http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b094mcwn/glam-rock-at-the-bbc
It's described as:
“A spangly celebration of the outburst of far-out pop and fuzz-filled rock that lit up the British charts in the early 1970s. Top of the Pops is our primary arena and its gloriously gaudy visual effects are used here aplenty! The compilation also utilises footage from a selection of BBC concerts as well as from Crackerjack and Cilla. It features classic BBC TV performances from T. Rex, David Bowie, Roxy Music, Alice Cooper, Suzi Quatro, Slade, The Sweet, Elton John, Queen, Sparks and many more.” September 15th 2017
Pictured: Alan Moore, hit writer for Wizzard
Glam marked the (thankfully temporary) end of pop music in the UK – the last gasp of a completely worn out, fucked up music industry that had tried everything it could to keep people interested. The thing at the time was to reach back to something that had grabbed our attention before and try it out again. The result was a lot of 70s people dressed in the 50’s Teddy Boy costumes of drape jackets and drainpipe trousers, a visual cue that we should find the music to be new, raw and attractive. Just like Bill Haley and the Vomits!
This diagnosis of malaise isn’t new; even at the time people knew that something had been irretrievably lost by around 1970, though I think it wasn’t until Robert Stigwood’s extragalactic unicorn orchestra ensemble zero gravity version of the Who’s Tommy that was headed up by Joan Collins, Mike and Bernie Winters and your mom that people realized music had finally died as dead as the proverbial parrot. Sounds (then a weekly inky) knew it as early as 1974, when they published a spoof record review of Brian Gamage and the Spikes’ single Brain Damage, that featured, “a guitar solo which involved hurling a meat-hook at a highly amplified Stratocaster,” and the NME (another weekly inky) obviously knew it in 1976 when they published Mick Farren’s call to arms, The Titanic Sails at Dawn. But something propped the corpse up and made it wave at passers-by between 1970 and 1976, when punk finally came along to reanimate it. And that thing was Glam rock.
The beginnings of Glam were simple enough. Marc Bolan got tired of sitting cross-legged playing the 50’s style rock and roll he’d grown up with and translated into British, songs like Mustang Ford and One Inch Rock, on his acoustic guitar, accompanied only by bongos. In collaboration with producer Tony Visconti, he hit on a winning Chuck Berry-influenced 60’s formula. For the kids too young to appreciate prog or the stirrings of working-class heavy metal up north, it was good stuff. The glam movement grew Pegasus wings of Damascene sable, as Bolan might have put it, when he appeared on Top of the Pops with his famously elfin features enhanced by glitter tears, his long curly hair loose and feminine, singing Get It On and pretending to play the guitar. His hippy silk and satin wardrobe had been simplified from the elaborate costumes of the Granny Takes a Trip rock elite into bright, stylish wear – tight pants with flares, girls blouses, girls’ shoes. Just about everyone fell for it. I know I did. I was 13, and the Golden Age of pop is always 13.
The BBC retrospective was sufficiently savvy to start with this moment, but as the program continued it became increasingly apparent that despite the yellow satin clothes, pop music was worn through, and had been patched for workaday use with better material from other, more luxurious times. The tracks they played are more or less in date order, so the deterioration is clearly evident.
T. Rex, Get It On, 1971
Marc Bolan and T. Rex’s stand out hit, Get It On (Bang a Gong in the US) is recognizably based on Chuck Berry’s 1959 rocker Little Queenie. It’s origin not exactly hidden. On the run-out groove Marc sings, “But meanwhile I’m still thinking…” Chuck's repeated refrain in Little Queenie. It’s 50’s music with saxophones, however brilliantly Visconti tarted it up for the seventies. One of the hallmarks of rock and roll (by which I mean the music of the American south, for example Jerry Lee Lewis or Little Richard) is the use of rhythm piano. In this particular rendition, I love the way Elton John kicks his stool away to start the rhythm piano bit and the producer ignores him and changes the camera. If we’d known then how famous he’d become, they wouldn’t have done that.
This first track also displayed the BBC’s famously muddy, quiet sound. Since the radio recordings of this period are superb, it may seem odd they couldn’t do it for TV. My dad, who was a TV engineer, did explain it to me at one point but since I’m not a TV engineer, I don’t recall much of what he said. It’s something to do with needing the bandwidth(?) for the picture, and so they put limiters on the sound volume. Whatever the reason, you can barely hear these guys but their glittering tinsel comes across great. (Studio cameras had come a long way from the white-streaked Ed Sullivan Show days.)
