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Let’s Put Together A Glam Rock Playlist

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There are few music genres whose starting point can be so accurately pinpointed. It was 11th March 1971. T.Rex performed Hot Love on Top Of The Pops. Well, they mimed it. Drummer, Bill Legend, can clearly be seen thwacking his thigh with his fist rather than actually striking the snare drum and the cymbals remain strangely motionless. As a twelve year old, I was fascinated by the size of Steve Currie’s left ear. My dad probably enjoyed Pan’s People. Normally, they danced to a hit song when they couldn’t persuade the act to appear but, on this occasion, they performed a little prance to liven up the prolonged coda and keep the audience interested. The key thing was Marc Bolan’s face. It took a while to notice, but a couple of minutes in, he raised his eyes towards a spotlight above him and something caught the nation’s eye. Chelita Secunda had added two spots of glitter below his eyes. They looked like teardrops. He appeared to be conflicted with deep emotions. A million, young female hearts fluttered. Glam Rock was born.

Marc declared Glam Rock as dead in 1973, when he was promoting his soul influenced album, Tanx, but it is generally thought to have kept going until 1976. I know many Afterworders experienced a musical epiphany during this period. If any blog can put together a top class Glam Rock playlist it’s this one.

I’ll start at the beginning and that appearance on Top Of The Pops.

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Comments

  19. Alvin Stardust
    (was he Glam? Active in the time period, re-visit/re-hash of 50s Rock n Roll – yes I think ha counts)

    Jealous Mind

    (just looked on YouTube to choose between Jealous Mind and My Coo Ca Choo – it’s dam near the same video – basically, Alvin standing there looking moody and … that’s about it)

  32. 1976: Glam is effectively over in the UK. David Bowie has become a Young American Soul Boy, Marc Bolan has discovered Champagene and Cocaine and lost his way, The Sweet have become proto-NWOBHM, Slade have f**ked to America, Gary Glitter has become cockney rhyming slang, and it’s all become a tad predictable, corporate and mainstream (anyone wearing lipstick is immediately re-christened Terry Tinsel or Simon Sparkle, thrown in the studio with Mickie Most and ritually laughed at on Nationwide).
    The backlash will soon begin with Disoc & Punk less than 12 months away.
    But the Americans are taking it to the nth degree with more Make-Up than is contained in the Max Factor catalogue.

    Kiss = I Was Made For Lovin’ You
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7isxoTIeYM

    • Slight correction Rigid: many historians (these are the historians which live in my head, natch) think that Disco is started in 1974 with George McCrae’s Rock Your Baby

  34. Inspired by Mott The Hoople and David Bowie, Magnus Uggla released his album “Om Bobbo Viking” in 1975, and that’s probably as close to glam rock as we came to creating in Sweden. Here’s “Hallå”, the lyrics describing the club scene with pale boys and girls – difficult to tell apart – in glitter and platform shoes.
    (Shite picture choices in this “video”, but it was the only one of this song)

    • I can definitely hear the Mott The Hoople influence, that is the Bowie-ish Mott rather than the rocky Mott.

      As an aside, I find it a bit disconcerting when a foreign language song suddenly includes a smattering of English.

  36. Lest we forget (or rue?) the influence Glam had on the future.
    Adam Ant took Glam Rocks “dressing up”, added punk attitude and African drums and became the biggwst pop star of 1980/81.
    Roxy Music and David Bowie are oft mentioned as prime influences for many New Romantics.
    Taking the Kiss US Version of Glam and slapping on the make-up and stack heeled boots spawned The Tubes, Twisted Sister, Motley Crue and Hanoi Rocks.

    In the 21st Century, Glams influence can be spotted in Scissor Sisters and Lady Ga Ga.

    Add some Queen into the equation (often found on low-budget Glam compilations who can afford the licensing fees) and you get this lot:

    The Darkness

      • I would post the whole of “Zinc Alloy…” here if I could.

        Amazing record that sounds a little different every time I put it on. Combines Bolan’s tremendous knack with a tune with an endearing weirdness.

        • From this distance, it is hard to disagree. At the time, though, as I grew older, I became irritated more and more by his lyrics and his sound became less polished (he squeezed Visconti out of the picture until he jumped before he was pushed). Nowadays, I find myself listening to the later albums far more often than, say, The Slider.

  41. I saw Ian Hunter do this shortly after Mott broke up – not with Mick Ronson though, Earl Slick was on guitar. He did it solo at the piano, as a ballad. Fantastic.

