In 1977, artists and musicians Tish and Snooky Bellomo opened America’s first punk store in St. Mark’s Place in New York’s East Village. This set the backdrop for the burgeoning American punk scene and forged the foundation for Manic Panic, the sisters’ avant-garde hair dye company.

Forty-five years later, Manic Panic continues its reign as the original alternative beauty brand, seen on celebrities like Cyndi Lauper, Rihanna, and the Kardashians. But, their journey hasn’t been easy. Tish and Snooky have faced misogyny, the travails of running a small business, and the ups and downs of cultural trends. In fact, the Manic Panic story is one that is more about self-expression and healing through art than anything else.

When I reflect on my relationship with Manic Panic over the years, I can see how the brand has been there for me in some of the most difficult seasons of my life. I’ve always loved the sentiment, “You can’t control the world, but you can control your hair.”

Tish and Snooky can attest to the power of hair color, having seen their work impact lives and youth movements over the generations. That passion for their product has carried their legacy forward today and into the future.

Bobby Hundreds: Well, thank you again for doing this, and thanks for doing the project. Thanks for doing the photo shoot and the interview. I’m asking so much of your time. We’re just really appreciative.

Tish: We’re so happy you asked because it was really fun!

Bobby: When did we see each other last, was it about a year ago?

Tish: I think it’s been about a year, yeah.

Bobby: Wow. I can’t believe it went that fast. So good to see you again. Where are you two right now?

Snooky: We’re in our office in Long Island City, Queens. We’ve started coming back to the office a couple of days a week but still working from home. But it’s good to be back in the office and see some of our staff, some of them are still working remotely, but it’s great to work in person with the people who come into the office. We can hug them and meet in person. It’s great, and I just so appreciate that, which I never did before the pandemic, you know, it was just the way we worked.

Tish: I mean, I remember just coming in sometimes and going right to my desk and feeling like I hadn’t left. I was just still there basically, yet this hybrid way of working is really great. I really, really, really love the hybrid way. And it’s really funny. My husband, before the pandemic for years was saying to me, you don’t have to go into the office every day. Why don’t you just go on your laptop and do the work from home? And I’m like, no, no, no, I have to go to the office. But I realized he was right. I was wrong. And you know, it’s been great. The hybrid way of working is just fantastic. Because one way isn’t perfect. The other way isn’t perfect, either. So hybrid is great.

Bobby: Yeah, I agree. How would you introduce yourselves, like when you’re sitting next to someone on a plane, or you meet someone in an elevator? You’re like, “Hi, I’m Tish and I’m Snooky, and this is what I do. How would you describe that?

Tish: I guess if we were together, we say we’re Tish and Snooky from Manic Panic and we’re badass boomers who created a line of hair color that, you know, is still popular 45 years later.

Bobby: Love it.

Snooky: It’s amazing. It’s gone beyond our wildest dreams. We grew up so poor. And it’s just amazing how far we’ve come, especially since we had maybe the entrepreneurial gene, but we didn’t have any entrepreneurial education. We just learned by doing it. We were, and still are singers and musicians. And, you know, we went to this specialized high school for music and art. We were singers when we started and just started the business as a sideline to our singing.

Bobby: There’s an interesting point. So you’re saying that you both went to a music and art school. I always thought or projected that I was going to be an artist for a career, and it turned into more. I am still an artist, I still create art every day, and I’m still making things and in many ways, businesses are art. But I think, more or less, people would classify me as more of a business owner and a founder at this point than a raw artist. And so I guess that’s really, really curious. And it’s interesting for young people who are creative and artistic and are like, well, I guess the rest of my life is going to be dedicated to putting oil on canvas. Whereas for you, it didn’t turn out that way, art and music opened up doors to a whole different type of career.

Tish: I think with most people, you’re not going to be able to go through that drive-thru if you’re just painting on canvas. Most people, I would say, like 99% at least, will have to get another job that pays the bills. And I think that’s what happened with us.

