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8/16/2015 The Rise And Fall Of Glam - Uncut HOME (HTTP://WWW.UNCUT.CO.UK) FEATURES & INTERVIEWS (HTTP://WWW.UNCUT.CO.UK/FEATURES) T DAVID BOWIE (HTTP://WWW.UNCUT.CO.UK/TAG/DAVID-BOWIE) s m h (HTTP://WWW.UNCUT.CO.UK/) MARC BOLAN (HTTP://WWW.UNCUT.CO.UK/TAG/MARC-BOLAN) (http://www.uncut.co.uk) REVIEWS (/REVIEWS­HOME) The Rise And Fall Of Glam u Tom Pinnock (http://www.uncut.co.uk/author/tompinnock) d March 9, 2012 NEWS (HTTP://WWW.UNCUT.CO.UK/NEWS) q 0 Comments (http://www.uncut.co.uk/features/the­rise­and­fall­of­glam­31131#disqus_thread) SUBSCRIPTIONS The new April issue of Uncut, out now, features David Bowie peering from th(eH cToTvePr:/ i/nW hWis W.MAGAZINESDIRECT.COM/UNCUT­ guise as sleazy space-star Ziggy Stardust. To celebrate this look at Bowie’s greMaAteGstAZINE­SUBSCRIPTION? creation 40 years on, here’s a fantastic piece from Uncut’s 18th issue, in NoveUmTbMe_r C19O9N8,T iEnNT=TOP+NAV+TEXT+LINK) which Chris Roberts looks back at the glammed-up, transgressive superstars who changed UK (HTTP://WWW.MAGAZINESDIRECT.COM/UNCUT­ his adolescent world. MAGAZINE­SUBSCRIPTION? USA (HTTP://WWW.MAGAZINESDIRECT.COM/UNCUT­ UTM_CONTENT=TOP+NAV+TEXT+LINK+UK) MAGAZINE­SUBSCRIPTION­US? REST OF WORLD UTM_CONTENT=TOP+NAV+TEXT+LINK+US) (HTTP://WWW.MAGAZINESDIRECT.COM/UNCUT­ BLOGS (HTTP://WWW.UNCUT.CO.UK/BLOG) FILM (HTTP://WWW.UNCUT.CO.UK/REVIEWS/FILM­ REVIEWS) FEATURES (HTTP://WWW.UNCUT.CO.UK/FEATURES) TICKETS (HTTP://WWW.UNCUT.CO.UK/UNCUT­ TICKET­EXCHANGE) http://www.uncut.co.uk/features/the-rise-and-fall-of-glam-31131 1/27 8/16/2015 The Rise And Fall Of Glam - Uncut The new April issue of Uncut, out now, features David Bowie peering from the cover in his guise as sleazy space-star Ziggy Stardust. To celebrate this look at Bowie’s greatest creation 40 years on, here’s a fantastic piece from Uncut’s 18th issue, in November 1998, in which Chris Roberts looks back at the glammed-up, transgressive superstars who changed his adolescent world. TWENTIETH CENTURY BOY In 1972, Britain joined the Common Market, Richard Nixon became the first American president to visit China, Arab terrorists turned the Munich Olympics into a bloodbath and Oscars were won by The Godfather and Cabaret. Like, I could’ve cared less. For into this world of On The Buses and Lift Off With Ayshea, of much fuss about some guy named Tutankhamen and newly decimalised currency, came a psycho-cultural force so irresistible, so spectacular, that one could only roll over and experience puberty as an absurdly hallucinogenic riot. Into this world came strange news from another star, came men singing of cops kneeling to kiss the feet of priests, and of queers throwing up at the sight of that, and of girls who were slim, weak, windy and wild, and had the teeth of the Hydra upon them. Into this world came Glam Rock. Glam Rock, like first love, never died for me. Actually, first love did die: I was 11, and threw a brick through her parents’ front window; doubtless a formative experience. But throughout Glam Rock’s ascent and decline I hung in there, loyal to a fault, like a party-crasher who relishes every last twitch and shiver of the hangover, like a man addicted to the dysfunction and push-me-pull-you pathos of a doomed affair. A Creamed Cage In August by Zinc Alloy And The Hidden Riders Of Tomorrow? A true magnum opus. “The Cat Crept In” by Mud? It rocks. “Saturday Gig” by Mott The Hoople? A tear in the eye. This rush of exuberant, narcissistic, electrifying records and poseurs only really went under when Bolan’s crash moved from metaphorical to physical, and the bopping imp landed the Early Death kudos. A http://www.uncut.co.uk/features/the-rise-and-fall-of-glam-31131 2/27 8/16/2015 The Rise And Fall Of Glam - Uncut month earlier, he’d told Steve Harley, ‘‘I’d hate to go now. I’d only get a paragraph on page three.” He was wrong, as he often was, and this was part of what we loved about him. (1974’s Zinc Alloy…, the last great Bolan album, not content with asking, “Whatever happened to the teenage dream?”, included the couplet: “Do they have sickness in society?