"Glam Rock 101"

Get it on, bang a gong, get it on!

by Michael Endelman


They called it "glam," shrinking "glamorous" into a curt, single-syllable 
catchphrase. Ironically, there was nothing small or diminished about 
glam rock. It was a scene obsessed with more: flashier, gaudier, and grander. 
Kick-started by frizzy-haired Marc Bolan (singer/leader of T. Rex) in 1971, 
glam quickly became a musical, social, and, most of all, fashion sensation in 
the U.K., as girls and boys threw off their hippy threads for platform 
boots, brazen makeup, garish costumes, and lots of glitter. Thanks to a British 
predilection toward cross-dressing (which we suspect would mainly be 
Benny Hill's fault), willful androgyny is one of glam's most lasting rock & 
roll traditions, as Bolan's eyeliner and David Bowie's pansexual costumes led 
to everything from the Kabuki-tinged Kiss to Poison's hilariously fey 
obsession with all things L'Oréal. It wasn't all lipstick and Final Net, though; 
there was great music, too. Bowie brought lovingly pretentious theatrical 
concepts (see below: ZIGGY STARDUST), Roxy Music noodled and brooded with both 
substance *and* panache (you try it!), Mott the Hoople made pub rock 
with virtuosic flash, and Lou Reed turned his Manhattan gutter tales into 
stage-ready musical vignettes. Applying fake eyelashes, affecting a detached 
upper-crust accent, and squeezing into a sequined halter top might enhance 
your appreciation of glam rock -- but, if you're eager to dive in, it's not 
100 percent necessary. All you need is a will to bang a gong and let 
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY's ultimate guide lead you down this sparkly road.


6 GLAM ALBUMS YOU MUST OWN
--------------------------

1. David Bowie, THE RISE AND FALL OF ZIGGY STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS 
- 1972. 
Bowie's masterpiece is the premier glam document; pretentious, theatrical,
fairly absurd, and, most importantly, stocked with shimmering anthems from
start to finish. CHOICE CUTS: "Ziggy Stardust," "Suffragette City," "Moonage
Daydream"

2. T. Rex, ELECTRIC WARRIOR - 1971
With his sexy, breathy peaans to cosmic dancers and planet queens, T. Rex's
wiggy leader, Marc Bolan, was the fairy king of British glitter boogie. CHOICE
CUTS: "Bang a Gong (Get It On)," "Jeepster"

3. Mott the Hoople, MOTT - 1973
Even without their coalling card, the Bowie-penned "All the Young Dudes," MOTT 
is Mott's true triumph: Mick Ralphs provides flash-guitar licks, Ian Hunter 
narrates in his working-class rasp. CHOICE CUTS: "All the Way From Memphis,"
"Whizz Kid"

4. Lou Reed, TRANSFORMER - 1972
Coated in producer Bowie's space dust (yes, his delicate hands are *everywhere*
in the glam world), Reed's second solo album detailed a Warholian cast of
street kids and drag queens. CHOICE CUTS: "Walk on the Wild Side," "Vicious,"
"Satellite of Love"

5. Roxy Music, ROXY MUSIC - 1972
Precariously balanced between Bryan Ferry's experimental synth noodling, Roxy
Music's debut turns tales of doomed romantics into wide-screen epics. CHOICE
CUTS: "Virginia Plain," "2 H.B."

6. New York Dolls, NEW YORK DOLLS - 1973
As important to punk as they were to glam, this Gotham quintet pioneered the 
confrontational mishmash of gutter sleaze, gender-bending, and bare-knuckle, 
stripped-down rock & roll that's been aped by countless more successful bands 
since. Bowie (who else?) called them the "Stones in lamé." CHOICE CUTS: 
"Personality Crisis," "Jet Boy," "Trash"


Q & A WITH MICK ROCK
--------------------

The aptly named Mick Rock was the go-to photographer of the glam scene,
creating a visual record of the era's icons -- from David Bowie provocatively 
chewing on Mick Ronson's guitar strings to a slinky Iggy Pop on the cover of 
RAW POWER to the Frankensteinian shot of Lou Reed on TRANSFORMER. The newly 
reissued photo book "Glam!: An Eyewitness Account" (originally published 
as "Blood and Glitter" in 2001) documents all the major players and brings the 
makeup-caked men, women, and not-quite-sure-what-they-are into focus. Here,
Rock reminisces about those debaucherous years.

_____________________________________________________________________________

E.W.: In the intro to "Glam!," you write: "First you seduce the retina, then
you subvert the other senses. The first rule of glam." What does that mean?

Mick Rock: That was how David Bowie operated in the early days: get people's 
attention by the way you looked. Once they were intrigued with that, then
they'd start listening to the music. To some degree, that was always true in
rock & roll -- look at Elvis Presley. With glam it was very self-conscious to 
tart yourself up, attract attention, and then deliver the goods.

E.W.: Was it really as hedonistic and wild as your photos make it seem?

M.R.: Oh, yes, people got away with all kinds of stuff, though the press didn't
really pry into it too much.

E.W.: What did they get away with?

M.R.: I'm gonna leave that to you, darling! [Laughs]

E.W.: C'mon!

M.R.: You know, partner swapping, the multisexual thing, the kinky stuff
started to come out. It was a great time to be young and out of order. It was 
absolutely self-indulgent, but it was very creative.

E.W.: You also write in the intro that you acquired a taste for makeup -- why 
did you try it out?

M.R.: I liked the way it looked... and the girls found me more attractive. Glam
was not just a gay thing, it was absolutely equally a heterosexual scene. And
if you wanted to get near all the hip girls, you *needed* to be tarted up a bit.


GLAM CHEAT SHEET
----------------

Five sets of glam facts that will bedazzle even your most die-hard glam-fan 
friends.

1. Marc Bolan's T. Rex was a Big Ben-size phenomenon in England, landing 11 
successive top 10 hits between 1970 and 1974. In the U.S., they scored only one:
"Bang a Gong (Get It On)," which reached No. 10 in 1972.

2. Before making it big as a singer, David Bowie studied the oft-mocked art of 
mime. In 1968, he actually founded his own musical mime troupe, called Feathers.

3. The back of Lou Reed's TRANSFORMER album shows a man with a giant bulge in
his pants -- it's a strategically placed banana!

4. Mott the Hoople took their name from a madcap 1966 comic novel by Willard 
Manus.

5. In Martin Scorsese's 1974 classic "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore,"
troubled son Tommy catches heat twice for blasting the stereo too loud -- one 
time it's Mott the Hoople, the other T. Rex.


- ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY, 2/24/06.

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