Snooky: But it kind of combined everything, like our mother was an artist. And we grew up playing with paint and glitter, and she was a greeting card designer. And she did really cute stuff, you know, baby books for kids and wedding books, and all sorts of beautiful greeting cards and stuff. Art and music were our roots, but we also had this business side that we didn’t really think about or embrace until we just decided to open our stores as a sideline to singing, because people liked our style. And we thought, Oh, well, we could sell it and do it as a sideline, and, you know, do our singing at night. We didn’t open the store till around noon or one in the afternoon. So we got to sleep late, sometimes on the floor of the store.

Bobby: Okay, let me stop you right there. Tell me about the music part of your background, even before we get into the business side of things, what attracted you to music? And how did you get into music? And can you explain the work with Blondie and all of the other repertoire?

Tish: We’re sisters, so we were always singing and dancing together and putting on shows, we even used to put on puppet shows. We lived on the ground floor at one point, we moved about 20 million times. But at one point, we lived on the ground floor. And we used to have puppet shows, and we would do the puppet shows for free. But we would charge for refreshments in between so we had that entrepreneurial spirit when we were very, very young, without even knowing it. And I think part of being an artist is how to survive and how to get by and you can have this creative problem-solving gene that a lot of other people don’t have. If you can’t get in the door, you go through the window, whatever it is, but that’s how we kind of did it on St. Mark’s place too with our shop. We had no money really to renovate a store and have a business so we painted the store black and… [Laughs]

Snooky: No business training at all. [Laughs]

Tish: Nothing. And you know, we had spike-heeled shoes and no place to put them. So we drilled holes in the wall and stuck the spike heels in the wall. Actually, Snooky’s boyfriend did that, he had a drill. You figure out creative ways to do stuff like that. The music and the fashion were so in sync back in those years in the seventies. It was all combined. And people would hang out at our store during the day and then go to CBGBs at night, or Max’s or whatever. We always had a flood of different local musicians coming in, and we would sell the 45s they used to make. We’d sell The Cramps, and I can’t even remember all the other different bands.

Bobby: Oh, I love it. Excellent. Can you explain the New York punk scene in the ‘70s? What was St. Mark’s place like? What did punk stand for then? Obviously punk is in a much different place now, whether it’s dead or alive, it’s up for debate. But the ‘70s were different. Can take us back in a time machine and just plop us back down in the context of how it felt?

Tish: It was dirty. [Laughs]

Snooky: It was really dirty and scary and dangerous, but so much fun. It was such a special time in history. And we’re so lucky that we got to be there. Right in the epicenter of the birth of punk. We were there and it was just amazing. You know, the first time we saw the Ramones, we were in this wacky show across the street from CBGB at the Bowery Lane Theatre, this old vaudeville theater, I guess. And some friends of ours said, “Oh, you have to come and see this band, The Ramones. They’re just gonna blow you away.” And, of course, they did. We ran over there between our shows at this theater. They were amazing. And they would kind of get into fights in the middle of the set and like throw down their guitars and walk off the stage. I don’t know if that was theatrics, or if it was real.

Tish: I think it might be real considering how it ended up.

Bobby: Yeah. What attracted you to punk in the first place? Was there a friend or just some adjacent groups that you were hanging out with that were like, come to this show? And that’s how you got immersed in it?

Tish: Well, yeah, you’re hanging out. It was like the tail end of the glam scene. And we were hanging out at Max’s and some of those types of clubs. And I’m trying to think of the first person who took us there when we ended up at the Bowery Lane Theatre. It was right across the street from CBGBs.

Snooky: I think it was our friends Gorilla Rose and Tomata du Plenty. They got us into the show, and then they took us across to CBGB to see the Ramones. And because they were friends with them, and they were friends with Arturo Vega, who did all the, you know, merchandise for the Ramones. He really helped style them. They couldn’t have done it without him. He was great. So you know, we knew all of them. And they took us to CBGB, and there was hardly anybody there in the audience, it was really empty.

Tish: There was a guy named Eric Emerson, who was one of the Andy Warhol people. He was in a band called The Magic Tramps, and he was one of the first people to introduce us to CBGB as well. Back in those days, we just ended up there and at the 82 Club and all these different places. Jane County took us to the 82 Club. Everybody kept going further and further into the East Village because before that, it was mostly West Village. Max’s was on 17th Street and Park. So it wasn’t the Lower East Side as much back then, except for the Fillmore.