/Do they have glitter crap gaiety?” The front page of the Evening Standard of Friday, September 16, 1977 which broke the news might, in one way, have gratified him. It was dominated by a picture from his cheeky, diamond-eyed prime: “CRASH KILLS MARC BOLAN: Purple mini driven by girlfriend hits tree in Barnes Common, kills rock star”. On the bottom right-hand corner of that page, in a minuscule box, a much smaller headline: “MARIA CALLAS FOUND DEAD IN FLAT.” When the history of the century’s music is written, it seems probable that Callas, arguably the greatest, most emotive singer of any century, will be granted a more earnest appraisal than the man who wrote “Purple pie Pete, purple pie Pete, his lips are like lightning, girls melt in the heat, yeah!” On the day, though, nobody doubted that the Standard had its priorities right. Even on the slippery slope, even after singles as dodgy as “New York City” and ‘‘I Love To Boogie”, Bolan remained a fey, frolicsome figurehead for a pop phenomenon of stellar scale and impact. He would’ve loved knowing that, even a month after Elvis Presley’s death, he’d outshone, in the popular imagination, the Diva Assoluta… HANG ON TO YOURSELF Oscar Wilde asserted that we are never more true to ourselves than when we are inconsistent. If, in the early ’70s, you were leaving childhood and entering adolescence – that awkward phase when the potency of cheap music is most likely to get you in the groin in any era – then, boy, were you true to yourself. Swallowing whole a movement propelled by a satin-jacketed corkscrew-haired elf and a bisexual alien in a Japanese nappy with no eyebrows, one could easily become confused. Only decades on can it be fully appreciated that pop music is not always, if ever, this edgy, subversive and exciting. Todd Haynes’ magical Velvet Goldmine, a Nic Roeg/Ken Russell fantasy, is blatantly based on Ziggy and Iggy and Showy Bowie and Loopy Lou, whatever the director’s opt-out disclaimers. By accident or design (I only suspect the former because his previous, critically-acclaimed films, such as Safe and Poison, have been so unutterably atrocious), and greatly assisted by http://www.uncut.co.uk/features/the-rise-and-fall-of-glam-31131 3/27 8/16/2015 The Rise And Fall Of Glam - Uncut the flawlessly contrived music (Shudder To Think, sodden with the spirit, sing of “starships over Venus”), Haynes catches the tricksy essence of Glam: the often ham-fisted flirting with issues of identity and gender, the hatred of all things worthy–but–dull, the denial of any social, economic or theological cause but self–promotion and astral ego-projection, the greedy needy lust for fame. It may have been punk that said never trust a hippie, but it was Glam that said never even be seen in the same building as one, it’s bad for your image. It’s a shame that Haynes overindulges his own sexual preferences in the film, with all the main characters unequivocally gay or bisexual (as far as you can be unequivocally bisexual). The funniest and perhaps most radical thing about the Glam Rock era which, coming several years before the mass advent of video, made Top Of The Pops an indecently powerful parochial semiotic, was the way in which it influenced a generation of heterosexual boys and men to dress up like moist and fragrant gardenias. Ridicule, as Adam Ant later whooped, was nothing to be scared of. It was entirely routine for classmates to sit after football practice adorned in the most fey and billowing of shirts, glittery stack-heeled shoes, dangly earrings and inexpertly-applied eye shadow, while butchly exchanging tips on how best to see down Melanie Thomas’ generous blouse. No dichotomy was perceived in this double standard, though one was frequently perceived, behind the sand dunes, down Melanie’s blouse. The dandy, in 1972-3, walked hand in hand (as it were) with the overground lad. It’s difficult now to gauge how sensational David Bowie’s declaration of bisexuality to Melody Maker (“Hi! I’m Bi!”) seemed at the time, with subsequent generations of stars adopting the ploy as an industry standard. Madonna has claimed to possess the soul of a gay man inside a woman’s body; Suede’s Brett Anderson equally hilariously touted himself as “a bisexual who’s never had a homosexual experience”. The gay male is a common enough cuddly uncle/flatmate figure in mainstream movies and sitcoms; the gay female, even if she has to go through Ellen high water, will catch up. But back then, Bowie’s arch scam (for scam it chiefly was) probed under rocks, tapped into irrational fears, taboos and sinister http://www.uncut.co.uk/features/the-rise-and-fall-of-glam-31131 4/27 8/16/2015 The Rise And Fall Of Glam - Uncut psychological hang-ups. For most impressionable fans and camp (sorry) followers, it was an insincere handle, a “mere” style statement on which to hang the fun-fuelled desire to dress up like a peacock on LSD. This dovetailed beautifully with Glam’s urge towards the celebration of oneself as a star, with which great levelling intention it presaged punk.

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