Glamography-The-Rise

poiprcdonI I The Rise of Glam Rock It was no longer possible to take the history of things as stage-managed by the media and the educational system seriously. Everything we knew was wrong.... Free at last or, if you like, at sea without a paddle, we were giving permission to ourselves to reinvent culture the way we wanted it. With great big shoes. -David Bowie ("Foreword") Glam cheered up the Seventies. -Ian Penman (qtd. in Cato 125) That the music classified as glam rock ranges from the buoyant boogie of T. Rex, to the sophisticated, self-conscious deployment of rock and pop styles by David Bowie and Roxy Music, to the straightforward hard rock of Kiss, to the simplistic, minimalist pop of Gary Glitter indicates that this rock subgenre cannot be defined purely in terms of musical style. Glam rock is not distinctive in this respect: no rock subgenre can ever be defined solely in musical terms, for each one entails an ideology that is manifest not only in music and lyrics, but also in the visual elements of performance (costume, staging, gesture, etc.) and the visual culture surrounding the music (album covers, posters, etc.).' It is never enough for rock performers to play a certain kind of music in order to claim mem- bership in a particular rock subgenre; they must also present the right kind of image onstage, on screen, and in print, even when part of the ideology is to deny the importance of the visual, as was the case in psychedelic rock. Even more than most rock subgenres, glam rock was defined primarily by the performers' appearances i. For a discussion of the importance of these visual aspects of rock, see Auslander, Liveness (73-81). 39 Generated on 2015-08-16 21:21 GMT / http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015063300878 / GMT 21:21 2015-08-16 on Generated http://www.hathitrust.org/access_use#oa / Access Open performing glam rock 40 and personae, the poses they struck rather than the music they played. In this chapter, I discuss the development of glam rock as a genre in both the United Kingdom, where it was a dominant rock style for several years, and the United States, where it took root only as a coterie phenomenon. In considering the music and its audiences, I point to the ways that glam destabilized conventional oppositions between rock and pop, art and commerce. As a reaction against psychedelic rock's emphasis on virtuosity, glam returned to stylistic basics and thus participated in the reevaluation of the 195os that characterized the rock culture of the 1970s. I also examine the emergence of glam masculinity through a series of subcultural transfor- mations from Mod to hippie to glam. Gender identity was another front on which glam challenged psychedelic rock and the hippie counterculture, not only because glam offered a new, implicitly queer, image of masculinity in rock but also because it disputed the ideology of authenticity by positing gendered identities as constructed rather than natural. While the precise origins of many rock subgenres are difficult to pinpoint, the beginnings of glam rock are relatively easy to trace. Two British rock musicians, Marc Bolan and David Bowie, were instrumental in bringing glam rock into being at the very start of the 1970s. Both men entered the rock music scene in the mid-196os. Bowie had been a musician, a mime, an actor, a member of various groups, and a folkie solo artist. Bolan, who had done some model- ing as a teenager, began as a solo artist, then was a member of a Mod rock group called John's Children before forming his own group in 1967, an acoustic duo named Tyrannosaurus Rex that was successful on the underground music circuit and recorded four albums. By 1970, both sensed the exhaustion of the counterculture and its associated musical styles and chose to pursue a direction representing a specific repudiation of the counterculture. As rock historian Barney Hoskyns observes, "What Bowie and Bolan both saw was that 'glamour' was the antithesis of hippiedom: for long- hair puritans, glamour symbolized affluence, capitalism, 'show business"' (Glam! 23). In defiance of the audience with which they had previously aligned themselves, both Bowie and Bolan embraced glamour. In February 1970, Bowie experimented with a flashy new androgynous look for a London concert at which his group, the Hype, opened for sixties stalwarts and Woodstock vet- Generated on 2015-08-16 21:22 GMT / http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015063300878 / GMT 21:22 2015-08-16 on Generated http://www.hathitrust.org/access_use#oa / Access Open 41 glamography erans Country Joe and the Fish. The cover of his album The Man Who Sold The World (1971) "pictured Bowie relaxing on a day bed with the same sort of hairdo worn by Hollywood movie actresses of the forties, wearing an elegant dress, and holding the queen of dia- monds playing card in his limp-wristed hand" (Charlton 257). By