Bobby: Were your parents, or friends who weren’t into this, were they kind of confused or worried?

Snooky: Our mother was so sweet and supportive! But she was always worried because she was always the black sheep of her family. She was an artist. But yeah, she was always worried because we were living with her in the Bronx and we’d take the subway downtown, we’d leave the house at midnight or something, and go out.

Tish: We’d put on our makeup on the subway train. And we’d have these like disgusting little flat shoes that we would wear, and then when we got about a block away from the clubs, we would put on our spike heels and throw the little slippers in our purses and act like we lived in Manhattan.

Snooky: Pretended that we just got out of the cab rather than off of an hour-long subway ride.

Tish: Sometimes we would get home when she was just about to leave for work and she said, “Girls, this is a very unhealthy lifestyle.” We would stink like cigarettes, because like, everybody smoked. We smelled like cigarettes and beer all the time.

Snooky: She was worried but we turned out ok. Our mom was the best. She actually named our business Manic Panic.

Bobby: Oh, really?!

Tish: She couldn’t get that much work, being an artist. So she became an art therapist. She was working in psychiatric hospitals and she came up with the name Manic Panic because it rhymes so nicely. And she said, “You know, sometimes the patients go into a Manic Panic and you know, your clothes and everything. Well, it might be a good name.”

Bobby: That’s so great. Speaking of clothes, you opened the first punk store in 1977. What was it like, opening that store? We talked about this last year, being two alternative women opening a shop and starting a business. I think that’s progressive, even today, right? Even today, it’s not as common as it should be. But back then in 1977, what was that like?

Tish: Yeah, well, it was a lot more difficult than today, we can tell you that much. And there were three of us at one point, in the very beginning.

Snooky: We had a friend who was our third partner for a short time, maybe six months or something. The three of us opened the store, we each put in $250. And the rent was only $250 a month. And we were living with our mothers. So the only overhead we needed to worry about was paying the rent in the door. But Tish and I would always out-vote Gina, our third partner, because we were sisters.

Tish: We had a lot of the same ideas about things. She was British, so I think she was more into British punk, the Clash and the Pistols and stuff, which we were too, but not to the extent that she was. We were more focused on the Ramones and the Cramps and all the local bands and stuff, so we parted ways after about six months. We ran into so many difficulties with basically not getting any respect in the business world, like we would go to trade shows, looking for things to sell in the store and some of the men in the business would just kind of look at you like you can’t afford this.

Snooky: Yeah, we were never taken seriously. Even when a salesman would come into the store, peddling his wares and he asked to speak to the owner and I said, “Well, I’m the owner.” They would want to talk to the “real” owner. I said I’m the real owner, but they wouldn’t believe me and walked out. Probably for the best. So we were young, we were women, and we looked like freaks. So nobody took us seriously.

Bobby: In the beginning, it was more of a clothing shop, right?

Snooky: It was everything. It was just everything that we liked that was cool in our opinion, and punk.

Tish: We were the first in the neighborhood to have a full line of theatrical cosmetics. So we had hair color, theatrical cosmetics, clothing, records, fan zines, lingerie, and all sorts of things. It was a tiny shop, we just stuffed everything in. Just like all sorts of accessories we did really well with and around Halloween, we would have a line down the street and we would have to have a doorman because people couldn’t fit in the tiny little shop. Little by little, the area changed and got more and more popular and fabulous, until we were finally priced out after 12 years.

Bobby: Wow, so what happened at that point with the business?

Tish: Oh, my God, it felt like the end of the world. We thought, “This is it. This is the end. We don’t know what we’re gonna do.” We had to take all our stuff and put it in storage. And a lot of the people who were working for us said sorry, we’re gonna get other jobs. So we were left kind of holding the bag, doing it ourselves with a few people who stayed on until the end. But we moved a bunch of stuff into storage, moved our wholesale business, which wasn’t huge back then, into Snooky’s boyfriend’s at the time, a three-floor walk-up studio apartment in SoHo, and we just learned. Yeah, you know what, we don’t need to have a storefront.