Alice Cooper, School’s Out, 1972
Perhaps US music hadn’t quite reached its own nadir at this point, as Alice Cooper’s performance and songwriting stand out in this overplayed (but with good reason) track. Not based on any recognizably Nashville or Memphis 50’s rocker template, it has the Alice Cooper hallmarks – different sections, actual chord changes, a singing voice that is clear and loud, punny lyrics (we got no class…and we got no principals!) and Alice being evil and menacing and yet keeping it PG-13. When most TOTP performers see the camera pointing at their face, or look at a monitor and see their face, they smile broadly like amateurs. (Look mum, I’m on the telly!) Alice instead points a rapier at the camera, rather accurately.
David Bowie, Starman, 1972
The other stand out glam track in the program, this is the famous performance where the universally dubbed “androgynous” Bowie puts his arm around glam Mick Ronson’s shoulders to sing the chorus and a thousand watching gay boys’ eyes bugged out and a thousand slashy fan-girls started writing a secret diary. It’s a great tune, owing more to Somewhere Over the Rainbow (that jump between “there’s a star…MAN”) than Jailhouse Rock, and without a trace of rhythm piano or grown men wearing Teddy Boy outfits. Bowie, too, can figure out which camera is on him and point at it accurately.
Roxy Music, Virginia Plain, 1972
An odd one this. Despite the fact that the band are described, on screen no less, as looking like 50’s rockers, and despite the presence of a saxophone and a rhythm piano, Roxy Music do have to go in the plus column. Ferry’s sheepy bleat and clever lyrics layer over a music track that might well have been engraved on a gold platter brought to TOTP by the aforementioned Starman from his lonely home on Mars. Its allusions, though, are to a vanished world only accessible visually through the earthly silver screen. Roxy Music did a good line in sounding nostalgic for something that was essential for existence but now vanished. They can't fully describe it in words, only with their haunting music. Their angst was outsize. U2 gave us the endless longing of “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” but Roxy Music were more, “I can no longer find what I used to live for”. For that, you can forgive them the occasional 50’s drape jacket and drainpipes amongst their costumes.
Chicory Tip, Son of My Father, 1972
A respectable song, written by no less than Giorgio Moroder, it features a bunch of Maidstone no—hopers lisping lyrics too heavy for the singalong handclap festival they made of it, rendered even worse by a depressingly cheesy synthesizer sound. It’s not Jerry Lee Lewis but it is pop music by numbers. Chicory Tip are famous for dressing as spacemen, if spacemen got their fashion cues from Plan Nine From Outer Space. People like this are to blame for KISS.
Slade, Mama Weer All Crazee Now, 1972
Ex-Skinheads with a hard-rock past do pop, which they did very well for a long time but it’s not exactly art. I won’t give them any points for originality – well, maybe as pioneers of branding by not using dictionary spellings for their product – but at least they aren’t wearing drape jackets and singing about the sock hop.
Sweet, Blockbuster, 1973
Our first Chinnichap record. More hard rockers with a penchant for playing pop. Sweet lucked out with Chinn and Chapman who made every record they touched irresistible to the average pop consumer. This one is based on the famous riff off of Tobacco Road by the Nashville Teens, so at least it only looks back to 1965 for its inspiration. I personally thought Sweet looked naff, glitter done badly, particularly in this performance when one heavily made up boy kisses another and it just looks…wrong...compared to the wholesome, ladsy shoulder clasp pioneered by Bowie. At least they weren’t skinheads and didn’t have major pretensions (that I know of).
Suzi Quatro, Devil Gate Drive, 1974
Gotta love Suzi, a fierce woman rocker, but this Chinnichap hit is self-consciously a fifties song. It’s basically Grease, with percussion piano and synced dance moves.
Wizzard, See My Baby Jive, 1973
Wizzard at least had the sense to be fronted by magician Alan Moore, but this inescapable hit is self-described as a Spector homage and it sounds even older than that, with a 50s structure and bloody saxophone. At least one person is in a drape jacket. Wizzard were determined to have “fun” and I hate “fun”. This performance had zany monkey costumes, pie throwers and dance moves. Can’t deny Roy Wood’s hit-writing skills, but this hit is self-consciously pieced together from the mechanically reclaimed carcass of 1959.
