Glam Rock

by Simon Philo

  In February 1972, as glam was gathering momentum on the back of the success of T. Rex and Slade and the publicity surrounding Bowie’s emergence as Ziggy Stardust, a grateful Richard Williams—breaking rank with his sniffy rock journo brethren—wrote that “after a couple of years devoted to worthy but dull earnestness, rock and roll is back where it belongs” (qtd. in Hoskyns 54). That it was “back” was due in large measure to the fact that glam had enthusiastically embraced spectacle, at a time when most rock ’n’ roll bands had not and indeed when many flat-out refused to do so. As Roxy Music’s Brian Eno confirmed, this embrace was undertaken in full consciousness: “I think all of those bands—us, Bowie and the others—were turning round towards the audience and saying, ‘We’re doing a show.’ In that sense there was a unity, though it wasn’t very obvious at the time” (qtd. in Hoskyns 56). For some, Roxy Music and Bowie represented the more esoteric wing of glam, but there was clearly a shared agenda, a common cause—one that was built around this commitment to spectacle, to putting on a show—that would unite all its variant strains. Although happily conceding that the kind of glam he produced “was more contrived than Bowie, without a doubt,” acknowledging that “we were very conscious of giving pop back to the kids, and giving them something to smile about and bop to and generally get off on” (qtd. in Hoskyns 44) does not set songwriter-producer Nicky Chinn’s charges/clients—which included Sweet, Mud, and Suzi Quatro—all that far apart from the so-called glam sophisticates. For, in whoever’s hands, the end product was avowedly “pop” to its shiny core. So glam’s love of the spectacular and the theatrical contributed to the frequent charge that it was inauthentic. Just as would the related (and undeniable) charge that so much of it—both in and out of song—was character driven. Of the ten generic signifiers or “signatures” listed by Barney Hoskyns, only the last of these—“self-birth implicit in glam names”—comes anywhere close to being truly genre defining. For much glam is performed by musicians who are not themselves—e.g., Gary Glitter (Paul Gadd), Alvin Stardust (Bernard Jewry), Freddie Mercury (Farrokh Bulsara), Jobriath (Bruce Wayne Campbell), Alice Cooper (Vincent Furnier), Iggy Pop (James Osterberg), Marc Bolan (Mark Feld), and of course David Bowie, who would distance himself even further from David Jones when becoming Ziggy Stardust. All of which supplied yet more ammunition for critics who were constitutionally contemptuous of, and frequently appalled by, what they understood as glam’s unnatural contrivances, its guiltless insincerity, and general lack of depth. Glam musicians then—even those who went by their birth names—were all essentially actors playing a part. Something which they would freely admit to in interviews, but which would also be openly acknowledged in song and in performance—as when, for example, dressed as a Pierrot, Cockney Rebel’s Steve Harley (Stephen Nice) sang in “Judy Teen” (1974) of a character in a cabaret “swinging on a cane,” or when a similarly attired Leo Sayer performed the piano- and banjo-driven “The Show Must Go On” (1973)—a track that, like Cockney Rebel’s “Mr. Soft” (1974) quoted Julius Fucik’s “Entrance of the Gladiators” (1897).

