Paul McCartney - LIVE AND LET DYE

Among the ways one can waste time, is by studying celebrity hair, and trying to determine a) when the person started wearing a hair piece in front, or a full wig, and b) what the person's real hair color would actually be.

Sometimes it's fascinating and hard to detect what's going on, because stars are under such a magnifying lens, their hair and make-up people instantly start coloring in a bald spot, changing a hair style to cover a receding hairline, then adding the piece in front when the star begins to comb his hair back again. Check the hairlines on anyone from Bud Abbott to Bela Lugosi, or the differences between a movie still of Jack Nicholson or John Travolta, and some snapshot taken the same time but OFF stage.

It's kind of rare when a person blatantly shifts from going bald to an upholstered rug. The famous American sports broadcaster Howard Cosell can be seen with a very receding hairline in talking to young Cassius Clay, and then he's got a full hairline when talking to the older Muhammad Ali (who liked to playfully pretend he was going to pull that fake hair off).

There's an entire blog on William Shatner that STILL can't quite determine what the hell he did...wigs or transplants...while chronicling the changes in hair color and thickness along the way. There's an art to the hairpiece, as Frank Sinatra or Fred Astaire knew long ago, and that many of today's men keep a guarded secret.

Bill Maher, probably the best political comedian America has, has flirted with his hair combed forward, then combed back with new fullness in front, and a variety of dye shades. He doesn't seem to care about touch-ups and often lets his white roots show.

(Say, maybe I could make a few pence off a website totally devoted to celebrity hair problems?? With banner ads from hair dye and hair transplant companies???)

Bob Dylan? WHAT is that? A weave of some kind? Elton? Didn't he just give up on transplants and plop a carrot-top on his head? McCartney? Supposedly the ex-mop top still has his own mop! Via transplants? One thing is certain, the color has been very strange at times.

People don't complain about Ringo's hair nearly as much as they do Paul's. It's also unfortunate that Paul's bone structure isn't as defined as Ringo's, so he often looks like he's in need of a jowl tuck. How many he's had, who knows. Many stars get a little botox, a little work around the eyes, and don't become Joan Rivers.

Macca seems that one of the main people we scrutnize for signs of getting older. The hair piece pictured above, not only went into detail on how strange the color can be, but how incredibly cheap Paul can be. Just how true the article is, I have no idea. A lot of people LOVE to get snarky about Paulie, perhaps as payback for all those silly love songs.

The piece was published in 2014, but dwells on incidents going back to 2004 and Heather Mills!

Here's the rest of it:

“She called the salon in a very agitated way. People were making fun of the color. He was coloring his hair on his own using a box color from Duane Reade [an all-too ubiquitous drug store chain in New York].

Guy’s daughter, Janelle Mercadante, started coloring McCartney’s hair while her dad did the cutting, with the pair traveling to the Hamptons regularly for the job. The salon even developed a unique formula to color McCartney’s hair. But things started to fall apart in 2012 when the singer’s assistants called demanding the formula.

“He never wanted to pay the money. There was always talk and complaints that the bill was so high,” Mercadante said. The owners of Guy Thomas Salon in Midtown say whoever is applying the former Beatle's hair color isn't doing a great job.

“He would stop having us go to him to do the color because it cost more money.” McCartney never tipped, though he did give staff tickets to his concerts. The father and daughter weren’t keen on handing over their formula, but say they relented after repeated calls from McCartney’s minions. “He had his assistants call us who were nasty. We really shouldn’t have given him the formula. He felt he was entitled to it,” Mercadante said.

They add that whoever is now applying the color hasn’t got a clue. “His cut is inferior and the color is a mess,”said Thomas. “We have clients coming in asking, ‘What the hell is wrong with Paul McCartney hair?’ People knew he came here, and they ask us, ‘Is that your work’?"

“His hair looks horrible,” says Mercadante. “It becomes dark initially and then lightens. Whoever is doing it for him leaves the sideburns grey.” While a rep for McCartney declined to comment, the singer released a bizarre statement in 2006 denying it was Mills who made him dye his hair. “I was engaged in this devilish practice years before I met her,” he said at the time. “I remember a strange blue dye dripping down my forehead on an Australian tour over 10 years ago, but let’s face it, if I want to dye my hair pink, that’s up to me and no one else.”

You do wonder if the writer here is a friend of the hair salon, or was paid off or something. Or how many stars would EVER use these people after knowing they are prone to dye-and-tell.

Bowie. Clapton. The late Cocker. Baldie Gabriel. It's hard to figure out what to do with hair problems. Jagger?

"What a drag it is getting old..."