Glam Rock

by Simon Philo

  Featuring ex-Spider Mick Ronson on lead guitar, Mott the Hoople’s autobiographical “Saturday Gigs” recounted the band’s history from 1969 to the present in typically droll fashion. Yet it also delivered the last rites. So, while ’73 was a “jamboree” in which “the dudes were the news and the news was we,” ’74 was “a Broadway tour” and “we didn’t much like dressing up anymore.” Having apparently fallen out of love with glam—“Don’t wanna be hip, but thanks for the trip”—and unable to see a future, the characteristic Hunter ad-libs in the track’s fade-out urge us to never forget them because “we’ll never forget you” to the backing of repeated “goodbyes.” The valedictory message of “Saturday Gigs” should not, however, have come as a complete shock. The previous Mott single and final hit, “The Golden Age of Rock ’n’ Roll,” had still possessed at least something of the same melancholia in the midst of its celebration—“the golden age of rock ’n’ roll will never die / as long as children feel the need to laugh and cry.”

  Two of its biggest acts might well have been down (T. Rex) and out (Mott the Hoople), but popular music abhors a vacuum. There were inevitably a host of newcomers eager to join the glam aristocracy. Appropriately enough, Queen released Queen II in March 1974. This album included the band’s first hit single, “Seven Seas of Rhye” (UK no. 10), which featured a humorous music hall blast of “I Do Like to Be beside the Seaside” in its fade-out. In contrast to most of their peers, Queen openly professed a love for the 45. This could possibly have been a major contributing factor to what quickly became the music press’s default critical position on the band. A position that, as Nick Kent’s dismissal of the first LP as a “bucket of urine” had demonstrated, could be very hostile indeed. There were, though, a range of reasons for such disdain. Most, if not all, of which had been directed at glam acts for a few years now. (Ironically, even Roxy Music’s drummer had accused Queen of being too contrived.) Queen II owed as much to Led Zeppelin and even progressive rock acts like Yes as it did to David Bowie or Roxy Music, and almost nothing to T. Rex. Yet Queen’s sensibility was firmly—and literally—planted in the glam camp. “[Lead singer] Freddie Mercury’s a pretty regular guy,” wrote the NME’s Julie Webb in the opening lines to her interview with the band in March 1974, who “uses regular Biba black nail varnish, regular black eyeliner, and straightens his hair with regular electric tongs.” Webb also informed her readers of Queen’s ambition and drive. The band was “big business” with “an amazing amount of gear and a lighting system that Bowie would be jealous of,” and “though you may hate them, they’re gonna confound you by being huge” (qtd. in History 1974, 32). Typical of glam, Queen’s close attention to “business” did not mean that the “show” was neglected. As Mercury explained, “You see, the thing is, we’re on stage to entertain and it’s no good saying, ‘Look, we’ve got a new album and you are going to get a whole barrage of our new songs, whether you like it or not’” (qtd. in History 1974, 33). On their March tour, Queen duly closed every gig with “Jailhouse Rock,” “Stupid Cupid,” and the burlesque anthem “Big Spender.” For the admiring Webb, Queen “have a flash way of putting it across that makes it with the audience.” Putting it more colorfully, in the singer’s own words, it was “just Freddie Mercury poncing on stage and having a good time” (qtd. in History 1974, 33). True to their word, Queen would continue to develop as a glam act—through the year and beyond. In July 1985, in front of a global audience of an estimated two billion, Queen would steal the show at Live Aid, performing a perfectly pitched, crowd-pleasing twenty-one-minute greatest hits medley that included sing-along sections of “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “Radio Ga Ga,” the first verse of “We Will Rock You,” and a rousing version of “We Are the Champions.”

  If Queen’s brazen commitment to the cause of “show” presented a challenge to rock conservatives, then American ex-pats Sparks took that challenge to another level entirely. The punningly titled album Kimono My House had been recorded in London during the first few months of 1974, when sessions had been disrupted by power outages, and the record’s proposed release date had been imperiled by a shortage of vinyl. A press handout in support of lead single “This Town Ain’t Big Enough for Both of Us” had made the direct comparison with Roxy Music, in claiming that Sparks would “capture the imagination and affection of roughly the same audience sector.” An uncredited review in New Music Express described the “rather charming” track as “totally bizarre” with “synthetic sounds—Mellotrons, Moogs and backward tapes—building from one delicious crescendo to another.” It was, however, noted that this most idiosyncratic of singles was “not the sort of record you half-like,” and that Sparks might well therefore “cause wars” (qtd. in History 1974, 58). One of presumably many—since the track went to number two in the UK singles chart—whose “imagination and affection” was captured was future Duran Duran bassist John Taylor. In fact, Taylor recalls Sparks having a similar audiovisual impact as Bolan, Bowie, and Roxy Music had before them:

