The Cutting Edge

The Beatles’ hair changed the world. As their increasingly wild, untamed manes grew and grew, to the horror of parents everywhere, they set off a cultural revolution, as the most tangible symbol of the sixties’ psychedelic dream of peace, love and playful rebellion. At the center of this epochal change was Leslie Cavendish, hairdresser to the Beatles and designer of the four most iconic men’s hairstyles since Jesus Christ, a brand image as immediately recognizable as the Nike Swoosh or the Coca-Cola bottle. But just

how did a fifteen-year-old Jewish school dropout from an undistinguished North London

suburb, with no particular artistic talent or showbusiness connections, end up literally

at the cutting edge of sixties fashion in just four years? His story parallels the meteoric

rise of the Beatles themselves, and is no less astounding.