the end of that year, Bolan, who already wore items of women's apparel, swapped his folk guitar for an electric guitar, augmented his group to a quartet, and shortened its name to T. Rex. When Bolan appeared on the British television program Top of the Pops with glitter on his cheeks in 1971, the Glam rock phenomenon was fully launched in the United Kingdom.2 Any number of British groups and performers followed the lead established by Bowie and Bolan: Slade, Sweet, Mott The Hoople, Mud, Alvin Stardust, and Gary Glitter were but some of the more prominent to put on makeup, platform shoes, and glittering costumes. Even popular music artists not specifically identified as glam rockers, such as Rod Stewart and Elton John, took on some of the visual aspects of glam, whether in costume, makeup, hairstyle, or onstage flamboyance. While some glam rockers, notably Bolan, Bowie, and Lou Reed, professed homosexuality or bisexuality, most simply adopted glam as a provocative performance style. Sweet, for example, consciously decided to "go glam" in mid-1972, adding makeup and extravagant costumes to their act. This was probably the peak year of the glam era: "T. Rextasy" (as the British music press called the fans' rabid enthusiasm for the group) was at its most intense, and Bowie brought out Ziggy Stardust, his androgynous, polysexual space alien persona (I offer a detailed analysis of Bowie's final performance as Ziggy in chapter 4). By mid-1973, when Bowie gave his last concert as Ziggy Stardust, the most inno- vative phase of glam was over. Nevertheless, glam persisted as a viable rock style for a bit longer, attracting new adherents-includ- ing Suzi Quatro, Roy Wood and Wizzard, Sparks, and others- whose work constituted a second wave of glam that held sway from 1973 through 1975. Table 1 displays a partial but representative list 2. There is some debate as to whether Bolan or Bowie should be seen as the true father of glam rock. Bowie may have arrived at something like a glam style first, though Bolan probably did more to publicize and popularize glam, at least initially. Bowie has recently conceded this point-see the epigraph for chapter 3. My purposes here do not require resolution of this issue. Bowie and Bolan were both friends and rivals at this period; each seems to have influenced the other. Generated on 2015-08-16 21:22 GMT / http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015063300878 / GMT 21:22 2015-08-16 on Generated http://www.hathitrust.org/access_use#oa / Access Open performing glam rock 42 of canonical major and secondary glam rock artists organized by nationality and year of emergence.3 Speaking very roughly, those listed as emerging in 1971 and 1972 can be considered first-wave glam rockers, while those listed as emerging after 1972 belong to the second wave. (By "first wave," I mean those who had a hand in cre- ating glam; "second wave" identifies artists for whom glam was available as an established stylistic option.) Before I am accused of promulgating a "great men" theory of glam rock's development, I hasten to add that communities, not individuals, produce musical genres; if Bowie and Bolan were the only glam rockers, this book would not exist. As Simon Frith pro- poses, "A new 'genre world' . is first constructed then articulated through a complex interplay of musicians, listeners, and mediating ideologues, and this process is much more confused than the marketing process that follows, as the wider industry begins to make sense of the new sounds and markets to exploit both genre worlds and genre discourses in the orderly routine of mass marketing" (Performing Rites 88).4 (I will note in passing Frith's implication that musical genres originate with musicians and their audiences- they are not initially the cynical products of marketing depart- ments.) The glam genre world's geographical center was London, where the musicians and record producers, music publishers, jour- nalists, and broadcasters who created and disseminated the music were located. Bolan and Bowie were both native Londoners; glam rockers from other parts of England (Slade was from Wolverhamp- ton, Roy Wood from Birmingham) had to spend at least some of their time in London to achieve visibility and success. Even many of the American artists associated with glam cemented that associa- tion by traveling to London: Iggy Pop and Lou Reed both appeared 3. I am referring to the year of emergence as a glam artist, not the artist's first appearance in any musical context. Many of the artists listed here had musical careers that began well before their glam phase: Bolan and Bowie had been around for over five years, Roy Wood and Lou Reed had both been in important groups of the 1960s (the Move and the Velvet Underground, respec- tively); Slade, Sweet, and Alice Cooper had kicked around as groups for several years before glam.

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