Snooky: Yeah, it was the end of the world and the end of our lives because our lives were so centered around the store. All the musicians and our friends would come to the store. It was like this little center during the daytime, where everybody met up and socialized. And then, at night, it was CBGB. But during the day, it was Manic Panic where everybody would meet and socialize. So we thought it was the end of the world. And we hated our landlord, it was the worst thing that ever happened, but it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened because then we really focused on wholesale and beauty products rather than everything, and instead of being distracted by chasing shoplifters down the street.

Tish: I remember chasing one girl down the street, and she’s kind of a big gal, and reaching down her cleavage and pulling out a miniskirt. We’d find people shooting up in the dressing room. It’s just like, give me a break. We needed a break from retail.

Snooky: So our landlord had done us a big favor. We were just the two of us in the studio apartment all day picking and packing orders and then we would roll down heavy stairs at the end of the day and then drive up to UPS and ship them all. We just did it.

Bobby: The hair dye was always integral to the business, right? And as you were running the shop, you started the hair products at that point? How did you even do that? For someone who’s listening to this or reading this and they want to start a hair dye or hair products company, how do you even get into that? T-shirts are easy, but what about hair products?

Snooky: Now it’s a lot easier than it was in those days. We found a manufacturer but it was really hard. And, you know, we were just these innocent little lambs, dealing with these experienced business people who took such advantage and ruthlessly screwed us over time and time again. It didn’t occur to us to get anything in writing back then, any agreements or contracts or anything. So we got totally screwed over so many times. But we learned the hard way to get everything in writing, to get agreements in order, and we’ve gotten really good at reading contracts.

Tish: I can’t, I fall asleep if I start reading them. I just nod out, they’re so horrible.

Bobby: Contracts are pretty rough.

Tish: I do try to read them, and sometimes you’ll just come across something and say, “I can’t believe they threw this in.” You know, it’s unbelievable what people do with contracts, you have to read every word. And that’s one piece of advice we give to everybody is to get everything in writing, and read every word and really understand it. Get a good lawyer to make sure everything’s in order.

Bobby: When you started doing the hair dyes, was there ever any thought that decades later, you would still be working in this lane? I’m imagining the late 70s and 80s, and even maybe in the early 90s, it is still a thing. But will this continue to sustain as a thriving business for generations? And it has, it’s like almost every generation has rediscovered it. And there’s been a renaissance again, of young people dyeing their hair wacky colors, and it just never seems to go out of style. Are you ever taken by that, that you’ve been able to flesh out a lifelong career around punk rock hair dyes?

Snooky: it’s just so amazing.

Tish: I think there were a few times in our careers where we thought, you know, we better take advantage of it now, because maybe it’s not going to be here forever. But now I’m totally convinced, it’s gonna be here till Armageddon. It’s always gonna be here, there are always going to be people who aren’t satisfied with their hair color. It’s the future!

Snooky: We’ve always loved it, how it looks and how it makes you feel. And we always felt like this is us, and this is what we do. This is what we live and love. And when people love it, too, it’s great. But if they don’t, well, fuck ‘em.

Bobby: [Laughs] What trends have you noticed over the years, in terms of colors or how people are dyeing their hair? How was it in the 80s and 90s and today? And is it generally the same colors that people are attracted to?

Tish: It totally varies. And one of the other big distinctions is, back in the old days, people just bleached their whole head and died it all one color. I only remember one woman who was an artist, she had really short hair. And she used to do hers in different colors all over. She was always trying to get us to give it to her for free because she said she was advertising for us or something. But she was the only one I remember with multicolor hair.

Snooky: Yeah, it’s true. Johnny Rotten and all these people just had one color. And then, it turned into art on hair, with these hairdressers and people doing amazing designs, just so creative. It really has become art.

Tish: Yeah. And I remember, like back in the 90s when I used to have my roots purple and my hair pink. That was back in the 90s and it was not something people did. They didn’t do different color roots, especially of those two colors. People didn’t even let their hair grow out and have roots because it was considered something bad. Now, all these years later, roots are in style. Now it’s totally appropriate to have different color roots, whether they’re natural or unnatural. And it’s fine to have three different colors in your hair or 10 different colors, rainbows, and all sorts of artistic patterns. The sky’s the limit.

Bobby: Tish, your hair right now, that blue-ish color? Is that in stock?

Tish: It’s Siren Song.

