By Tim Gunner

Through the years of a rock icon: The ever changing hair of Axl Rose.

Believe it or not, there was a time when Axl Rose was the biggest rock star on the planet. And, during that brief period between 1987-1993, there were few who could match him on any front, including his rock and roll hair.

Since those bizarre cornrows he sported back in the early 2000s, Axl's hair has been a bit here and there. Many people have speculated that the cornrows were used as an attempt to cover his baldness, or a botched hair transplant. But to the relief of his many fans, he is looking more normal these days, although for the past few years he has been a constant hat and bandanna wearer, suspiciously.

Has Axl Rose had a hair transplant? 

If I had to guess, then I would say yes -- and here's why:  I believe Axl, who was clearly beginning to lose his hair in the mid '90s, must have undergone some kind of hair transplantation procedure around the time of 1998 or 1999. This was during the years of his wilderness, when he was hardly seen in public for the five year period between 1995-2000.

1994

The image above shows Axl in 1994, and it is clear his hair was starting to go thinner, with slight receding at the frontal hairline. Now, we all know Axl has naturally thin hair anyway, but the image clearly shows early stages of male pattern baldness, Norwood Hamilton scale 2.

Images of Axl in the late '90s are few and far between, but there are some floating about on the internet. The bandana and shorter hair is a regular look in those images, which leads me to believe he had his hair surgery around that time.

This can be further backed by the images of Axl in 2000 -- his return to the spotlight. Axl came back with a thick head of cornrows (see image below), of which must have been stuck on. It seems very unlikely that it was all his original hair, because Axl has never had that much natural density in his hair to sport that kind of style. For cornrows to look like the way he had them, he would need thick hair.

2000

The problem is, Axl always seemed to wear a bandanna during that period, meaning we never got to see his hairline - which is so crucial in determining if he had hair surgery or not. Having shown clear signs of receding in 1994, you'd have expected Axl's hairline to have receded further by this point.

Come 2006, Axl was still sporting the cornrows, but he ditched the bandanna, and now we could see what we'd all been waiting for -- his hairline. Unsurprisingly, well, to me anyway, Axl's hairline was firmly intact. It was as if his hair had thickened, and his hairline had been filled in and brought forward by a few inches. This image below shows Axl clearly had a hair transplant procedure since 1994, unless it's a stick on hair piece. Either way, that's not his real hair.

2006

Apparently, Axl had been obsessing about his hair since the time he was with his ex-wife Erin Everly (she testified in court that he became obsessed with his hair after he got famous), so it was obviously an issue for him for many years.

More than 60 percent of men will experience some stage of hair loss by the age of 40, and over 85 percent by the age of 60. Hair loss is a worry for millions of men around the world, and without a cure, it's a problem that is not about to go away any time soon.

So, why does Axl's hair currently look so weird? Axl's strange, greasy, frizzy strands have become that way because of having multiple surgeries. Hair transplantation surgery has come a long way since the '90s, and the chances are, the procedures he had back then weren't anywhere near as effective as they are today. Constant botch-job transplants take their toll, inevitably.

2023

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