David Essex, Rock On, 1973
Oddity, this one. The song is 100% throwback fifties music, referencing James Dean and soda jerks or some similar crap. However, it’s stripped down to a gracile titanium exoskeleton of funk, featuring a breathtaking bass line by Herbie Flowers, some funk violins and little else. Pretty boy David might have hearkened back to the music of his own Golden Age of 13 but at least it sounded great. (And he looks great, too.) Wouldn’t call it glam, mind.
Alvin Stardust, Jealous Mind, 1973
I don’t need to do much to prove my point with this one. Bernard Jewry aka Alvin Stardust dresses as Gene Vincent and sings a Vincent-esque song. There’s literally no attempt to make this sound as though it was recorded after 1962. (I don’t know why stating Bernard Jewry’s real name is so funny. It’s not nearly as funny to mention Gary Glitter’s real name is Paul Gadd, or Marc Bolan’s name was Mark Feld.)
Mott the Hoople, Golden Age of Rock and Roll, 1974
Well, it’s all in the title, isn’t it. A specifically designed throwback track with rhythm piano and a whole bag of saxophones. Ian Hunter’s trademark anger makes it interesting but it’s still Grease. To be fair to Mott, the BBC seemed to want to showcase All The Young Dudes but found that, as they often did, they'd wiped all the tapes. This song has me in it, though – I was a 96 Decibel Freak. (Bradford Town Council had limited music venues in the city to a maximum loudness of 96 dB the year before.)
Ian Hunter is not very glam.
Mud, Tiger Feet, 1974
Five or so (can’t be bothered to count) guys in Teddy Boy drape jackets and drainpipes and a guy in a dress with Xmas baubles hung from his ears. (Actually, it’s a divided skirt, but it looks like a maxi dress.) Another Chinnichap hit, as catchy as influenza – who can resist singing along with that’s neat that's neat that’s neat that’s neat really love your tiger feet, whatever the hell it might mean – but it’s still a throwback song. And it has a built-in skinhead dance.
Elton John, Bitch is Back, 1974
God knows I hated Elton when he was a singer/songwriter, but in a compilation like this he stands out head and shoulders above the competition. And he’s singing about being a bitch, which is funny.
Glitter Band, Goodbye My Love, 1975
Dreadful ballad from several people dressed in Space Teddy Boy drape jackets and drainpipes. At least they still have two drummers. This could have been a hit song at any point in the last 60 years and I’m amazed it takes 5 amplified people to put it out. I assume the BBC had to nod towards Gary Glitter, who defined Glam, but since he’s a felon with an ugly crime to his name, they couldn’t actually put on the man himself. Unfortunately his backing band had little going for them.
Queen, Killer Queen, 1974
This is where prog meets glam, though I can’t say I thought this was particularly glam. Freddie was wearing a fur coat. Is that glam? This is English music, singing-into-a-cone-to-record-78s-music, of the Noel Coward tradition, with big guitar sounds and tremendous dynamic range (dutifully ironed out by the BBC limiters). It owes nothing at all to Memphis or Nashville. Prog was on its last gasp as well during this period, but at least Queen were looking backward at something other than Eddie Cochran. No hint of drainpipes or rhythm piano.
Sparks, This Town Ain’t Big Enough For The Both Of Us, 1974
Unabashedly American. From our vantage point in the future, we can see it’s audibly trending towards the New York Dolls rather than backward towards Chuck Berry. The vocal mannerisms are a little bit Queen but edging towards a little bit punk. It’s not glam though, is it?
Steve Harley, Come Up and See Me, Make Me Smile, 1975
Sorry I was rude about you last week, Steve Harley. This is a killer record. The Ooooh Ooooh La La La’s in the background may be Beatles throwbacks, but the song is solid and modern. Harley’s mannered delivery, half Bob Dylan and half punk, is a perfect bridge to the next big thing that was rapidly hurtling down the pike, gobbing as it comes. Punk is in the air. Also by 1975 the BBC had the sound sorted.
Marc Bolan and Cilla Black, Life’s a Gas, 1973
You wouldn’t have thought this would work, but it does. Our Cilla’s sweet voice and Marc’s more weathered tone harmonize well together. I’m wondering who made him change the lyrics from “priestess” to “princess” though.
The last words are “Life’s a Gas, I hope it’s gonna last.” ☹
