The mullet is enjoying a celebrity-led renaissance in the 21st century

‘Number one on the side and don’t touch the back, number six on the top and don’t cut it wack, Jack.’

Were the Beastie Boys responsible for the tonsorial nomenclature known as the mullet? Certainly, the lyrics to the New York hip-hop trio’s track Mullet Head, from their 1994 album Ill Communication, is widely acknowledged as the first time this particular hairstyle – short on the sides and top, lengthy and ratty behind – was given a definitive name, having been previously referred to, variously, as ‘hockey hair’, ‘bi-level’ or ‘Bowie’ cut.

Currently enjoying a quasi-ironic renaissance among east London hipsters, trending with public schoolboys and even adopted by Hollywood actors, including Gladiator II’s Paul Mescal, the ‘do’ actually has a much longer (at the back) history.

Roman emperor Tiberius Julius Caesar Augustus, born in 42 BC, was said to wear his hair ‘rather long at the back, so much so as even to cover the nape of his neck’ following a Claudian family tradition.

In the sixth century, the prominent Byzantine scholar Procopius noted that factions of young males were leaving their hair long at the back but cutting it short over the forehead – both practical and stylish, the barnet kept hair out of the eyes, while providing warmth and protection for the neck. Procopius described the thatch as ‘Hunnic’, preceding 20th-century German males’ devotion to the mullet by some 1,400 years.

But was the mullet, so beloved of cinema’s warriors and heavy-metal drummers, originally designed for war and aggression? Native American tribes and Celtic warriors of the Iron Age chopped their locks just so for intimidation and heroism, thrilling at their flowing manes as hand-to-hand battle commenced. Then, in the subsequent un-rockin’, namby-pamby centuries, wigs took over and men’s heads were hidden under the preposterously powdered postiche of times past.

History records that David Bowie, during his Aladdin Sane period, revived it in the 1970s (with the help of Bromley pirate Suzi Ronson, then Suzanne Fussey). Much imitated but never bettered, it was called a ‘feather cut’ back then; versions appearing on Aussie Rules footballers, across Scandinavia and skimming the shoulders of pretty much every male musician from Rod Stewart and Keith Richards to Paul McCartney.

In the 2010s, the style appeared on Iran’s list of ‘un-Islamic’, ‘decadent Western cuts’ and was reportedly banned by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. Some tastemakers believe that similar tonsorial draconianism might be appropriate for the men of Hackney and Shoreditch.