  That period in pop was one of the most golden. Every week on Top of the Pops there was a treasure unveiled and Sparks were right in the middle of that with “This Town Ain’t Big Enough For Both of Us.” I saw the Mael brothers and thought I’d never seen anything like this in my life. You instantly knew that there was something about them that was very different. I was immediately fascinated with that song. The arrangement is pretty extraordinary, the lyric surreal—unlike anything else out there at that time. The physical sound of it and the use of the gunshot, the guitar break, that voice! (Qtd. in Easlea, Talent, 75)

  “This Town Ain’t Big Enough for Both of Us” was unconventional, for sure. Noticeably lacking pop’s standard structure. Ron Mael explained that he had been intrigued at the prospect of writing a song that was far from being a cliché but which used a clichéd line. Yet that cliché was a non sequitur—a payoff that simply did not follow on from verses that barely related to each other and which instead offered a series of apparently narrative-defying random images: “The mammals are your favorite type and you want her tonight / . . . / You hear the thunder of stampeding rhinos, elephants and tacky tigers.” And what on earth was meant by lines such as “As 20 cannibals have hold of you / They need their protein just like you do”? It was as if a Captain Beefheart lyric had been wedded to a crazy disco beat. In Melody Maker, Geoff Brown declared that the band possessed “an immense sense of style”:

  Because their style is real, not the tacky pizazz of the New York bands and not the vogueish calculatedness of the Britisher (excepting Mr Ferry). Though Americans, Ron and Russell [Mael] have more in common with Paris Match than with the New York Times; with the Champs Elysees than with Broadway; and, to cross the Channel, with the London Palladium than with Max’s Kansas City. (Qtd. in History 1974, 68)

  Sparks, then, was not remotely classic rock. Sparks was showbiz. Sparks was glam. “This Town Ain’t Big Enough for Both of Us” was as cinematic as its movie-cliché title and gunshot effect suggested, as theatrical as Russell Mael’s cabaret-castrato allowed, as odd as Ron Mael’s lyrical and musical collages sanctioned. And Sparks was funny to boot. So, as countless teens—John Taylor and myself included—can confirm, Sparks were “the peacock people” who “enlivened and brightened” our mid-1970s lives, “who would appear in our homes once a week. Aspirational values, cheap tailoring and the bizarre mingled together” (Easlea, Talent, ix).

  Whether well meant or not, the descriptors “clever” and “contrived” were also frequently ascribed to Cockney Rebel, whose leader, Steve Harley, could match anyone in the pretention stakes. “At the time,” he explained, “I was into Eliot, Wordsworth, Hemingway” (qtd. in Turner, Glam Rock, 115). Refusing to use electric guitar, Cockney Rebel’s sound had been shaped by classically trained musicians on keyboard and violin. For Alwyn Turner, this “was a somewhat unexpected consequence of the way that glam had expanded the sound palette of rock music” (Glam Rock, 117)—an experimental drive that would eventually fi
lter through to glam-pop. Witness Sailor’s duo of campy, decidedly un-rock singles “Glass of Champagne” (UK no. 2) and “Girls Girls Girls” (UK no. 7) from the following year. Of course, Slade’s classically trained Jimmy Lea had incorporated the violin into several of the band’s biggest hit singles including “Coz I Luv You” (UK no. 1, 1971). Slade, though, had never declared in an interview, as Harley had done, that “the greatest works of contemporary song-writing were by Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, and Cole Porter” (qtd. in History 1974, 9). Part of the reason, no doubt, why the following letter had appeared in Melody Maker in early ’74:

  Who the hell does Steve Harley of Cockney Rebel think he is? In the Melody Maker you quoted him as saying “you’ve got no right to be on stage if you don’t look a million dollars, not if you think you’re in show business.” So . . . good bands like Status Quo, Pink Floyd, Hawkwind etc have no right to be on stage because they wear jeans and T-shirts and look like they should be working for the council. Don’t forget, Mr Harley, it’s not eyelashes and glitter that make a good band, it’s the music. (Qtd. in History 1974, 43)