Bobby: Yeah, I’m gonna need that. I love that color. I’m sure people ask you about your hair all the time, both of you.

Snooky: Little kids will stop us and think we’re fairy godmothers.

Tish: A lot of the queens – are you allowed to say drag queen anymore? What is the new term?

Bobby: Yeah, I think you can.

Tish: A lot of the drag queens consider us their fairy godmother. And we are, we’re like little fairy godmother from The Wizard of Oz or something.

Bobby: What are some of your favorite stories from fans you’ve impacted?

Tish: Cyndi Lauper was one of our early shoppers at the store, and she decided to color her hair and it really gave her a certain edge, you know, made her look different. And she’s continued to use Manic Panic, ever since whenever it was, the late 70s, early 80s when she came in. She’s our number one favorite poster child.

Snooky: And Prince came in the store one time. And we weren’t there at the time but a friend of a friend of a friend had a bunch of stuff that he wanted us to sell. And, you know, we weren’t really sure about it. It wasn’t so much our style, they were all one-of-a-kind pieces, like satin and fringe, not punk. But he said, “Oh, just stick it in the window and you’ll see, it’ll sell.”

Tish: So we put it in the window thinking that once he left, we could move it out. And then we kind of just left it in there for a day or two. Then Prince pulled up in his limo and said, “Do you have more of those?” And they said, “No, it’s the only one. It’s one-of-a-kind.” He says, “I’ll take that.” And we were laughing. But yes, we have had people writing us beautiful letters telling us that they were suicidal and they dyed their hair and it changed their lives and made them happy. Color is therapy. And, you know, sometimes a change like that is just the perfect medicine. We had this woman who was in her 80s or something, a woman from Canada named Rose, and she felt invisible. Then, she dyed her hair purple. And all of a sudden, people started talking to her and sitting with her and taking pictures with her and all this stuff. she wrote to us and said, ‘You know how wonderful it was?” Everybody called her Purple Rose.

Snooky: It gave her a whole new lease on life. She had so much fun in her twilight years. And it really changed her life and those around her, too. At her funeral, all her relatives dyed their hair purple in her honor. And we thought that was just so beautiful.

Bobby: I would empathize with Purple Rose. I feel like I’ve suffered depression and anxiety my whole life. I can distinctly point to certain seasons where I felt like things were a little bit more out of control. And I always say when the world is out of control, the one thing you can control is your hair, right? So dyeing my hair or bleaching my hair in those moments gave me a sense of control, helped me stabilize my mood, and just gave me a better outlook on life. And it really is such a great therapy and medicine like you were saying.

Both: It really is!

Tish: And you notice when a lot of people go through some kind of depression or something, they cut their hair off, just to do something with their hair, but dyeing is a way better alternative because most people can’t cut their hair very well. It’s just a wonderful change that you can do over and over to suit your moods or just refresh your look.

Snooky: It’s funny, it’s come full circle because our mother was an artist and she became an art therapist, and that was all about color therapy. And that’s kind of what this is. It makes you feel better and it gives you a lift.

Bobby: I wanted to ask about building a brand that has longevity, and can maintain relevance over generations. Manic Panic has been around since 1977, so what are the secrets to that? It’s more trendy now to work on projects for a couple of years at a time and ditch them, people have become serial entrepreneurs. But you stayed focused on this project for the better part of your career. What is the secret to maintaining and sustaining that?

Tish: All you need is love. We have this love for our company and our brand and another passion and love for color. I mean, we’re always in black but our hair is always a color and our nails and stuff like that, our lipsticks, eyeshadow, all that stuff. We absolutely love color. And it’s been our passion all the years. Some people stay married, some people get divorced, but I guess we’re just like, the long-married type. We just love our business, and it has changed so much over the years. We’ve changed over the years, our hair is gray now. So, it’s easy, we don’t have to bleach.

Snooky: Mine is not gray, it’s purple!

Tish: We have stayed true all these years to our brand. It’s a mom-and-mom operation. It’s not like we’re some big corporation or something. I guess we’re big, but we’re still a mom-and-mom brand. And I think people see the truth and authenticity. We didn’t get into this, like a lot of the other brands, just because this is a great place to be right now. It’s always been our hair color, our love for music, that rock ‘n’ roll.