Most of the tunes follow the familiar chorus/verse structure of three-minute pop songs there is an emphatic, thumping 4/4 backbeat melodic hooks appear early, and are repeated many times there are very few instrumental solos, and little elaborate ornamentation and the lead vocal performances often feature affected Cockney accents, accompanied by high-pitched backing singers. In terms of their music, all the acts featured in the BBC4 compilation could reasonably be described as ‘pop’ (rather than ‘rock’, I would argue). Whatever else it may have been, glam was not primarily a musical genre. However, they do imply that defining glam isn’t straightforward. My instinctive responses to all this are certainly contentious, and I’ll leave the finer points to enthusiasts. It’s equally striking that very few British glam artists – again, with the exception of Bowie – managed to achieve any success in the US. The most overt transatlantic connection here is Bowie’s role as producer of Lou Reed’s Transformer album (1972) but while Reed briefly adopted some glam characteristics – including make-up – he quickly abandoned them. There are definitely some visual trappings of glam here – especially the transvestitism – but this is infused with a self-consciously decadent sleaziness that is a very long way from the glittery, teen-oriented pop of the British acts, including Bowie. The New York Dolls, for example, or Wayne/Jayne County, seem to me to belong more to the art-world avant garde, especially that associated with Andy Warhol, albeit filtered through the tradition of amateur garage bands. While there are some US stars who might comfortably be categorized as glam – especially Jobriath (who was almost unknown in the UK) – others don’t fit very easily. It may be that I am chauvinistically insisting on some uniquely British quality of glam here – perhaps a kind of British theatricality. Interestingly, all three of these acts originally hail from the US, although Alice Cooper is the only one who remained there. Aside from singer Russell Mael’s luxuriant hairstyle, Sparks were barely glam at all, either in their appearance (especially the weird-pervert look of fellow front-man Ron Mael) or in their music. Alice Cooper placed a central emphasis on performance and visual display, but the band had little of the glitter or (despite their name) the gender ambiguity of glam.
Quatro is often identified as the only female glam performer, although much of the point of her act was precisely that she was not glamorous or feminine, but actually very macho (at least in a sweaty leather-jumpsuit way). Although they are generally included in histories of glam rock, I would even question whether Suzi Quatro, Alice Cooper and Sparks really belong in this category either. Many of the acts on the BBC compilation might more reasonably be described as mainstream pop or novelty bands (Chicory Tip, Mud) some fit better under the category of ‘revivals’ (such as Alvin Stardust, a latterday Gene Vincent impersonator, or Roy Wood’s Wizzard) yet others arrived relatively late in the day, assuming elements of the glam style, but quickly moved off in other directions (Queen, Elton John). Both, it appears, have been erased from history. Conspicuous by his absence was Gary Glitter, who in recent years has been repeatedly arrested and imprisoned for child abuse and the leading DJ and Top of the Pops presenter of the time Jimmy Savile, whose posthumous exposure as a prodigious child abuser precipitated a major crisis at the BBC. Rex, Bowie, Roxy Music, Slade, The Sweet), it features others whose glam status I found rather dubious: Alice Cooper, Suzi Quatro, Chicory Tip, Alvin Stardust, David Essex, Elton John, Queen, Sparks, and others. As well as the more predictable glam acts (T. Glam Rock at the BBC features clips from Top of the Pops and BBC concert footage from the period 1972 to 1977, alongside some from Cilla and the children’s programme Crackerjack. In researching this essay, I took detailed notes on one of the historical compilation programmes that are increasingly used to fill the schedules on BBC4.
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