  Mr. Harley, though, was not listening. He appeared to take no notice of the classic rock ideologues lining up to criticize him for his showbiz allegiance. Indeed, “eyelashes” and “glitter” were precisely what the new Cockney Rebel single “Judy Teen” (UK no. 5) was all about. Whatever it was, it certainly was not Bad Company. Angular, with a near-tango rhythm and pace, “Judy Teen” showcased a more-mannered-than-Ferry vocal and with that most un-rock of instruments, the violin, very much to the fore. An unrepentant Harley then featured bare of torso, jazz of hands, and heavily made up with foundation, mascara, and lipstick on the cover of the band’s Psychomodo LP. One might have concluded that he was looking for a reaction. Coproduced with Alan Parsons, a symphony orchestra and full choir were to be found within, along with explorations of melancholia, musings on alienation, and a range of nightmarish images. The title track, for example, had some familiar reference points—“I’ve seen 1984 in a terrible state” and “I’m so disillusioned / I’m on suicide street”—and its narrator talked of “losing a million brain cells every day.” “Psychomodo” was very zeitgeisty and surprisingly punky—with its war cry of “destroy!” and the admission that “I’m so confused, I wish I could die, die, die, die!”

  Reviewing the album in New Musical Express, Charles Shaar Murray semiconceded that there was “more to Harley and his gang of mincing Biba dummies than a fast mouth and a good costuming job.” But, he then added, “not that much more.” In Shaar Murray’s opinion, “Most of Psychomodo [was] disposable, but three of the tracks on the first side work[ed] spectacularly well.” One of these, “Mr. Soft” (UK no. 8) was released as a single and is described “a kind of modified Brechtian cabaret vamp of the kind that Bowie tackled on ‘Time.’” Shaar Murray particularly liked what he described as the track’s “’50s doo-wop bass backing vocal” (qtd. in History 1974, 58). It is, though, arguably more reminiscent of a sonorous Russian Orthodox male voice choir. In fact, “Mr. Soft” is a curious mélange a la Roxy Music’s first two LPs, with its sawing, Romany fiddle, “quoting” of Czech composer Julius Fucik’s “Entrance of the Gladiators,” which traditionally accompanies the entrance of circus clowns, and frequent campy exclamations of “ooh la!”

  Millward has written of “progressive glam”—a variant that, he suggests, “acknowledges the theatricality and commercial appeal of Queen but followed the more consciously arty approach pioneered by David Bowie” (135). This is presumably where we are encouraged to file bands like Sparks and Cockney Rebel. “Prog glam,” though, was still overshadowed—blinded?—by the glam-pop that continued to thrive through the spring and summer of 1974. Mud, for example, followed up its number one single “Tiger Feet” with the near-identical, feline-referencing “The Cat Crept In” (UK no. 2). Suzi Quatro had a modest hit with “Too Big” (UK no. 14)—a rock ’n’ roll revivalist workout reminiscent of Dion’s “Runaround Sue.” Speaking of revivalists, Showaddywaddy took its debut 45 “Hey Rock and Roll” to number two, while the Glitter Band scored a Top Five hit with “Angel Face” (UK no. 4) and American ex-pats the Arrows made the UK Top 10 with “Touch Too Much.” All this despite a seven-week, high summer strike by BBC technicians that took Top of the Pops off-air and so threatened to cut off glam’s (free-to-)air supply. Here, sales of Sparks’ follow-up to “This Town Ain’t Big Enough for Both of Us,” “Amateur Hour,” were believed to have suffered from this lack of all-important screen time, as it stalled just inside the Top 10.

  Starving the Top of the Pops’ unofficial house band of prime-time exposure, the strike could also help explain the comparatively poor performance of Sweet’s next single. “The Six Teens” (UK no. 9) was, however, uncharacteristically reflective, marking a big step up from “Teenage Rampage” in both music and lyric. Like the latter, it was a glam anthem (“But life goes on, you know it ain’t easy. . . . You just gotta be strong”); but now, instead of aiming at thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds, it was pitching a little higher—“You’re all part of the six teens.” In the song, Julie and Johnnie, Suzy and Davey, Bobby and Billy are all glam “children of the revolution,” Bowie’s “young dudes,” kids who have grown up in the late ’60s. The song asks, “Where were you in ’68?” Yet, true to those who “never got it off on that revolution stuff,” it does not appear to hanker after those days. In fact, we are told that Bobby and Billy “thought that ’68 was out of date,” and so “took the flowers from their hair” and “tried to make us all aware.” The message, coming through loud and clear then, that it was “too bad, too late.” If Chinn and Chapman had presented Sweet’s audience with a more “mature” lyric, then this was accompanied by music that “could have been a Deep Purple B-side, or a new Queen anthem” (Thompson 312), as softer acoustic verses collided with heavier, harder, louder choruses. Presumably on the strength of “The Six Teens” and the key change it signaled, Sweet had been invited to support the Who at the latter’s headline stadium gig at Charlton FC in June. Unfortunately, vocalist Brian Connolly’s throat was damaged in a brawl, and so the band was forced to cancel. The next few years might have been very different for Sweet had this not happened.

