy hip-huggers from the mod section of the local department store, and Tom McAn Beatle boots. (The answer, of course, was his girlfriend.)

Eleganza really had to hand it to Missing Persons at the US Festival—no group looked better at its post-performance press conference. Please be assured that Eleganza isn’t begging the question of Dale’s multi-colored hair, in which no primary color isn’t represented. Please know, on that contrary, that Eleganza will cease to ridicule Dale’s hair as silly and hideous only when no breath remains in this muscular old body, will cease to try to think of catty things to say about her lipstick only when frozen yogurt goes on sale in Hell.

Please know too that Eleganza finds the Persons’ music as objectionable as the next guy, particularly in view of its failure to shame Dale out of that obnoxious squeaking she thinks so cute and new wave.

But let’s give credit where it’s due. Even with Dale among them, they looked great. They all wore white, see, and not just any white, but gleaming, dazzling white. One got the impression that they’d tarted up just to come meet the press-—the critical wing of which was recently characterized by Terry Bozzio in these very pages as “dogs without teeth.”

Just for the record, Dale did nothing to jeopardize her image as the Gracie Allen of rock ’n’ roll. That is, her virtually every utterance was positively bracing in its inanity. Urged to betray her most intimate feelings about computer technology, for instance, she blithely asserted, “Oh, I’d love to have a new computer in my car.”

Moments later, she tried and failed three times to force the word “technological” from between her huge stoplight-colored lips, only to settle in the end for “technical.” At another, when asked about the role of women in rock today, she demurred, “I don’t like to separate man from female.” Can you help but love her?

Except for their very black and very blond dyed hair, the two Motley Crue-tons who ventured back to Press Island looked much less like sadistic Satanists with uncles in the wholesale leather business than like garden variety heavy metal reactionaries.

They wore jeans, for Christ’s sake, and sneakers. There wasn’t a stiletto heel in sight. Nikki Sixx turned out to be flirting with pudginess. And the singer, in the grand old rock ’n’ roll tradition, turned out to be a great deal nearer the ground than one might have imagined. (Such of your favorite stars as Tom Petty are only 4’6”. Eleganza’s shaken hands with some of them.)

They denied being devil-worshippers. “We’re just a rock ’n’ roll band,” they said. Naturally. Saying, “We’re just a rock ’n’ roll band,” has become as standard a part of the repertoire of this particular sort of heavy ipetal mob as making the sign of the devil at the camera when they pose for publicity stills.

But back to matters Eleganza. Four years ago, when Berlin was still toiling in the obscurity to which their music so richly entitles them, Terri Nunn used to wear fab spandex dresses whose strategically placed cut-outs exposed vast expanses of her firm white flesh. And yet on stage at the USFest, she saw fit to wear a demure dress of the sort a young woman her age might choose for Saturday morning brunch with her parents and clergyman.

(Eleganza’s close frjend The Kiddo has been proudly noting that he went out with Terri years ago. If she doesn’t shape up, he’ll be deprived of that pleasure. She probably doesn’t remember him anyway. You know TURN TO PAGE 59 these technopop stars. They’re often even shorter than the normal ones.)

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 41

Afterward, neither Nunn nor her accompanists took the time before confronting the press to refresh her or his make-up. The result was that they looked less like triumphant superstars in their finest hour than hustlers at the end of a long night. The Bozzio woman might have looked clownish with every feature so luridly painted-on-looking, but at least she looked meticulously clownish.

(Actually, nothing’s as bad as it’s made out to be here. But it isn’t Eleganza’s job to make you feel neutral about things. It’s Eleganza’s job to get you so crazy stirred up that you dash out and buy all the products advertised in this magazine, all the guitars of dubious manufacture and tanktop Tshirts. Lives may be ruined in the process, but Eleganza is doing only what it must. If the brothel creeper fits, wear it.)

What did Eleganza wear if it’s so smart? The ill-fitting red leather blazer it bought last spring on Carnaby Street in London for what a good pair of running shoes costs in the U.S. of A. A black cotton muscle shirt that showed off those of the weary old muscles in the upper arm area. Red suede daggertoed brothel creepers that got ruined. And a harried expression, for only six of the 150,000 kids in the audience each day wasn’t armed with a squirt bottle with which he thought it great fun to douse red suede brothel-creepered passers-by who were old enough to be their fathers, given a very high degree of sexual precocity.

Next month: Eleganza meets, interviews, and photographs one of the two of the three best-dressed women in rock today—Linda Jones of Tex & The Horseheds and Patricia of Gun Club. You won’t want to miss a single syllable!

Now go buy some guitar strings. ^