  42. One of my all time favourites, the song that was the first one which was “mine”. I can still remember the impossibly crap sound from the mono earpiece of my crackly tranny radio as this beauty came through.

  53. Diminutive Swedish glam-rocker, Magnus Owl, is still going strong.

    This is a song about how going out and getting plastered on payday.

    Great views of Stockholm in this clip too.

    • You are right, the views of Stockholm are great. I’m just struggling with the Glam aspect. I can’t see any glitter whatsoever and the song strikes me as pretty ordinary pop. I’m guessing this is a hit from his Glam days that he is performing more recently, minus the outfits and make up.

      • @tiggerlion, he only did glam rock for that album, “Om Bobbo Viking”. Then he went a bit punk light for a split second, before finding his susequent style, this sort of energetic pop with a simple beat and a sing-along chorus, lyrics mildly mocking subjects that everyone knows well.
        He’s written the soundtrack to most Swedes teenage years, and now he’s moved on to more middle-aged subjects for his steadily older audience. He’s never written “serious” pop lyrics, he’s always poking fun at the things he writes about.
        And HUGELY popular…it would be difficult to find a Swede who doesn’t own at least one album by Uggla!

        • I’m trying to think of a UK equivalent and can’t. Robbie Williams is much too young. David Bowie not popular enough (and too talented). Cliff Richard is too old. How about The Rolling Stones?

          • No, no, no.
            This guy is half about comedy, half about music. In fact, in the latter stage of his career, the music has taken a back seat, both quality-wise on the albums, but also with him doing radio shows, stage shows with more comedy than music and TV shows where he’s meeting people and being funny (well, most of the time), he’s acted in a few films, and is/was apparently very popular on Twitter.
            So: humourous topical songs that everybody knows the words to, radio and TV personality, a bit of comedy and some (fairly bad) acting, king of tweets…
            No, I can’t think of anyone either.

            • An excellent précis of Mr Owl’s career., Lo. I saw a couple of those show where he met people and I thought he was very entertaining and established a great rapport with those he was meeting.

              He’s more Jarvis than Cliff but that doesn’t really get him either.

              Nearer Billy Bailey or Mitch Benn perhaps? Two very amusing chaps.

  58. More band-wagon jumping from 1970s Tokyo: Vodka Collins. No doubt that they’d been listening to T Rex etc.

    Lyrics in a mixture of Japanese and English.

    I’ll get my coat.

  59. Love the glams, me:

    Asteroids Galaxy Tour from Denmark, Denmark – love that band, with that track and Golden Age they are the poppermost.
    the Duke Spirit, if I may:

    and Goldfrapp seen here performing with Suzi Q’s backing band (maybe):

    All female fronted – unlike most, maybe all, the original Glam Rockers ..?

  60. So 11th March 1971 is one date put forward for when everything went shite – useful information I intend to live by.

    Even more compelling is the appearance of the ‘tongue logo’ on 17th April 1971 on the American (naturally) issue of ‘Brown Sugar’, but, as ‘Hot Love’ precedes it, it is probably still the prime offender.

    Certainly the ‘Budgie’ TV series filmed in the early months of 1971 has fashion that is so horrendous it has to be seen to be believed.

    I suggest that whenever the first disco record or 12″ inch single was released are the dates that absolutely seal the deal.
    When would that be?

    • Buddy Fite had a 7 inch single released October 1969 called For Once In My life. In order to boost flagging sales, the record company issued a few hundred 12 inch discs in early 1970. They rotated at 33 1/3 rpm and were seen as a gimmick. A few years later, Tom Moulton, a famous disco remixer you won’t have heard of, deram, wanted a fatter bass sound and asked that the vinyl grooves were further apart. His engineer came up with a 45rpm ten inch. The improvement in sound quality was so impressive that by 1975, DJs were regularly being given promotional twelve inch singles. However, the first commercially available 45rpm twelve inch single was released by Atlantic on 26th November 1975. It was Love To Love You Baby by Donna Summer.

    • The first Disco record is much trickier and probably deserves a thread of its own. I’ll have a bash anyway.

      Discothéque is a French term meaning a library of records. In the 1940s some dance halls were unable to field a live band and played records instead. By 1959, in Paris, the records were sequenced and introduced in a night club on a regular basis. In September 1964, Playboy magazine, no less, shortened the term to Disco.