  Like “The Six Teens,” as with so much glam work, David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs (UK no. 1, US no. 5) was rooted in an avowedly antimythic attitude toward the late 1960s. Released three months ahead of the album, “Rebel Rebel” (UK no. 5) represented conclusive proof that Bowie was still glamming it up, still reaching out to his core constituency: “Your face is a mess, you’re a juvenile success.” Motored by a memorable, visceral riff, it explored familiar territory—“You got your mother in a whirl / She’s not sure if you’re a boy or a girl.” According to Barry Walters, “Rebel Rebel” was “Bowie’s answer to all those deliciously dumb Sweet, Slade, Mud, Gary Glitter, Suzi Quatro and T. Rex hits he indirectly enabled” (n.p.). Related to this, it has also come to be viewed as his glam swan song. However, while it might well have been his last single in the glam-rock style, it was by no means his last glam single. That would be 2017’s No Plan EP.

  With that characteristic mix of modesty, diffidence, and sincerity, Bowie described Diamond Dogs as his “usual basket of apocalyptic visions, isolation, being terribly miserable.” Declinism in the long-form format, then. On the album, he explained, “I’m saying the same thing a lot, which is about this sense of self-destruction. . . . There’s a real nagging anxiety in there somewhere” (qtd. in Heylin, Madmen, 236). No longer working with the Spiders, Bowie himself played most of the guitar parts, in addition to playing keyboards, synths, and sax, and producing. He was also reunited with Tony Visconti, who arranged the strings. Bowie’s guitar playing was not as polished as Mick Ronson’s. However, these technical shortcomings undeniably contributed to the album’s suitably feverish, fevered, on-the-edge quality. Diamond Dogs presented a sustained, overwrought, dystopian mix of dread and decadence, conceptually tighter than either of h
is two previous original works; Bowie grafted elements of George Orwell’s 1984 to his own personal take on the apocalyptic times. Orwell’s estate had refused him permission to transform 1984 into a stage musical. Therefore, material that he had been working on in the winter of 1973/1974, which he had hoped would form the basis of this production, was instead put to good use on Diamond Dogs—most evidently, on tracks like “1984” and “Big Brother.”

  If it was thematically consistent, the same could said for the album in terms of its music. Drawing upon Broadway, European cabaret, rock opera, and even blaxploitation, tracks ranged from up-tempo Stonesy rockers like “Rebel Rebel” to the jazzy “Sweet Thing” to the funky “1984.” Furthermore, such eclecticism was well served by a “collection of songs that didn’t resolve themselves but petered out in chaos, blended into the next track or were abruptly conjoined (Turner, Glam Rock, 135). For the NME’s Charles Shaar Murray, the album stood as nothing less than “the final nightmare of the glitter apocalypse” (qtd. in Hoskyns 98). Prefaced by a distorted howl, album-opener “Future Legend” features a synth- and guitar-backed, Richard Rodgers’ “quoting” spoken intro of a little over a minute to supply a snapshot of postapocalyptic “Hunger City”—complete with “fleas the size of rats,” “rats the size of cats,” and mutant “peopleoids.” It then segues straight into the title track “Diamond Dogs,” which introduces listeners to Bowie’s latest persona, “Halloween Jack,” following the explosive declaration—“This ain’t rock and roll / This is genocide!” Unsurprisingly given its length and more pointedly its subject matter, when released as a single, “Diamond Dogs” fell short of the UK Top 20—Bowie’s first false move since “Changes” had failed to chart back in early 1972. Next up was the 8:50 song-suite “Sweet Thing / Candidate / Sweet Thing (reprise),” on which Mike Garson’s jazzy piano work was much in evidence as it documented the hustler turning tricks, the politician “hustling” for votes, and the “sweet” narcotic relief of class A drugs. With its funky wah-wah rhythms, side two’s “1984” was musically reminiscent of Isaac Hayes’s “Shaft”—and the result, in large measure, of Bowie having apparently asked Visconti for what he described as “Barry White strings.” Proceedings came to an unnerving—dramatic—close with the looped first syllable of the word “brother”—“bruh! bruh! bruh!”