Eyewear – no matter if a performer is in theater, movies, or music, the right eye fashion (glasses) can be the most important part of the performance whether it is live onstage or a photo on a CD cover – the look can make or break the performance.
When it comes to great eyewear on album/CD covers nobody will ever come close to the signature glasses that John Lennon wore starting around the time of Sgt. Pepper. Those glasses were first given to him as a prop for his role in the movie, “How I Won The War” filmed in 1966. That particular style is called the Windsor and were the glasses generally given out by the British National Health Service, in other words cheap.
But other performers also have their own signature eyewear. Cary Grant for instance always favored a heavy black-framed style of glasses much like Roy Orbison or Rivers Cuomo of Weezer, not to mention Buddy Holly, who of course John Lennon himself worshipped, which is why the Beatles are called the Beatles in honor of Buddy Holly’s band, The Crickets. On the other end of that spectrum, Lisa Loeb also wears black frames but much lighter in style – and she looks as great as she sounds.
Jerry Garcia always wore tinted glasses while onstage with the Grateful Dead as does Ozzy Osbourne, whose onstage glasses look a lot like Janice Joplin’s onstage glasses, but nothing was as cool as Lennon’s everyday glasses
But the main thing for musicians trying to make a statement while wearing glasses on stage is to be as unique as possible while being functional. For instance, almost all musicians onstage need to have some kind of tinting in order to combat the bright lights that beam into the performer’s eyes on the stage. Ringo Starr and Bono both use different colors of tinting and levels of tinting according to the particular show or photoshoot they are doing. Many times musicians need to make adjustments to their equipment so a good level of magnification is necessary even if you are using reading glasses. Another important factor is that the glasses fit right so that they don’t fall off while you are dancing around.
As for the band Stavros – they use glasses provided by Reading Glasses Etc. because after all their slogan is, “Ridiculously Cool Glasses,” and one of the most important parts of a live performance is to look as cool as possible – even ridiculously cool. And even if you are not performing onstage – it never hurts to look like you could be on stage, because everybody wants that cool look