Here’s a post to refute once and for all the ridiculous notion that Brian May perms his hair.
Brian’s hair from early 70s to early 80s is a textbook example of naturally curly hair in transition. He straightened it when he was in his teens (for goodness sake, he had a Beatle bowl cut in the 60s) and considering the era, I’d say he used liberal amounts of pomade, brylcreem or similar to glue his curls down.
Also, if you regularly brush naturally curly hair when it’s dry, it loses its curl definition and is just bushy and weird (cue Brian’s hair in 69-71, the Smile era bushy, face-eating style).
Now, if you do this for years and years, put all sorts of straightening products in the hair, use heat tools etc. (I’m guessing here, but who knows, he might have, he’s said he hated his hair when he was younger) it takes its toll on the hair and it takes time for it to find it’s natural curl pattern again.
He’s said how he had curly hair from infancy and if you look at his teenager photos you can see those deep wavy curly locks on the top of his head even though it’s been glued down with a pomade of some sort.
In another interview he said how he hated his hair when he was young and only when Jimi Hendrix burst into the scene, he started to think that curly hair could actually be cool.
There’s even a little clip of Anita saying how his hair is the way it grows out of his head and he has no control over it. She should know, as she lives with him.
And as all curly haired people know, the curls have a will of their own, they do whatever they want and grow and go which ever way, no matter what you do. Also, age, hormones, diet, hair products and the way you treat your hair affect the curls. No two days are the same with curly hair.
Thus, Brian let his hair “do its thing” finally in the early 70s and stopped doing all the straightening and brushing, but it took a couple of years for his curls to come back in full force. This is why his hair texture changes from year to year during the seventies from big and loopy curls and waves to tighter and tighter curls. The tight curl pattern he has from the eighties onwards is his natural hair, finally in its original state, NOT a perm. Observe:
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