There’s a photo of The Beatles linked in another thread, showing them in their collarless grey suits. It seems many bands of that era wore ‘uniforms’ when they played. This is a pre-coffee post, so I can’t think of other specific Rock bands that dressed similarly; but I know I’ve seen bands from the '50s and '60s that wore suits or ‘show suits’ (lamé, ruffles, and such). The Beatles wore military-inspired costumes for Sgt. Pepper. Peter, Paul & Mary dressed ‘up’, and The Brothers Four wore matching slacks and sweaters. Bands and back-up singers in Country acts wore suits or tuxedos (some of them gawd-awful), with the singer wearing something more flamboyant, into the '70s (at least – I never was a Country fan). Josie and The Pussy Cats ran from 1970 to 1972, and its titular band featured matching cat costumes. But that was a cartoon. Of course Kiss and Devo wore costumes.
Let’s ignore the costumes for now – and I’m talking about ‘themed’ costumes like Sgt. Pepper’s, Kiss’s, Devo’s, Lady Gaga’s, et al. When did Rock bands stop, as a convention, wearing suits or ‘dressing up’ for their performances?
The Rolling Stones are often given credit for that changeover. Their management intially forced them into wearing silly-looking suits for their first (UK) television appearance, which they hated and so they basically said “never again” and started wearing mix-and-match for all appearances. Mick Jagger wore a pullover that looked a lot like a sweatshirt on a 1964 Ed Sullivan Show broadcast. I think he’s in the film The TAMI Show sporting that look as well. Perhaps because the Stones pulled off the casual look so well other groups followed their lead.
I think that there isn’t necessarily a specific group or event that precipitated it, other than the overall 60s attitude coming into play. Dressing alike was conformist and The Man-contrived. However, that attitude didn’t completely trump the appeal of bands all dressing alike, because it remained fairly common during that era and you still see it to this day.
To think that not too long ago there was a cultural expectation that anyone appearing in public to perform together would be dressed identically. I find it really bizarre.
This seems about right. In pop/rock, dressing identically basically faded out over the period 1964-1966. Before they got famous, the Beatles dressed casually, but once Beatlemania started, they dressed in suits and maintained this throughout their touring career. (Here they are in their final performance, at Candlestick Park in 1966.) This, of course, made dressing in suits the “in thing” for awhile, but as mentioned by Ellis Aponte Jr., bands such as the Stones started to circumvent this quite early. Once the Beatles stopped touring and switched to their Sgt. Pepper uniforms, it was all over.
(Around the same time, the Charlatanswere credited with starting the West Coast fad of dressing like 19th century cowboys – essentially, what became the hippie “uniform”.)
In soul/Motown/R&B, by contrast, the convention of dressing up lasted longer. I don’t know that the Temptations or Four Tops have ever stopped dressing in suits.
IMHO, I think many bands in the 80’s still employed this to a certain extent by wearing matching colors and keeping similar themes while on stage. Example : Motley Crue. On the Theatre of Pain tour, they wore court jester style outfits, on the Girls Girls Girls tour, they dressed like bikers.
I think the 90’s grunge movement is what did away with that. That’s when it became the norm for bands to go onstage in wrinkled flannel shirts and work boots and stand there and pout for 90 minutes. Matter of fact, I think the term “grunge” probably came from the way they looked - grungy, dirty and depressed.
I think dressing alike depends on genre and timing. Like all fashion - it has its regenerations and regurgitations.
I’ll never forget when Sean Combs did the tribute to Biggy Smalls and everyone danced across the stage in white (well, except the one white guy, Sting, who was dressed in black . . .)
Boys II Men were big on dressing alike for a while there, too. And then Michael Buble - it all depends.
“It all depends” is very different from what existed before the '60s. People actually used to get worked up if people appearing before the public weren’t dressed in a specific manner. I recall that when Walter Cronkite was reporting on the Kennedy assassination, some woman called up during a break in the broadcast, outraged that Cronkite was “in his shirtsleeves” – he had taken off his suit jacket at some point, but was still wearing a dress shirt and tie. The newsroom was so chaotic, that Cronkite took the call himself.