  Glam’s near-default tendency to emphasize the performance—to privilege voices, poses, and role-playing—meant that it would run into considerable opposition from a critical orthodoxy for whom “playacting” was anathema. Though often viewed with a mixture of suspicion and disdain, voicing and character-driven songs were of course nothing new in rock music. Paul McCartney, for one, had always demonstrated a propensity for such material in populating his story-songs with a cast of memorable characters—think, “Eleanor Rigby” (1966) or “Penny Lane” (1967) or “Obla-Di, Obla-Da” (1968). This is arguably why most rock critics have tended to favor his more “honest” songwriting partner, John Lennon, who could never be accused of failing to expose his “true” self in his songs—think, “In My Life” (1965) or “Strawberry Fields” (1967) or “Julia” (1968). Post-Beatles, it was perhaps to no one’s great surprise, then, that it was McCartney who most enthusiastically embraced the glam modus operandi, when he recorded the hyperventilating James Bond movie theme “Live and Let Die” (1973). Given his track record, McCartney was always a more likely convert than Lennon. As quirky as any Cockney Rebel or Sparks song, his most un-rock-like and most unlikely US number one single “Uncle Albert / Admiral Halsey” (1971)—as its two-songs-for-the-price-of-one title indicated—featured multiple characters inhabiting different stories delivered via a range of voices. With its funny accents and impersonations of trilling telephones, it was reminiscent of a music hall ditty or perhaps a Goon Show comedy song. In sharp contrast, Lennon spent the immediate postbreakup years engaged in strenuous attempts to get the sixties out of his system—seen and heard, for example, in the myth-stripping “God” (1971) in which he declared the “dream is over”—resulting in self-flagellating material that was fully committed to sincere self-revelation. “Give Me Some Truth” (1971), he sang, presumably believing that it was out there and within him, while his former songwriting partner was producing archetypal story-songs like “Another Day” (1971)—a track that Lennon himself singled out for very public criticism as the ultimate proof of McCartney’s dishonesty in the scabrous “How Do You Sleep?” (1971). Even Lennon’s rock ’n’ roll covers LP—not released until 1975 but recorded a few years earlier—was construed as an act of personal revelation rather than modish revivalism. It was aided in this by the singer’s own liner notes, in which he implied that the songs would help you understand where he came from and so who he is. Spectacularly humorless as he appeared to be in the early 1970s, we can only conclude that Lennon subscribed to the idea that authenticity was absolutely central to rock practice—a credo that would lead most in the world of rock to condemn glam as fake and insincere. In John Lennon’s case it would contribute to his rather poisonous in-song attacks on McCartney, who is charged with being a purveyor of “muzak,” living with “straights” and having done little more than write the presumably anodyne “Yesterday.”

  Yet, by 1975, it appeared that even rock’s most celebrated ascetic John Lennon had loosened up somewhat, when he belatedly crashed the glam party and collaborated with David Bowie on the American number one “Fame.” Possessing a lyric that positioned it closer to Lennon’s self-flagellating critiques than anything Bowie had recorded thus far—“Fame puts you there where things are hollow / . . . / What you get is no tomorrow”—it was, however, still a track that was on message for a genre for which the pursuit, pleasures, and pitfalls of stardom held a powerful fascination—“What you like is in the limo.” The self-mythologizing that this obsession encouraged is of course nothing new in rock ’n’ roll, but glam would take it to a whole new level, without much evidence of guilt and often with lashings of knowingness. This is also part of the reason for humor and irony featuring so prominently—and yet another reason for so many po-faced rock critics taking against it. The genre’s acute self-consciousness is evident in the numerous anthems that pepper its discography—from Alice Cooper’s “Eighteen” (1971) to Bowie’s “All the Young Dudes” (1972) to Marc Bolan’s “Teenage Dream” (1974) to Sweet’s “The Sixteens” (1975). Although set at different levels, there is a still audible strain of lament, melancholy, and reflection to be found in each of these; but there is always a leavening humor, supplying warmth and generating empathy. It could be pessimistic, but it was never cold or mean spirited. Glam, not glum. The apocalyptic comic-book denouement to Sweet’s “Hellraiser” (1973) is exciting rather than terrifying or disturbing; and, even though Bowie’s Diamond Dogs (1974) was consciously conceived in response to the chaos of the early 1970s and, as such, arguably marked its creator’s most direct engagement with that “real world,” this did not prevent the title track from showcasing yet another example of glam’s humorous chops. After all, its apocalypse-surviving protagonist’s first thought on being “pull[ed] . . . out of the oxygen tent” is to “ask for the latest party,” with the express intention of making the best of his or her deformities—because, who knows,
that “silicon hump” and particularly that “ten-inch stump” might come in handy. So, although it might have been unable to avoid or even ignore all the surrounding disillusionment, glam itself was never disillusioned. Instead, it was humorous and surprisingly self-effacing, cutting through any pretension that might be lurking. Unlike the voguish singer-songwriters of the day or the doomy serio-rock of the likes of Pink Floyd, it was rarely if ever introspective or maudlin. It did not appear to do downbeat. As Bowie and the Sweet demonstrated, even the apocalypse could be a strangely joyous, communal, randy, euphoric affair. More end of pier than end of times. One reason it might have remained essentially good humored and hopeful is because it was so avowedly teen focused and so committed to “pop.” A faith evident in its enthusiasm for that most pop of formats, the 45 rpm single. Although musically diverse, glam’s debt to—or, more accurately, its kinship with—classic rock ’n’ roll is evident in a similarly full-on commitment to instant gratification, thoughtless fun, and hedonism at all costs. Significantly, it is with classic rock ’n’ roll (1954–1959) and not classic rock (1966–1971), then, that glam shares a direct lineage. For as Mott the Hoople’s Ian Hunter gleefully pointed out in “The Golden Age of Rock ’n’ Roll” (1974), the former is “good for your body, it’s good for your soul.” Glam performers could and would publicly identify with classic rock ’n’ roll’s wholesale embrace of the pleasure principle; but they also admired, and so sought to emulate, the showmanship of “first wavers” like Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, Gene Vincent, and, most notably, Little Richard. This was a reverence which—appropriately enough—found expression in both sound and vision. Glam channeled classic rock ’n’ roll via cover version, pastiche, and even intertextual reference—as when, for instance, both T. Rex in “Get It On” (1971) and Queen in “Now I’m Here” (1975) quote directly from Chuck Berry’s “Little Queenie” (1959)—and via performances that in costume, props, and moves recalled the sheer unabashed theatricality and spectacle of this “golden age.”

