Ray Manzarek (and his sideburns)
A video version of this post is available here.
About the most rebellious thing I did in my teenage years was grow out my sideburns like Ray Manzarek.
You might know Ray Manzarek as the keyboardist for The Doors. You might know The Doors as the psychedelic rock group that did “Break on Through (To the Other Side),” or “Light My Fire,” or “The End,” or any number of other rock radio staples.
I discovered the man and the group because of the music they made. But on a purely cosmetic level, I really admired Ray Manzarek’s sideburns.
Refer to the picture above. Ray’s sideburns were long and thick and perfectly symmetrical. To me, they were an almost artistic continuation of hair down to the upper jawline. It’s easy to grow out a beard or a mustache, but sideburns are different; they require a certain finesse, a certain style to pull off.
Being a dopey 16-year-old, I went ahead and assumed I had the requisite finesse and style. So I let my sideburns grow. And grow. And grow some more. Actually, maybe “mutate” is a better word for what they did.
My Manzarek-inspired sideburns developed a texture similar to bristles on a brush. I feared that if I trimmed them I’d ruin them, so they exploded not only downward, but outward, to the point that they protruded from either side of my head, sort of like wings.
I’d show you a picture, only I feel like that would be like a horror director revealing the monster in the very first scene. What you come up with in your mind is always more frightening, anyway. Suffice it to say that my sideburns really didn’t look very good.
That fact, however, wasn’t especially important to me. What was important was that no one else at school looked like me, and I didn’t look like anyone else. I’d basically joined a party that had ended four decades prior, but whatever.
I think pretty much every American high school kid goes through this phase at some point in adolescence, this phase where we copy a behavior or a trend that seems unique, even though we’re making it less so by copying it. Only for my phase, I copied an anachronistic (and kind of gross) hairstyle.
I remember re-watching an old video of myself playing basketball during the Manzarek Sideburn Era, one that my dad had filmed. He’s talking with my cousin in the background, and my cousin asks where I am on the court. My dad says something like, “The floppy hair and the sideburns.” There’s a pause, and then my cousin says something like, “That’s an interesting look.” And then nobody says anything.
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The sideburns died sometime during my junior year. My mom politely handed me an electric razor and encouraged me to at least trim the sideburns if I wanted to keep them.
Instead, I shaved them. The magic of the sideburns had dissipated. Besides, I’d been getting enough grief from my friends.
It’s funny how important those sideburns were for the short time I had them. The allure of facial hair to a teenage kid is something like tattoos to college students; it’s a form of self expression that goes beyond others because it’s right there on your skin, out where everyone can see it.
I still have sideburns, though now I trim them and they’re even with my eyes. I’ve attempted other hairstyles imitating other musicians; when I discovered Iron Maiden, for example, I very seriously wanted to grow my hair past my shoulders, a la Bruce Dickinson. It always grew outward but never downward, so eventually I gave up.
These days, I get a clean cut every few months. Sometimes I apply a little pomade to the front, but I’m afraid I’m getting too old for that look. That’s alright. A lesson I learned in high school: my hair is probably not my best medium of self expression. That’s what my crappy classic rock band t-shirts are for.
Maybe someday my Manzarek sideburns will return, perhaps if I’m forced into the witness protection program for some reason. But for now, I’ll stick with the hair I have. It’s a lot less itchy.
Kyle A. Massa is the author of the novel Gerald Barkley Rocks and the forthcoming short story collection Monsters at Dusk. His stories have appeared in numerous online magazines, including Allegory, Chantwood, and Dark Fire Fiction. He lives somewhere in upstate New York with his wife and their two cats.