      The music is four to the floor beat with soaring vocals a quaver or semi-quaver hi-hat pattern and a prominent syncopated bass. Frequently, there are lush horn, orchestral and/or synthesiser embellishments. You can identify these elements in many sixties records, which should be right up your street, mr daze. How about The Supremes’ You Keep Me Hanging On, Jerry Butler’s Only The Strong Survive or Sly And The Family Stone’s Dance To The Music?

      By the seventies, these nightclubs catered for society’s outsiders; Latinos, gays, blacks, etc. at a time when males dancing together was fraught with danger, these venues created a positive, lasses-faire atmosphere. The TV programme, Soul Train, which began in 1971, featured much of the music. New York and Philadelphia were hot-beds for early Disco venues, which started to attract a wider audience.

      People have gathered together to dance throughout the ages. At which point, did Disco music emerge from dance music?

      For me, Philadelphia, the city and the record label is key. Tom Moulton is crucial to the development of Disco with his extended remixes but the musicians are the most important. A group of musicians regularly played on Philadelphia records. They formed a group M.F.S.B. and made records of their own. They recorded the theme for Soul Train and called it T.S.O.P. (The Sound Of Philadelphia). It’s mainly an instrumental but has some vocals by The a Three Degrees. Every Disco ingredient is present and correct. It was released 6th February 1974.

  61. Chinn and Chapman are the svengalis of Glam, writing hits for The Sweet, Suzie Quatro and many others. Their relationship with The Sweet was particularly fraught as the band wanted to play rock not teenypop. From 1973 to 1974 alone the pair had 19 hits in the Top 40 of the UK Singles Chart, including five number ones.

    Here’s Arrows with a song rejected by David Cassidy, The Sweet and Suzie Quatro. It still made the top ten.

    Touch Too Much

    • The first single I ‘bought’. It cost me sixpence and an old football trophy. I loved the Fly record label. It was far better than Marc’s own label, featuring his corkscrew hair.

  75. After being out all day I come back and I’m so glad that no one has posted this, a real glam wannabe but a brilliant song from a brilliant album, Described by Andrew Loog Oldham as the “Rock Greta Garbo” whatever that means! And have a search for Brett being interviewed by Russell Harty, well worth a look.

    • Don’t want to be pedantic, but I just can’t help myself.
      Fox On The Run was from 1975.
      The Sweets last hit in 1978 was Love Is Like Oxygen (which was sort of Glam meets The Who)

      • You are right, My memories of them having a last big hit in 1978 and I thought it was the one I posted.

        In future I will check my facts before posting sir :_)

        I still introduced you to One Of The Days by Trespass though on the old site!

        • I’ll give you that one

          Although in truth, I did own the Metal For Muthas II compilation for many a year (where I first heard it) – it had somehow fallen from my memory, until you’re posting re-inspired my tired brain. It then became my default “Post A NWOBHM track”

  78. Would early Cheap Trick count as glam? Their 1st album especially was a huge slab of punky/power pop /glam anthems. I loved it. You had the two pretty boy frontmen & ,uh, the other two. Sounds pretty glam to me.


    & there was flashes in some o’ their later stuff too. This from ’79, the same year that The Sweet apparently asked Robin Zander to come be their new frontman.

          • Au contraire. 9:30 pm is optimum bakin’ time. Kids gone to bed. Headphones on for a bop around the kitchen to Ty Segall. Cds already prepped & cases decorated for her one track a year for each year she’s been alive so just left ’em to burn on the computer, all 3 of ’em. Cake won’t fit in the feckin’ tin to take in to work with me this morn but I’ll manage somehow. Now just wish I’d done her a Glam cd. She’d’ve loved it. Doh! Happy Birthday Pauline. Ta Tiggs x

  101. I always thought this was quite glam

    The Auteurs – Show Girl

    I have on occasion wondered if The Equals were the Godfathers of glam.

    Exhibit B: Baby Come Back

    Exhibit C: Softly Softly

  103. not so much the fag end as the dregs:

    the singer’s ok – sounds a little like Andy Partridge to me but the other three – I wouldn’t know in which order to shoot them.
    Also, I’m having this:

    ‘cos it’s ace.

  108. Um, I’ll just leave this here & run away to bed. I love this song far too much than is good for me & I love the video even more. Glam? Haven’t a feckin’ clue, but where else am I gonna stick it? Such a fab late 70’s/early 80’s pastiche.

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