Is Bret Michaels Bald?

As the lead singer of Poison for around 40 years, Bret Michaels’ signature look has always been flowing blonde locks and a bandana.

In more recent years, Michaels has added a cowboy hat to the ensemble. As he’s gotten older, people have become more curious about his hairstyle – is it still natural?

Let’s take a look at the big questions about whether Bret Michaels is bald.

Is Bret Michaels bald?

Bret Michaels hasn’t revealed the extent of his hair loss, but he has admitted to using hair extensions to keep his iconic look. It’s unclear whether Bret Michaels is bald or if he has just suffered from minor hair loss and thinning, as he always hides his hairline while in public.

We do know that this isn’t a recent issue for Michaels – he’s been battling with hair loss for at least 15 years. When asked in interviews back in 2008 he admitted then that his hair wasn’t completely natural, and he’s continued to protect his image ever since.

It’s unclear when he started balding though because he’s always seen wearing his bandana. His head may have been balding for a long time prior to 2008, and it may have just taken him until this time to admit it.

Does Bret Michaels wear a wig or hair extensions?

Bret Michaels has admitted wearing hair extensions – in his own words, “the finest extensions Europe has to offer”. Because he always hides his head with a bandana and, more recently, a cowboy hat, it’s unclear how much of his hair is real and whether he wears a wig too.

A lot of people still speculate that it must be a full wig by this point – just read the comments of any online interview he’s given – but extensions combined with a weave or other hair system can cover the top of this head too – it’s not just about making his existing hair longer.

The other alternative would’ve been if he’d had a surgical procedure to implant new hair follicles, but if he’d done that then he wouldn’t have admitted to wearing extensions, so we know that’s not the case.

While we know he’s used hair extensions before, and therefore probably still does, it could be that he’s since changed to a wig – and that’s why he’s using a cowboy hat to help cover his hairline along with the bandana.

Unless he discusses it in an interview, or finally decides to open up about it in his next book, we likely won’t ever know.

Are there any pictures of Bret Michaels without hair extensions?

There are no pictures of Bret Michaels without hair extensions. He has always avoided showing his real hairline in public by wearing his extensions and bandana, plus a cowboy hat as he has become older.

In an interview he gave in 2008 about his hair extensions, he said “I do [Rock of Love] without [my extensions] all the time and they won’t film me. They are like, ‘Put your bandana back on, it’s your image’. It is my signature thing.”

So Michaels claims that his own management team won’t let him be filmed without his hair extensions in place. We have to take him at his word, but it’s an odd concept.

After all, this is one of the biggest rock stars of the 1980s and beyond – why would he listen to his team if he was comfortable showing his age? It doesn’t sound very metal, does it?

The nearest we’ve ever come to seeing Michaels without his hair extensions in place is a mock photo created by Madhouse Magazine, which is often re-used whenever people discuss his receding hairline. It’s clearly not realistic, but we don’t know what he actually looks like with the fake hair and bandanas removed.

Plus, the claim that a bandana is his signature thing is a little bit of a stretch. Keith Richards, Axel Rose, and many other rock stars are known for wearing bandanas. But Bret is definitely known for wearing one too, so while it may not be his signature, it is part of his ‘look’.

But it becomes even more questionable that his reasons are down to protecting his image when he admitted to Oprah in 2010 that he’d kept the bandana on during a visit to hospital after suffering a brain hemorrhage. 

You have to ask how true that is – he did show a photo of himself in the hospital bed wearing the bandana, but did he put it on just for the photo? Or did he wear it even during his private time in the hospital, when his image really doesn’t matter?

It might be true that he does want to protect his rockstar image, or it could be insecurities on his own part. It may be a combination of the two – he might want to preserve his image so that he doesn’t feel like he’s getting older, or so that he can keep feeling like a sex symbol.

The impact of long hair on balding men

For anyone who, like Bret Michaels, has long hair and starts to lose it, the impact can be more pronounced. And that’s for two reasons.

Firstly, the weight of longer hair can pull it away from the scalp, meaning the scalp is visible through the hair. The person appears more obviously balding because the hair is dragged flat in all directions.

You can see this in full effect in The Dark Knight where Heath Ledger’s balding hair was given additional weight by the products applied. The length and weight exposed the actor’s balding scalp.

Secondly, hair gets thinner towards the ends. If you’re used to having thick, luscious locks of hair then it’s going to look even thinner toward the bottom as you start to lose it. The longer your hair, the more obvious it is.

It’s why most men with long hair who start to suffer from receding hairlines will either cover it up with a weave, or will completely change their hairstyle to something much shorter, or just go completely bald.

It’s pointless trying to maintain the hair down the back and sides of your head, and putting in the effort if you don’t have a full head of hair anyway. So you either need to use extensions and a weave like Bret Michaels does, or take the approach to change to a much shorter hairstyle – like 80s rock legends Lars Ulrich or David Lee Roth did.

How do hair extensions work for balding men like Bret Michaels?

While Bret Michaels has confirmed he does wear hair extensions, and that he uses the best he can get, he’s never clarified what type of extensions he uses.

However, based on what we know about Michaels, we can make a reasonable assumption.

Hair extensions are used to give someone longer hair, but they need real hair to be woven into. You can’t just stick long hair onto a bald head.

So it’s likely that Michaels has a weave or similar hair system which covers his receding hairline. We know he hasn’t just left his head bald as, despite taking to wearing a cowboy hat and bandana, he has often left the top of his head exposed where the bandana doesn’t cover.

This will likely be a non-surgical weave, where the hair is woven into a thin fake skin layer before being glued into place.

He’ll then have extensions woven or glued into this. It’s likely that his real hair has been cut back to avoid showing just how much it is thinning, so all of his long hair will be an extension. And if it’s true that he’s buying “Europe’s finest” then the fake hair will be made from keratin just like real hair, so it’ll feel authentic.

This would also back up the claims of Ambre Lake, the winner of the second season of ‘Rock of Love’ who dated Michaels for a couple of months after the show when she said that he didn’t wear a wig.

Lake wouldn’t necessarily be lying, she just wouldn’t know he had a weave affixed to his head, and the extensions would be longer-term ones as well. Glue-in extensions, or micro-link extensions that are looped through natural hair, can last up to a year but need re-applying every few months.

Summary

Whether Bret Michaels will ever give up the facade and show the world what he really looks like beneath the extensions, bandana, and cowboy hat, we’ll never know.

As long as he continues his career – he continues to make music and release books about his time as a musician and celebrity – he will probably want to keep his image as it is. When you cultivate a look for 40+ years, it can be hard to let go.

But plenty of legendary rock stars have embraced baldness in their later years, and they don’t have to give up the glam lifestyle. We’ll see whether he gets bored of constantly re-applying extensions every few months.

Before you go; it’s not just rock stars that struggle with baldness. Stars of the big screen also have to deal with hair loss, including Superman himself:

Henry Cavill’s hair loss – is he balding?