Glam Rock – All that that Glitters turned to Gold
June 29th 2007 21:19
The Sweet, Slade, The Rubettes, T-Rex, Alice Cooper, Gary Glitter . . .
Tough huh?
Once described as “a three minute long tribal outburst, with platform boots, glittering outfits, makeup, and a vaguely translatable chorus - and what you have is the outrageous freak show once known as ‘glam rock’.
From Hush to Kiss, Glam rock's emergence into popular music was perfectly timed.
By the early 70's rock had reached an evolutionary cul-de-sac. What the genre needed was something new and unpredictable – what we got was glitter and glitz – and all the hallmarks of a torrid but every so brief musical typhoon.
Although glam rock had been around in one form or another throughout the history of rock music – it was the era between 1972 and 1975 that many of the revered artists enjoyed their greatest success.
From David Bowie to Suzi Quatro, Iggy Pop, and later to the Bay City Rollers – Glam Rock was characterised by languid, narcotic ballads and raunchy, high-energy recietals.
Alice Cooper – the prophet of bad taste – characterised all that was good (and distainful) about Glam – relying on almost satirical opera and ‘shock rock’ to attract huge audiences– while at the same time being a craftsman of teen anthems including Schools Out, I’m Eighteen and No More Mr Nice Guy.
Powerful musical fluff – it’s now time to let the Rock n' Roll music of the Glam Rock era to speak for itself.
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Comment by David
My sister was into glam-to-the-max back in the mid 70s.
From memory, the first concert I ever went to was Alice Cooper's 'Welcome to My Nightmare' Tour performance at Footy Park (now AAMI stadium) in Adelaide (whatever year it was; probably 74-76). My sister dragged me along but I enjoyed it, even after a 400 mile road trip.
What I remember most was the concert opened with a movie showing on crepe-paper strips which formed a false stage-backdrop. It was of a cemetery. A grave was dug up, and then Alice Cooper burst out of the coffin. Then he burst through the crepe paper in synch with the movie image. Then the rest of the band members burst through the crepe paper and the show was on.
He was certainly ahead of his time when it came to live concert stage production.
My favourite song of his? Only Women Bleed. There was this story about record executives being played the song and being asked to guess who wrote and performed it. Not one of them guessed it was Allice Cooper, and a few of them couldn't believe it was him.
I'm enjoying these trip-down-memory-lane posts of yours.
David ...