  In seeking to identify the genre’s core ingredients, Barney Hoskyns lists several musically derived “signatures” that would appear to characterize it as the anti-prog—such as an emphasis on the drum and the voice, a constant mid- to fast-tempo rhythm, rather conventional song structures, unadventurous melodies, and relatively short songs marked by brief solos. However, for David Bowie, it was not about the musical commonalities. “We were a very odd little genre,” he explained. “What became known as glam or glitter rock wasn’t a movement at all, musically” (qtd. in Hoskyns 46–47). The diverse glam work of Roxy Music, Slade, Sweet, Cockney Rebel, Sparks, Queen, and Bowie himself makes any attempt at constructing a generic template via musical “signatures” a somewhat reductive, ultimately rather frustrating, exercise. Hoskyns is, however, arguably more persuasive when he turns his attention to what might be termed glam’s nonmusical ingredients. Prominent among these, for example, is that unashamed “pop” sensibility that presumably nourished all those songs about cars, girls (and boys), good times, and sex, not to mention that seemingly unquenchable obsession with stardom, fame, and celebrity. Glam can also be defined by the visual dimensions of and in its performance—by costume, staging, appearance, and gesture—and by the visual culture that surrounds it—by single and album cover work, promotional videos, and poster art. “The glam thing was always great fun,” recalled Gary Glitter. “We—Marc Bolan, David Bowie, myself, Slade, Sweet—were working in pre-video times, but we’d be thinking visually. When we did Top of the Pops, which was our major outlet, we devised some outrageous props. I used to come out on motorbikes, or moons to stand on” (qtd. in Thompson 305). This is not to say that the glam sensibility, its consciousness, could not be transmitted solely through music and lyric. And yet “Starman” was ur-glam, so quintessential, because it functioned so effectively as sound and vision—because it reached back in search of more musically direct, even simpler models; because it genuinely reached out to its young audience; because it restored spectacle and theatricality to rock via stagecraft, fashion, and props; because Bowie clearly reveled in the constructed nature of the performance persona; and because, like all glam with its magpie tendency, it treated existing styles and voices as fair game when it came for source material to plunder.

  February 1974. For Barney Hoskyns, T. Rex’s “Hot Love” (1971) was his “password to the mystery of pop’s power and glamour,” the song “that seduced [him] and kept [him] coming back for more and more and more” (4). Well, for me, that would be Sweet’s “Teenage Rampage,” the first single I ever bought. To my mind, “Teenage Rampage” could not have offered a more thrilling introduction to pop music’s “power and glamour”—cartoonish but no bubblegum novelty. Fittingly, like many I’m sure, I saw it at the very moment I first heard it. Eighteen months after offering the nation its first sighting of Ziggy, Top of the Pops was now liberally and gratefully dosing glam to more than fifteen million viewers every week. On a run of peerless singles that would invariably be backed by memorable on-screen performances, Sweet had become a Thursday night fixture by enthusiastically embracing producer Mike Leander’s belief that “glam rock was all about putting on a show.” As a result, “the records too were constructed to be seen,” he pointed out, “whereas in the Sixties they were constructed to be heard” (qtd. in Hoskyns 41). Featuring stomping tribal rhythms and simple, repetitive riffs, peppered with teen crowd noises calling for the band to lead us into battle with our parents and possibly even older siblings, here was a less subtle, more easily digestible “Starman” (“Star-Teen,” perhaps)—visceral and exciting, humorous, and fun, an all-inclusive, shouty call to arms. Yet, this being glam, there was strangeness too. I was certainly not alone in being fascinated at the sight and behavior of Sweet’s bass guitarist, who wore women’s clothes and heavy makeup, and whose voice, gestures and onstage moves compelled one to lock onto him whenever the studio camera picked him out (which it did a lot, of course). Yet, I do not recall ever being shocked by Steve Priest’s appearance and camp antics; and neither can I remember any negative comments from my watching parents, even as Priest’s performances seemed to grow more outrageous by the week. As far as I can recall, there were no playground assaults on Sweet fans. Perhaps because in just two years or so, Bowie and other glam acts had prepared the way for greater mainstream tolerance of the transgressive. Perhaps because what constituted the “normal” had dramatically shifted in the face of glam’s counternormative challenges.

