Did The Beatles Wear Wigs? Paul McCartney Explains How Rumors About The Beatles’ Hair Got Started

The Beatles were iconic for many reasons. They made rock and roll an incredibly popular genre worldwide, and they possessed unique imagery and style that dominated the 1960s. One thing The Beatles pioneered was their haircut, which became utilized by many of their fans and other artists. However, there are rumors out there that The Beatles wore wigs. 

How did The Beatles discover their iconic haircut?

When the Fab Four emerged, people were just as obsessed with their hairstyle as they were with their music. The Beatles rocked a haircut they coined the “Arthur” – a mop-top haircut with a side-swept fringe. So many people were enthralled by their hair because it was something no one had seen before. 

According to GQ, The Beatles found the idea for the haircut from an art student named ​​Jürgen Vollmer, who the band befriended in Hamburg in the early 1960s. John Lennon and Paul McCartney met with Vollmer in Paris and requested the mop-top haircut, which Vollmer cut in his “Left Bank hotel room.” The pair brought it back to England and showed it off in several performances, including their 1964 performance on The Ed Sullivan Show. 

Paul McCartney says The Beatles never wore wigs

In an interview with Wired, guitarist Paul McCartney addresses a rumor that The Beatles wore wigs. McCartney denies this rumor and isn’t entirely sure where it began. However, he does have his own interesting theory. 

“No, we didn’t wear wigs,” McCartney said. “What used to happen, people would tell us, when we went on The Ed Sullivan Show, our first appearance on American TV, all the dads, who were probably very jealous of these fine heads of hair that we had, and we were shaking, and we were doing things with them, and the dads of a lot of kids would say, ‘Oh, they’re wigs. They’re wearing wigs’…So, anyway, they weren’t wigs, and that’s maybe where the rumor started.”

There doesn’t appear to be any conspiracy theories on the dark web that The Beatles were wearing wigs. McCartney seems to think that the rumor started from dads who were jealous of their haircut, and wanted their kids to believe it was fake. However, that iconic hairstyle appears to be authentic. 

Many musical artists still rock the stylish mop-top haircut

Years later, many Beatles’ fans and musical artists are still donning the mop-top haircut made famous by the band. Liam and Noel Gallagher rocked the haircut in the early days of Oasis, and One Direction had similar haircuts before going their separate ways. Even the K-pop boy band BTS had the hairstyle as the group is heavily influenced by The Beatles and their style. 

As The Beatles evolved, so did their haircut. They later all had bowl cuts and even utilized sideburns. In the late 1960s, the band had much longer hair combined with beards and mustaches. Their hair on Abbey Road and Sgt Pepper’s showed a drastic transition from their early days. By the time the band broke up, their hair became less synchronized, symbolizing the eventual rift leading to the end of The Beatles.