  Warranting often little more than a footnote in rock history, we might conclude that glam’s commercial success is what lies at the very root of this marginalization. Is it all so “obvious” that it simply does not deserve serious critical consideration? Is this why rock narratives appear to confound that truism about history being written by the “winners”? Certainly, at least insofar as the 1970s are concerned, it seems as if popular music history has been written by those who identify with its “losers”—ergo, the disproportionate critical attention paid to the likes of Nick Drake, the Krautrockers, and even the punks. By contrast, glam has found itself largely erased from this narrative—not “cool,” too “pop,” too British, a novelty, an unnatural aberration, “the rock that dare not speak its name” (Turner, Glam Rock, 10). But, of course, this is a version of history that simply does not tally with the pop life that I and millions of other young Brits lived out at the time. It is a version that we refuse to accept. Propelled by revisionist ire, then, Glam Rock investigates the origins, development, and impact of an undervalued and misunderstood musical genre that has for too long remained hidden in plain sight (and sound). Wedged between late ’60s rock and late ’70s punk, glam has failed to generate anywhere near the volume of studies that have emerged from these fabled and much-storied moments. This despite—or perhaps more pointedly because of—the fact that many millions of glam records—singles and albums—were sold. T. Rex reportedly shifted sixteen million of them in just eighteen months to the middle
of 1972, representing an impressive, almost Beatles-esque 4 percent of all recorded music sold in the UK. Now, sales alone do not necessarily make this a tale worth telling; but at the very least they should add significant heft to the case for glam’s inclusion in the pop grand narrative. Exploring it in relation to a range of key contexts (artistic, political, psychoemotional, sexual, demographic, and commercial), this book will treat glam to the full account that it surely deserves. Woven into the fabric of the pop everyday, it was “not just a highly successful trend in popular music—it became something like a cultural dominant . . . manifest as sensibility in all areas of British popular culture in the 1970s” (Auslander 49). As zeitgeisty, then, as the revered rock formations that immediately preceded it and those that would follow it. Arguably even more so, because of that long, wide reach. And, as the global reaction to David Bowie’s death demonstrated, the story of glam is not only one of how it carved out a meaningful place for itself as a musical style in a specific time—but also of how it has continued to be received and understood by musicians, the industry, critics, and, most importantly of all, audiences.

  Glam delivered an exhilarating, colorful, and sugary explosion of pop joy. In this respect, it was surely—to paraphrase Noel Coward—one of the most “potent” forms of “cheap music” yet witnessed. For the orthodox rock critic, it was evidently too much of a challenge to take such “potency” seriously—to acknowledge and try to understand the significance of performance and context. Instead, glam’s critics winced at the fact that visuals were unashamedly integral to this most theatrical of genre’s meaning and appeal. It was both telling and fitting that it should be a trio of memorable TV performances—of “Starman,” which had followed on the stack heels of T. Rex’s “Hot Love” and which would then precede Roxy Music’s “Virginia Plain” by a mere six weeks—that would announce its arrival in such spectacular fashion. (Or, that on a more personal level, it should be Sweet performing “Teenage Rampage” a few years later that would baptize me into the joy of pop.) Glam, though, did not simply score some kind of Pyrrhic victory for style over content, for surface over depth. For style and surface read content and depth. More than a case of one-sized jumpsuit fits all, glam was musically diverse—ranging as it did from the complex art-rock of Roxy Music to the artless thump, grunt, and grind of Gary Glitter. Yet, as a Sparks newspaper ad for a bass player who—it was stipulated—“must be beard-free and exciting” indicated, here was a joyful reboot for music that had of late so grimly embraced denim-clad seriousness. “Glam’s allure”—so says a perceptive Jon Savage—was built on many things: “outrage, gang solidarity, rapid motion, androgyny, but most of all glee” (Savage, “Kiss,” 82, my italics). Of all these ingredients, it is the last here that will truly unite all the glams discussed in this book.